Apple final week introduced its newest replace for MacOS 26, codenamed “Tahoe.” It is full of recent visible design components like Apple’s Liquid Glass design theme, higher integration with the iPhone, and a extra sturdy Highlight function that is higher built-in with Shortcuts.
The theme of all of Apple’s updates this 12 months is streamlining each the visible UI and have units throughout Apple gadgets, whereas making extra apps and options obtainable on them, punctuated by Apple Intelligence.
Additionally: The whole lot introduced at Apple’s WWDC 2025 keynote: Liquid Glass, MacOS Tahoe, and extra
Following the identical trajectory as the previous few years, Apple’s announcement of MacOS 26 comes throughout WWDC, with a developer beta opening up now, and a public beta in July. The total launch of MacOS 26 will not be out till this fall, nonetheless.
Let’s check out the largest bulletins Apple made for MacOS.
1. The Telephone app on Mac
The Telephone app has lastly arrived on MacOS, permitting for a extra streamlined consumer expertise between your iPhone and pc. Customers can now entry latest calls and contacts synced out of your iPhone, and make calls with a single click on in the identical manner. What’s extra, the Telephone app will embody the brand new options added in iOS 26, together with Maintain Help and Name Screening.
Along with calls and contacts, dwell actions from the iPhone shall be seen in your Mac, reminiscent of monitoring an Uber or a supply from Seamless. Clicking on the dwell exercise will open up iPhone Mirroring, which is able to will let you take motion instantly out of your Mac.
2. Liquid Glass and visible consistency
Apple dropped a serious visible overhaul for iOS with its Liquid Glass design theme, and lots of of these updates are filtering over to MacOS, streamlining the consumer expertise throughout gadgets.
The dock, sidebars, and toolbars have been redesigned in the identical translucent aesthetic that is supposed to point out extra content material on display screen with out UI litter. As well as, the rounded components and added dimensionality look much more like what you’d see on the iPhone. Customization additionally lets you modify the management heart in the identical manner because the iPhone
Additionally: What’s Liquid Glass? Here is every thing we find out about Apple’s main UI overhaul at WWDC
Similar to the iPhone, Macs will assist extra personalization choices, together with darkish or mild mode, an all-clear icon, and dock theme, in addition to custom-made shade tones. This customization extends to folder icons themselves, with colours, themes, and even emojis.
3. Shortcuts and Highlight get smarter
MacOS 26 provides a handful of good integrations for the Highlight function. As an alternative of simply being a easy search bar, Apple’s updates to Highlight make it right into a extra highly effective management panel that works with Shortcuts and might take app-specific actions, whereas powered by Apple Intelligence.
For instance, in the course of the WWDC keynote, we noticed a demo in a photograph modifying app, with the consumer adjusting the colour tone by trying to find that perform within the Highlight. In a posh app like Photoshop, for instance, if you cannot discover a particular perform, Highlight may step in to behave as a top-level search perform.
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In supporting extra productiveness options, Highlight will even comprise clipboard historical past and will let you create automations at the side of Apple Intelligence to make complicated actions like summarizing textual content or creating pictures. You possibly can entry Apple Intelligence fashions in your machine or ChatGPT.
Highlight will even assist a handful of shortcut Fast keys, reminiscent of “sm” for “ship message,” for instance. That opens a thread the place you possibly can ship a message instantly from the Highlight app itself, with out swapping to Messages.
4. Apple Intelligence, after all
Among the Apple Intelligence options that debuted on the iPhone will now be obtainable in MacOS, together with a extra sturdy, customized Siri, and a better Shortcuts app.
Apple can also be opening up MacOS 26 so third-party builders can begin creating apps that really combine with Apple Intelligence. It is a good transfer, permitting some respiratory room to additional innovate by itself AI options (which some say have fallen behind rivals’) whereas permitting exterior builders to carry helpful AI capabilities to the Mac.
5. Apple Video games
Coinciding with the launch of the Video games app on the iPhone, we’re additionally seeing Video games come to MacOS 26 as a devoted retailer, launcher, and leaderboard. The Video games app additionally brings an overlay exhibiting system settings like low energy mode, in addition to on-line mates and communications.
Steel 4 involves MacOS 26 as nicely, providing greater high quality graphics with MetalFX Body Interpolation and MetalFX Denoising for smoother visuals and sooner body charges.
Let’s discuss compatibility
All of those updates sound nice, however not each Mac shall be appropriate with MacOS 26 Tahoe. Older Macs with Intel processors, sadly, is not going to assist the brand new OS model. This implies any Mac with an M1 processor or later will run MacOS 26, however most gadgets from earlier than the 2020 mark is not going to.
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This transfer all however seals the deal on phasing out older Intel-based fashions, one thing we have been anticipating from Apple for some time. When you do have a Mac pc with an Intel processor, you possibly can nonetheless run the earlier MacOS, Sequoia, or its predecessor, Sonoma, relying on how outdated your machine is.
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