One of the user interface features in macOS is what Apple refers to as Vibrancy, where the color displayed for Finder windows, menus, the Dock, the menubar and other interfaces subtly change to reflect the colors behind them. This produces a translucent visual effect for those interfaces.

This feature, first introduced in OS X 10.10 Yosemite, can come at a cost in terms of processor and GPU resources because this visual effect is being recalculated and redrawn as needed. For those who want to reclaim those resources, it’s possible to turn Vibrancy off if needed. On macOS Sequoia, this is managed via the following setting in System Settings:

System Settings: Accessibility: Display: Reduce Transparency

With the Reduce transparency setting enabled, Vibrancy is turned off and the various interface components should change from their Vibrancy-managed translucent appearance to a non-translucent gray appearance.

As of macOS Sequoia, it does not appear to be possible to manage the Reduce transparency setting using a defaults command but it is possible to manage it via a configuration profile. For more details, please see below the jump.

The relevant preference domain and key values are below:

• Preference domain: com.apple.universalaccess
• Key: reduceTransparency
• Value: Boolean

Setting a boolean value of true will disable Vibrancy on macOS Sequoia. I’ve built a configuration profile with the boolean value of true set, where the profile is available on GitHub via the link below:

https://github.com/rtrouton/profiles/tree/main/ReduceTransparency