macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 3

Juli Clover (Mr. Macintosh, 9to5Mac):

Right now, there is a bit of a bug with the beta that is preventing Apple silicon Macs from being able to download it. Intel Macs can be updated with no issue, but Apple will need to address the server side bug before it will be available to everyone.

I can confirm that, once again, Software Update isn’t working. But you can download the full installer manually.

Again, the release notes don’t seem to say what’s new.

Howard Oakley:

Apple’s operating systems provide support for encryption and related techniques in CryptoKit, making quantum-secure methods available to third-party apps as well. For OS 26, CryptoKit gains Module-Lattice based key encapsulation or ML-KEM, part of the FIPS 203 primary standard for general encryption. Signatures gain the Module-Lattice based digital signature algorithm or ML-DSA, part of FIPS 204.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

I’m very ready for a beta 3 of the new OSes; beta 2 has been mostly usable, but has lots of little blockers getting in the way of progressing my apps

Previously:

• Assorted Notes on Liquid Glass
• macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 2
• macOS Tahoe 26 Announced

Update (2025-07-07): The full installer didn’t work for me, either. After a long time, it reported an error failing to prepare the update.

Update (2025-07-08): The same installer worked this morning.

Mr. Macintosh:

This is the new macOS Tahoe Installer

Mario Guzmán:

After installing #macOSTahoe b3, I got a new wallpaper! :)

[…]

I think these icons are also new/updated in #macOSTahoe b3…

Mr. Macintosh:

Apple has added the new Tahoe wallpaper via image and active video .heic for both the blue background and beach background wallpaper images.

Marcus Mendes:

Much like on tvOS, Apple recently introduced native video screen savers on macOS that transition smoothly into the wallpaper upon unlocking.

With today’s beta seed, Apple included a new “Tahoe Day” screen saver that glides across the surface of Lake Tahoe’s rocky shoreline, with snow-capped mountains in the background.

This is pretty nice, but I had to turn it off on my Tahoe Mac because I mostly control it via Screen Sharing, and this makes it really slow.

Marcus Mendes:

One of the most common complaints in macOS Tahoe 26 betas 1 and 2 was the new tab UI in apps like Safari and Terminal, which added a black bar to the bottom of inactive tabs.

[…]

Now, Apple has increased contrast and eliminated the black bar, making it much easier to spot the active tab at a glance.

Mario Guzmán:

Native Tabs in #macOSTahoe still suck but at least they have fixed a lot of the visual issues from beta 1 and 2.

Thomas Brand:

Since the earliest rumors of transparent UI, I thought Tahoe would adopt the “frosted” look of visionOS.

With the release of Tahoe beta 3 I could be convinced frosted was Apple’s plan all along, and the initial renders of liquid glass were merely a faint to get an extreme reaction.

Craig Grannell:

Someone – probably multiple people – at Apple signed this off. The ‘glass’. The lack of clarity. The absurd floating back/forward buttons that become the most visually prominent thing in the window. All of it.

Reduce Transparency makes things slightly less awful but it still weird and ugly. Best bet appears to be Reduce Transparency + a solid colour (ideally grey) for wallpaper.

(This is dev beta 3.)

We’re, what, about eight weeks and counting now?

Jonathan Wight:

So i guess now that we’re at b3 the blurry icons are here to stay…

Now we can all experience what it is to have old person eyes.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

It’s beta 3 of macOS and Apple still seems to be really struggling to deal with the floating sidebar in AppKit. It still has hard cut offs in various apps, and now it renders under a toolbar in fullscreen mode.

Stephan Michels:

I noticed a similar cut-off in my app. The glass effect have a very wide shadow, which doesn’t not spread across containers, in my case a scroll view without background. Ugly 🧐

Steve Troughton-Smith:

🤔 [System Settings]

Riccardo Mori:

Glass and transparency can be fun when used meaningfully. Look at the battery indicator in Mac OS X 10.0.3. It wasn’t a menu extra, but a live indicator in the Dock (called ‘dockling’).

Sindre Sorhus:

Menu item icons in macOS 26 reduce usability – should be optional

Liquid Glass Mac macOS Beta macOS Tahoe 26 Safari Screensaver Software Update System Preferences Terminal Wallpaper

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