macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 5
Apple today provided developers with the fifth beta of macOS Tahoe 26 for testing purposes, with the update coming two weeks after the fourth beta.
There are no updates to the release notes, which still say Beta 4.
THIS IS THE NEW MACINTOSH HD ICON?! WTF
Previously:
Update (2025-08-06): The release notes now say “beta 5” and call out a few changes (integrated into the list, so you have to search for them):
In beta 5 SDK, CoreData changed several
Sendableannotations to resolve compatibility issues with Swift 6’s newMainActordefault isolation feature. These changes include markingNSManagedObjectasNS_SWIFT_NONISOLATED NS_SWIFT_NONSENDABLE, markingNSManagedObjectContextasNS_SWIFT_NONISOLATED NS_SWIFT_SENDABLE, and requiringNS_SWIFT_SENDABLEclosures for the family ofperform,performBlock,performBlockAndWaitand similar methods. These changes are ABI compatible with past releases but might introduce new warnings while building source code that violates the longstanding CoreData concurrency guidelines.
NSManagedObjectare mutable reference types inextricably related to others in a graph and cannot be madeSendable. They are expected to be isolated to the scope of theNSManagedObjectContextthat creates or fetches them.NSManagedObjectContextis a style of actor which encapsulates its own dispatch queue. While it’s impermissible to use many methods onNSManagedObjectContextfrom other threads, it is permissible to pass references around to invoke theperformBlockfamily of methods, for the purpose of routing aSendableclosure to its managed dispatch queue. CoreData supports a user default-com.apple.CoreData.ConcurrencyDebug 1which can be used to enable additional assertions.
I assume this debugging default still breaks NSAsynchronousFetchRequest (FB8438285).
Apple has been updating some classic Mac icons during the macOS Tahoe beta, upsetting some longtime Mac users who prefer the original look.
RIP Macintosh HD icon (2001-2025) 🪦💐
An external SSD enclosure that resembles a Samsung T7 but with offset port and vent holes like a Mophie power bank. It makes more sense than a naked hard drive because people always need external storage for their Macs that ship with almost none and can’t house any internal drives anyway. Bold move to put the Apple logo on it though.
Making it look like an SSD is fine, but why make it look like an external SSD? Anyway, the main problem is that it isn’t drawn well. The perspective looks wrong and is very off-putting. They did the same thing with the new icon for mounted disk images.
I want to put a finer point on the problem with this icon: it is not a mere aesthetic preference or a reaction to change, but a simple acknowledgement that this icon is not good. It has a generic quality, a lack of personality. The perspective does not make sense, either. It is just a sad grey box without any connection to literal data storage on a modern Mac, the “Macintosh HD” label beside it on the Desktop, or any object in the real world.
macOS Icon History
Preview
these small things that makes the beta 5 (already) feels half baked. the basic controls have broken layout.
They’ve glassed up the video play button in Safari.
I real curious to see what Apple pro apps like Logic and Final Cut do with Liquid Glass.
i continue to believe that OS 26 is being designed by people that hate computers and don’t understand the people use them.
Previously:
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Presumably, the inverted perspective on the HD icon is how we will see the world, once our content has been elevated.
I assumed the Time Machine drive icon in the last beta was some kind of error, but it appears they're doubling down.
I keep hoping for visual improvements to Liquid Glass on Tahoe, but they're not coming, are they?
@Steve no, they are not. Definitely not as far as the icons go.
It's so baffling to me how they are purposely making the icons worse as a stated design principle. They don't actually use the word "worse" but they do say they want them less detailed, and stuck in a squircle shape. And then they give these system icons as examples. So yeah, worse.
There are no improvements coming because they don't think they are doing anything wrong. They don't think there is anything to improve. The top execs don't seem to actually use computers directly. Maybe Vision Pro, which of course is where it came from.
In the context of Vision-ifying everything it makes sense. Of course the icons are lower detail there.
I'm starting to feel like Alan Dye and Steven Sinofsky have some things in common.
Following up on my own previous comment, a much smarter-than-me friend pointed out the vertical lines on the icon are actually parallel, it is as though we are looking down on the drive from above, but the corners are creating a Müller-Lyer perspective illusion, which exists even in an outline of the design with no shading at all.
This icon is an encapsulation of everything wrong with Apple in 2025. (Soon to be "Apple 26".)
((And I'm starting to think the term 'glasshole' got coined a decade too early… Tim & Co.: "HOLD OUR BEERS!!"))
"If you don't want to see the new icon, you can hide Macintosh HD from view entirely." (From Juli)
Lol, lmao even
@Steve H. I too keep hoping that they'll walk back some of the low contrast in Tahoe. Invisible slider thumbs and Text Fields without borders, smaller volume notifications really make it a jarring experience.
I'm probably going to skip Tahoe on my dev machine, simply because of how it looks.
