{"id":48030,"date":"2025-06-10T16:19:58","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=48030"},"modified":"2025-07-07T14:51:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T18:51:30","slug":"macos-tahoe-26-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/10\/macos-tahoe-26-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"macOS Tahoe 26 Announced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple<\/a> (preview<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>, Reddit<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

With the new design, iconic elements of macOS will feel more expressive, delightful, and personal while remaining instantly familiar, including the desktop, Dock, in-app navigation, and toolbars. Users can further personalize the experience with an updated Control Center and new color options for folders, app icons, and widgets. Continuity gets even better with the Phone app arriving on Mac, so users can access familiar features from iPhone — including Recents, Contacts, and Voicemails — and new ones like Call Screening and Hold Assist. And with Live Activities from iPhone, users can stay on top of things happening in real time, like an upcoming flight, right on their Mac. Spotlight gets its biggest update ever, allowing users to now directly execute hundreds of actions — like sending an email or creating a note — and take advantage of all-new browsing experiences to get to content faster.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The Dock, sidebars, and toolbars have been refined, bringing greater focus to a user’s content. The menu bar is now completely transparent, making the display feel even larger. There are more ways to customize what controls appear in the menu bar and Control Center, along with how they’re laid out. The new design also unlocks more personalization on the Mac. App icons come to life in light or dark appearances, colorful new light and dark tints, as well as an elegant new clear look. Users can also change the colors of folders and add a symbol or emoji to give them a unique identity.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Spotlight, the central place to search for things on Mac, makes finding what users are looking for easier than ever, and provides users with all-new ways to take action. During a search, all results — including files, folders, events, apps, messages, and more — are now listed together and ranked intelligently based on relevance to the user. New filtering options rapidly narrow searches to exactly what a user is looking for, like PDFs or Mail messages. Spotlight can also surface results for documents stored on third-party cloud drives. And when a user doesn’t know exactly what they’re searching for, Spotlight’s new browse views make it easy to scan through their apps, files, clipboard history, and more.<\/p>\n

Users can now take hundreds of actions directly from Spotlight — like sending an email, creating a note, or playing a podcast — without jumping between apps. Users can take actions from both Apple apps and apps built by developers, because any app can provide actions to Spotlight using the App Intents API. Users can also run shortcuts and perform actions from the menu bar in the app they’re currently working in, all without lifting their hands off the keyboard. Spotlight learns from users’ routines across the system and surfaces personalized actions, such as sending a message to a colleague a user regularly talks to. Additionally, Spotlight introduces quick keys, which are short strings of characters that get users right to the action they’re looking for.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

It looks like there are some good features here, but I really don’t like the new design. Most of it just looks ugly, particularly the toolbars and sidebars. You can still turn off much of the transparency (including the menu bar) with the accessibility setting, and this also makes the sidebars look better, but none of the settings seem to get rid of the huge shadows in the toolbars. The alerts are kind of a mess with a mix of different font sizes and a left-aligned layout that I guess is better than the narrow, iOS-inspired one, but I prefer the classic, wider design.<\/p>\n\n

Craig Hockenberry<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

So is it macOS Tahoe, macOS 26, or macOS Tahoe 26, or macOS 26 Tahoe?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jeff Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

How do I install the macOS Taco beta on an empty APFS volume? Can I do that through Software Update?<\/p>\n

I don’t see it in softwareupdate --list-full-installers<\/code><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Mr. Macintosh<\/a> has a link to the full installer<\/a>. There’s no IPSW<\/a> yet.<\/p>\n\n

• • •<\/p>\n\n

Kyle Howells<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I guess the terrible Settings.app style UI is now the standard we should expect across macOS.<\/p>\n

It was nice having dedicated desktop UI designs for a while. I guess now macOS lives on iOS and iPadOS leftovers?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Craig Grannell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The menu bar is now completely transparent. ARRGGGHHHH<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Joachim<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Why is a completely transparent menu bar good on macOS? Didn’t we try this before 10-20 years ago and then dialed it back a lot again? Why would it work this time?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jeff Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Why would you want this transparency???<\/p>\n

And why are there icons for every built-in menu item?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Miguel Arroz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It’s impossible to read the title of that Acorn window. In the keynote. We’re not even in the real world yet. They made macOS horrendous.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

• • •<\/p>\n\n

Rui Carmo<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The (apparent) fixing of Spotlight and effective return of Quicksilver<\/a> almost two decades later<\/em> and in almost every respect<\/em> including parameters and menu navigation. This is a huge win for power users and a long-overdue update to the macOS<\/a> experience. That it took Apple this long<\/em> to do it is a bit sad, but at least they appear to be doing it right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Joachim<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Ok, using Spotlight to search through the menu items of an app (like the Help menu did for ages) is a great idea!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Guy English<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The Spotlight Command Line seems cool.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Brian Webster<\/a>:<\/p>\n

OK I’m calling it, built-in clipboard history is the official WWDC winner feature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

• • •<\/p>\n\n

Colin Cornaby<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I feel like we just need to rip off the bandaid and go back to wide alerts. Stacking the image on top of the text isn’t helping here. (I’m not picking on the checkbox misalignment in since this is a beta.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Adam Bell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ok these “Thing is running in the background, is that OK?” alerts in macOS Tahoe absolutely need to go lol<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

• • •<\/p>\n\n

Josh Avraham<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

On macOS Tahoe notarized apps are exempt from a first launch malware scan, making the launch incredibly fast 🚀<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Josh Long<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Odd decision. Apple has been notarizing malware ever since notarizing became a thing.<\/p>\n

I hope Apple at least gives an option to re-enable that safety feature (even if it’s just via a Terminal command) for users who want a more hardened macOS.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

• • •<\/p>\n\n

Mario Guzmán<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In #macOSTahoe, if your Mac app icons stick out of the squircle, they’re now put inside a gray squircle for you. You can no longer have elements stick out.<\/p>

Truly the end of an era where you could have free-shaped icons. :(<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Adam Bell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I will miss having icons in the macOS dock that break out of the squircle though.<\/p>

They still made the Mac feel special and distinct.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

I really liked that, too, and I’m not happy about having to redo my icons again<\/em>, after Apple specifically allowed this style before (and did it with their own apps).<\/p>\n\n

• • •<\/p>\n\n

John Siracusa<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

New Finder icon: 🤮<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Stephen Hackett<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Something jumped out at me in the macOS Tahoe segment of the WWDC keynote today: the Finder icon is reversed.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The Finder logo has changed over the years, but the dark side has been on the left forever<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I’m obviously joking about this being the biggest news of the day, but it really does feel just plain wrong to swap the dark\/light sides. The Finder icon is more than an icon, it’s a logo, a brand.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n