Archive for September 15, 2025

Monday, September 15, 2025

macOS Tahoe 26

Apple (feature list, release notes, security, enterprise, developer, full installer, IPSW):

macOS Tahoe transforms the Mac experience with a stunning new design and powerful capabilities that turbocharge productivity. The new design offers users even more ways to personalize their Mac with an updated Control Center in addition to new color options for folders, app icons, and widgets. The menu bar is completely transparent, making the display feel even larger. With its biggest update ever, Spotlight offers all-new browsing views for files and apps, enhanced search, plus powerful action capabilities to quickly accomplish tasks like sending emails or creating events — all with the help of quick keys. Shortcuts get even more powerful with intelligent actions along with the ability to tap directly into Apple Intelligence models to automate complex tasks. Thanks to Continuity, the Phone app allows users to effortlessly access familiar features from iPhone — including Recents, Favorites, and Voicemails — alongside new features like Call Screening and Hold Assist. With Live Activities from iPhone now appearing directly on the Mac, staying informed about real-time events has never been easier.

The current versions of my apps are compatible. There will be some updates soon to optimize them for Tahoe.

Stephen Hackett:

I spent a large part of my weekend making over 150 screenshots, just for you.

Howard Oakley:

Whether you’re installing the upgrade because of those, or in spite of them, allow me to take you on a quick tour of how you can set its interface up, and which controls do what.

There are three sets of controls:

  • Appearance mode, Light or Dark, in Appearance settings;
  • Display variations to Reduce transparency or Increase contrast, in Accessibility settings;
  • Icon & widget style, in Appearance settings.

That comes to a total of more than 20 combinations before factoring in icon tinting colour, so there’s no shortage of choice.

Michael Flarup:

One of the things I’ve loved most about designing macOS icons is how they let you break the frame. A blade, a pencil, a petal. Something reaching out.

With Tahoe, that era is behind us.

Adrian Schönig:

I worry how inconsistent macOS is gonna get thanks to Apple and Apple-only indie apps adopting the bubbly new look, while cross-platform apps stay on the classic/functional/flat look. Things weren’t entirely consistent before but many well-crafted cross-platform apps could (and did) feel right at home. That seems unlikely with Liquid Glass.

Kirk McElhearn:

If you’ve already installed Apple’s 26 OS RCs, it looks like there’s an update. Not at all confusing, the way it’s presented here…

Steve Troughton-Smith:

It’s becoming apparent that macOS Tahoe has a number of issues that completely break the Mac App Store for installing and updating apps, some of which that can only be fixed by booting to Recovery mode and using the command line 😅 That is an extraordinary state to launch an OS in.

See also:

Previously:

Update (2025-09-29): Juli Clover (Howard Oakley):

If you have a Mac Studio with an M3 Ultra chip and can’t get macOS Tahoe to install, you’re not alone. There is a bug that is preventing the update from installing properly on machines that have the M3 Ultra.

Juli Clover:

If you didn’t download the new software yet, here are some features that might entice you to upgrade.

Tim Hardwick:

In this article, we’ve selected 50 new features and lesser-known changes that are worth checking out if you’re upgrading. What do you think of macOS Tahoe so far?

Ric Ford:

Apple apparently addressed in macOS 26 a notoriously longstanding home folder bug with serious security implications.

Stefan Esser:

So now with macOS 26 being final. Why do people still have to jailbreak their Mac (and VMs) to be able to run 3rd party kernel extensions inside VMs?

Steve Troughton-Smith:

macOS Tahoe RC, everybody 😅

Rui Carmo:

System Preferences on the Mac is still horrible to use (sluggish, apparently overly dependent on web views, and has at least two different styles of control spacing).

[…]

Relying on the Globe/Fn key for window management was a mistake because it tends to switch keyboard layouts on me, so I guess people at Apple are neither bilingual nor good testers.

Jesse Grosjean:

For my taste, this standard macOS 26 Liquid Glass treatment muddies the boundary between UI and content way too much.

Rob Jonson:

Apple: “Spotlight now lists all result types … and intelligently ranks them by relevance to you, making it easier and faster to find what you’re looking for.”

Reality: Tahoe removes the information that allows you differentiate app versions.

Matthias Gansrigler-Hrad:

Interesting. The green zoom button has superfluous mouse-over detection for some reason on macOS Tahoe.

Dmitriy Kovalenko (via Hacker News):

Calculator app has a memory leak.

Gus Mueller:

This is what it looks like when I try and use the scroll wheel in Tahoe’s Calendar app. Is it just me, or does this happen to anyone else (scrolling doesn’t really happen).

Mario Guzmán:

Safari 26 settings in Sequoia vs Tahoe.

Native controls have been looking worse over time but Tahoe’s native controls just look the worse. They don’t work any better as they simply look so disabled in their standard enabled appearance.

I also wonder if they got rid of the compact toolbar in Safari for Tahoe because well, we all know how well toolbars are going in Tahoe. Not too great.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

If you’re running macOS Tahoe on a non-Apple monitor or TV, and you don’t have your screen white levels calibrated perfectly, Liquid Glass sidebars and toolbars are indistinguishable from white. The entire look and feel falls apart.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

It’s a little alarming just how bad macOS looks on a non-retina resolution these days. Blurry text and UI throughout the OS.

Russell Ivanovic:

In the release version of macOS 26, the system wide colour picker shows a zoomed in preview for the colour that’s wrong. It actually samples at the tip of the mouse pointer, which is about 10-15px off where the zoom preview is showing.

Aaron Pearce:

Catalyst where a button with “role: .cancel” does this in Tahoe. Thanks Apple.

Norbert Heger:

Generic media file icons used to be easily distinguishable with unique, recognizable designs. Now we get gray symbols and, of course, reduced text contrast in the file type label – for consistency with the overall reduced legibility of Liquid Glass.

Helge Heß:

A thing I like about macOS Tahoe is the animated Tahoe screen saver. It is quite beautiful.

Louie Mantia:

It is flat-out embarrassing that the Apple News app cannot seemingly render the content as the window is resizing.

Marcin Krzyzanowski:

I don’t think anyone decisive uses Mac for anything other than web browsing - judging after how damn annoying the glass transparency is on macOS26

Rakhim Davletkali:

Benjamin Button Reviews macOS

Update (2025-10-06): Avi Drissman:

Unfortunately, this fix doesn’t help Chromium. The issue is that NSAutoFillHeuristicController hammers the synchronous IME API -firstRectForCharacterRange:actualRange: on the main thread. Given that Chromium needs to synchronously round-trip to a different process to get a response, this means that even on 26.0.1 NSAutoFillHeuristicController causes unacceptable main thread jank.

Greg Pierce:

“Show Contact Card” in Mail is…interesting.

Louie Mantia:

macOS 26 still has a setting for “Show toolbar button shapes” but… it doesn’t do anything anymore. On or off appear exactly the same in Liquid Glass.

Collin Donnell:

Yesterday I decided to stop waiting and install macOS 26 Tahoe. It’s a mixed bag.

Everything they added for apps other than the design updates, I like.

[…]

I’m a big fan of the Journal app. Having it on macOS is awesome. I’ve never been able to stick with Day One, but for some reason Journal clicks with me. The suggestions it gives are good at reminding me what I was doing, so even if I don’t visit the app for a few days, I can come back and fill in the details.

[…]

My review for the design changes is this — mostly not awful, but everything they changed is worse. Every change rests somewhere between neutral and a little bit degraded.

Léo Natan:

It’s possible to disable Liquid Glass on Tahoe with:

defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES

Then reboot your machine. AppKit apps work and look ~ almost the same as in Sequoia. Catalyst apps are slightly buggy, mostly visual glitches. And Safari has visual glitches. But still better than Liquid Glass.

Isaiah Carew:

this has easily been the most challenging macOS release as a professional dev.

mostly i really love writing code, but this stuff is really testing my resolve.

Hwee-Boon Yar:

The upgrade to macOS Tahoe has bothered me or disrupted my work way less than any macOS upgrade over the last few years. It’s not as bad as I read around.

Juli Clover:

Apple’s new Liquid Glass design has received most of the attention in news about macOS Tahoe, but there are quite a few new features that make the Mac better than ever, including some that are not super obvious. We’ve rounded up 10 useful macOS Tahoe features that you should know about.

iOS 26

Apple (feature list, release notes, security, enterprise, developer):

Featuring the new design with Liquid Glass, iOS 26 brings more customization options to the Lock Screen, including a sleek adaptive time presentation and delightful 3D spatial scenes, as well as enhancements to Camera, Photos, Safari, the Phone app, and more. To help users eliminate distractions and focus on the conversations that matter most, Call Screening can screen calls from unknown numbers, while Hold Assist can hold on the line until a live agent is available. In Messages, users can now choose to screen messages from unknown senders, create polls, and add backgrounds to conversations.

iOS 26 also adds Lyrics Translation and Pronunciation in Apple Music, Visited Places in Apple Maps, and order tracking in Apple Wallet. Updates to AirPods allow creators to record content with great sound quality and remotely control content capture in the Camera app. Additionally, iOS 26 introduces the Apple Games app, an all-new personalized gaming destination designed to help users jump back into the games they love, find their next favorite, and have more fun with their friends. Also, CarPlay users will see a new compact view for incoming calls, Tapbacks in Messages, as well as widgets and Live Activities.

Craig Grannell:

The reaction during the summer’s public beta program was divisive. And while some people just hate change, Liquid Glass does invite criticism. Instead of sharpening focus, it too often muddies it due to legibility issues and distracting visual effects. On Mac, controls are overly prominent, yet on iPhone, they are relentlessly eager to disappear into a new Apple take on hamburger menus, denying users the chance to build effective muscle memory.

Niléane Dorffer:

Oh and […] everyone who has kept gaslighting us all summer assuring us that the legibility and contrast issues would get fixed before the public release.

See also:

Previously:

Update (2025-10-06): BasicAppleGuy:

iOS Icon History
Phone ☎️

Shayan:

iOS 26 has some good ideas, but it’s an overall UX downgrade for me.

Possibly their worst case of form over function so far.

A lot of common actions now require extra taps. Text is still hard to read. So much dead and white space across the UI. The enlarged bubble effect feels unnecessary. Colors heavily bleed into each other when UI stacks, and so on.

Jeff Johnson:

Unfortunately, the iOS 26 Release Candidate still includes a few bugs specifically affecting Safari extensions.

Steve Moser:

Liquid Glass icons for Apple Store, Clips, GarageBand, iMovie, Keynote, Numbers, and Pages have surfaced on Apple’s iPhone tech spec pages.

Juli Clover:

There are a lot of changes and features to learn about, so if you want a quick, easy-to-read list that outlines what’s new, we’ve got you covered.

Ben Lovejoy:

It certainly takes some getting used to, but overall I’m a fan, and I particularly like some of the small but notable changes … For me though, it’s the little things that make the biggest difference. For example, I find the notification banners cute while now still being easy to read[…]

D. Griffin Jones:

Quick, which of these Home Screens are checked? This is on the iOS 26 default wallpaper.

Benjamin Mayo:

I’ve had a response to one of my OS 26 submitted Feedbacks! I reported that the use of the Music’s app red tint colour in alert dialogs was confusing when the dialog included destructive actions. The design has been changed to resolve the ambiguity.

Update as of iOS 26 release day: this remains my only Feedback to have received an explicit response.

Rosyna Keller:

Yay, 3 of the 18 privacy bugs I’ve filed so far look to be fixed in iOS 26. Only one counts for a bounty so far? (I don’t understand the bounty system)

David Price:

Users across a range of forums have claimed that periodically, Wi-Fi connectivity “briefly disconnects and then reconnects after they unlock the iPhone,” which can also cause CarPlay to disconnect.

Joe Rossignol:

iOS 26 breaks search functionality in the Calendar app for some iPhone users, according to comments from affected users across the Apple Support Community, Reddit, X, Facebook, and other online discussion platforms.

Scharon Harding:

This time around, we’re taking a look at some of the updates targeted at people who rely on their iPhones for much more than making phone calls and browsing the Internet. Many of these features rely on Apple Intelligence, meaning they’re only as reliable and helpful as Apple’s generative AI (and only available on newer iPhones, besides). Other adjustments are smaller but could make a big difference to people who use their phone to do work tasks.

Juli Clover:

iOS 26 has somewhere around 200 new features and changes, some of which are more useful than others. We’ve highlighted some of the updates that we think provide the best quality of life improvements to the iPhone.

Geoff Duncan:

Apple seems to have removed the ability to block callers from the Phone app in iOS 26. In order to block an unknown number, I guess I have to create a contact card for them, and block them there. That seems less-than-great.

Yes yes: I know I’m supposed to turn on call screening but I really don’t want call screening.

Pierre Igot:

It’s quite revealing to me that Apple appears to have no qualms about giving the iOS upgrade itself an icon in which the “26” is barely readable.

Marco Arment:

Shout out to one thing that got much nicer recently:

Music.app on iOS not only remembers the song you were playing through a termination or iPhone reboot, but it even resumes from the timestamp you left it at!

Craig Hockenberry:

Bugs are being reported in OS 26.0.

And we fix them.

And then they break again in a point release.

This is why releasing an OS in such a broken state is so harmful - there is no incentive for third-parties to fix things that are clearly works-in-progress.

Craig Hockenberry:

This new behavior of devices deciding to update themselves during daytime hours is bullshit.

I just picked up my phone to test something and went through several minutes of thinking my iPhone was bricked. No sign of an update and not responding to button presses.

I was in the process of starting a DFU when the screen came back on.

As far as I can tell, there’s no way to disable this behavior.

And who’s to blame if it was a medical emergency?

macOS 15.7 and macOS 14.8

macOS 15.7 (full installer, security):

[Not yet listed, but presumably:] This update provides important security fixes and is recommended for all users.

macOS 14.8 (full installer, security):

[Not yet listed, but presumably:] This update provides important security fixes and is recommended for all users.

See also: Howard Oakley.

Previously:

Update (2025-09-25): Rodrigo Ghedin:

I can’t click to select the focused tab in Safari 26 running on Sequoia (15.7).

[…]

also, is this a taste of Liquid Glass for Sequoia?

The Mac App Flea Market

Jim Nielsen (via Hacker News):

Have you ever searched for “AI chat” in the Mac App Store?

I have. It’s like strolling through one of those counterfeit, replica markets where all the goods look legit at first glance. But then when you look closer, you realize something is off.

For the query “AI chat”, there are so many ChatGPT-like app icons the results are comical.

[…]

The funny thing is: the official ChatGPT desktop app from OpenAI is not even in the Mac App Store. It’s only available from their website, so it won’t show up in the “AI chat” results.

827a:

The odd thing about the Mac App Store is how needlessly embarrassing this is for Apple. The Mac App Store doesn’t need to exist, but because it does Apple is lending its authority to these apps, and every day its customers, who come to Apple expecting a level of safety and authenticity, are fooled by them.

Previously:

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