I've always found the small instances where macOS Linux themes and actual macOS diverge annoying. To me, themes that use patterns and idioms that were instead inspired by, and not copied from, macOS are a happy medium.

As much as I enjoy the heritage of Linux theming, I do have to agree with you. A lot of it comes down to a difference in HIG, and as you've suggested, the quality of a theme mostly comes down to how well it works with those constraints. Normally I'm pretty unimpressed (those Big Sur themes have a real chicken-and-egg feel to them), but the few themes that I've seen that go out of their way to make a good, Mac-like experience are Nordic[0] (my personal fav and daily driver), Prof [1], and Juno [2].

[0] https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1267246/

[1] https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1334194/

[2] https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1280977/

https://elementary.io/ might be interesting to you if not looked already

> https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme

Thanks for this! I didn't realize that such a thing existed.

But does it work like a Mac?

I find it to be close enough for my purposes. I've also re-bound some keyboard shortcuts.