Two of my MacOS apps stopped showing their icons in the menu bar and I could not access their settings to send debug info to the developers. One developer told me to check System Settings → Menu Bar, and both apps were disabled – along with several OS icons. I don’t recall turning any of them off.
And my Tesla stopped auto-navigating to my next appointment. Research told me I needed to go into my iPhone’s Settings → Tesla app and check calendar access. I originally set it to full access but it was changed to add events only.
For several years (and macOS versions) Mail has randomly hidden the Favorites bar. Since this is my effective Categories index years long before “AI”, it is most distressing. I would file a bug report, but can not find any corroborative evidence to submit. Nor can I produce the problem deliberately. I can only show the Favorites bar again.
It’s maddening. I’ve been fighting a retreating battle of unending horrible changes affecting me, all over the OS. Changing things or disabling things randomly.
I don’t have my “list” with me, but one fairly persistent settings change on both macOS and iOS are during system updates, when on rebooting Apple forces wifi and/or bluetooth to turn ON, even if you had them off. I cannot remember the current update behaviors, but not too long ago BOTH would be forced back on during reboot. More recently I believe macOS shifted to only turning on bluetooth.
Depending on your use case and “situation”, this forced, automatic enabling of wireless radios is a potential security issue, and in some unique cases a life-threatening one.
When I updated to MacOS 26.5, the targeted folder for afari downloads reverted to the
default ˜/Downloads folder rather than my custom location. I needed to visit Safari>Settings>General to reset it. This occurred on both my Macs.
Starting a few years ago (iOs 16.1 and macOS 13.1), Apple started randomizing the MAC addresses of WiFi radios for this very reason. I think it’s a smaller security issue than people think. I also believe that this happens with Bluetooth radios.
This happened to me as well with 26.5, and changing the location to “Ask for each download” in Safari settings would immediately switch back to my user account’s Downloads folder. Quitting and restarting Safari fixed that.