Switchboard layout inspired by macOS High Sierra

[alexdeplov]

I was looking into existing Switchboard UI and decided to try to change the layout, to match it old macOS, because it has some advantages.

Original:

New:

Current Switchboard layout uses horizontal placement for icons and labels. But in macOS it uses vertical placement: image on top, label at the bottom. Images are quite big, so you notice them first, and only after the label. When you get used to that UI you don't read labels much, just navigating by looking to icons. It also makes the screen to be less wider, more compact.

Further improvement cam be made by moving Security to the bottom row, and to move Wacom to devices row.

macOS also used even odd filled background behind each row.

For that mockup I used 48px icons and scaled them up to 100px.

I also add focus ring to the search bar, to indicate it batter that user can start typing immediately.

[danirabbit]

Hey thanks for your feedback! The reason we have titles to the right is because settings can be resized down to a single column layout for tiling workflows for example:

Icons on top is quite a bit more awkward in this kind of layout.

We could definitely set focus to the search by by default, I'd recommend you file an issue report about that :)

I think the section headers are nice to have explicitly labeled so I'm not really interested in removing those

"wacom" is already grouped with other devices. In your mockup you've moved it with network and wireless settings which I don't think makes sense. "Online accounts" and "wacom" are not like things

"Security & Privacy" settings is under "Personal" because these are no global settings. Your personal housekeeping settings don't affect other user accounts