You can tell the story of Mac OS via the story of its settings, and the same is likely true of Photoshop.

Recently, spelunking in the preferences of Photoshop 2025, I found this extremely curious thing:

To transcribe:

Focus mode limits the appearance of certain optional user interface messages so that you can use Photoshop with fewer interruptions.

With this option enabled:

• The Welcome screen will not include “what’s new” feature descriptions
• Blue in-product alerts promoting discovery and use of certain features will be suppressed
• What’s New will not auto start when Photoshop is launched
• The color mode preference will be auto set to “Neutral Color Mode”

The three first options should be self explanatory. Neutral Color Mode is sort of the “graphite” option of Photoshop’s UI where the (already rare?) accented blue elements become white instead.

As much as I’ll always applaud a piece of software working on annoying you less, this is all so very strange. I don’t mean that the last option seems unrelated, and the first and third one kind of mutually exclusive… but just the very idea of shoving it in as an opt-in in the last tab of settings, under “technology previews”, and asking people for feedback feels peculiar to me.

Not to spoil the outcome, but even this “technology preview” is completely gone in the updated Photoshop 2026. I wonder if this is fallout from a mangled launch (even for those few who I imagined turned it on, the option didn’t live up to its promise), but also perhaps a political fight inside Adobe between product and growth teams? I bet we’ll never know.

I do not personally have a grand unified theory of how to explain things or announce features in products because it’s so situational, and I understand that especially Photoshop given its age might be the hardest difficulty level. I’d personally prefer to receive announcements of new features over email so I can read them at my leisure, and with each new thing or change linked to a playground that would allow me to experience it in the best way – but I can’t say with any certainty that this would work for everyone.

But I would expect people on the Photoshop team to have more experience here, and this focus mode approach just feels a bit… naïve to me. My two warm takes: 1. People aren’t generally as frustrated with how features are announced, but with what features are. 2. Why wouldn’t everyone deserve the gift of focus?