Strange behavior using Appearance on group

[stass19946577]

Hey,

Been using Illustrator for a million years.
Something recently changed in how fills and strokes affect elements inside a group.
In general, I expect a Fill effect on a group to apply to the whole group as a single object, rather than apply the fill individually to each part of the group.

To give an example:
These are 2 separate regular squares.

I would like to apply a gradient on top of the existing fill.
To receive this effect: (Which in this example I got by placing a compound object above the 2 squares, defeating the purpose of using the appearnce tab on a group).

So like always, I group the 2 squares and apply a fill effect on the group, which gives me this horrid result:

Why is the fill effect being applied separately to every element inside the group???
Why would it even change? am I being gaslit by Adobe?
SO MANY QUESTIONS.

Anyone know of a setting that fixes this behavior?
Using the latest Ai version and all that.

Thank you for reading.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

I could only test that in version 2020 and it was the same.

But also when you apply a stroke to the group it will put strokes on all the elements. So that is logical.

You can apply Pathfinder effect "Add" to the gradient fill to solve this.

[stass19946577]

It works 😃

Thanks, I really have memories of this working differently. Maybe it's a Mandela effect type of situation.
Thank  you very much!

[Kurt Gold]

It's due to transparency settings in the gradient fill in the overlapping area of the squares.

Another way to fix it is to make the group a knockout group in the Transparency palette.

[renél80416020]

Sur la dernière figure, appliquer l'outil Dégradé de couleurs (G).