MacOS Tahoe

Development

Features

System features

User interface

Home Screen, Lock Screen & Control Center

• Folder icons have been redesigned and can now have custom colors, emblems, and emojis, and can also abide by the accent color. They also now have animations.
• App icons have been unified with iOS and iPadOS, and can have dark and tinted variants as introduced in iOS with iOS 18/iPadOS 18, as well as a new clear variant.
• The menu bar is now fully transparent by default, with a faint drop shadow. The option to show a background for the menu bar is retained.
• The Control Center has been redesigned, now functioning like and resembling the iOS version introduced in iOS 18/iPadOS 18.
• Volume and brightness sliders have been redesigned; the sliders are now fully integrated with the Control Center.
• Some Lock Screen customization features on iOS/iPadOS have been brought over to the Mac, such as changing the color, font, and weight of the clock.

  Spotlight

• Spotlight Search has been redesigned and gains quick actions, "quick-key" shortcuts, third-party API support, a completely revamped indexer with AI support, menubar search, and Apple Intelligence integration.
• An Applications feature which is similar to the App Library, used on iOS since iOS 14 and iPadOS since iPadOS 15. It is integrated into the Spotlight interface. iPhone apps also appear in the Applications list through Continuity from the user's iPhone, and will launch through iPhone Mirroring. This replaces Launchpad from the previous versions of macOS.

  Other new features

• App icons are now required to be squared-circles, a design recommended since macOS Big Sur; an icon that doesn't comply with the requirement is placed inside a grey squircle.
• Areas such as the Control Center, app opening, and Spotlight Search now have increased animation.
• Many iOS and iPadOS features have been brought over to the Mac, such as Live Activities and Collections in the Photos app.
• The cursor has been redesigned, now having a more rounded appearance.
• Some system sound effects are refined.
• Vehicle Motion Cues, a system-wide Accessibility Reader, and support for Braille displays come as part of expanded accessibility features.
• The Photos, Maps, and Apple Music apps now behave more similarly to their iOS and iPadOS counterparts.
• Notifications for low battery and AirPods have been reduced to alerts in their menu bar items.
• The power and restart windows are now shown in a pop-up window rather than an actual one.
• Terminal gains support for 24-bit color and Powerline fonts.
• Passwords adds a password history feature to view previous passwords.
• The disc image format, formerly RAW, has been replaced by the new format Apple Sparse Image Format, which Apple claims is significantly faster and more similar to a native SSD's performance.
• The Macintosh HD icon has been changed from a hard disk drive to a solid-state drive.
• NFSv4.1 client support has been added.
• The icon for Finder has been changed to align with the Liquid Glass design language.
• macOS 26.2 enables support for the 160MHz channel for Macs with Wi-Fi 6E.

  New apps

• Phone: The Phone app uses Continuity to integrate with the iPhone.
• Journal: Encourages users to create journal entries in which they can record and reflect upon their thoughts and activities.
• Magnifier: the app uses the Mac's camera to allow users to zoom in on information in front of them.
• Games: provides an interface for games from the App Store and Apple Arcade, as well as Game Center social features.
• Applications: acts as a replacement to the Launchpad used in previous versions prior to MacOS 26.0.

  Removed features

• Home only supports the redesigned architecture introduced with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura and ends support for the older architecture.
• Support for FireWire 400/800 has been removed.
• Launchpad has been removed in favor of the new Applications feature.
• Safari no longer has the Compact tab layout in its settings.

  Supported hardware

• MacBook Air or later
• MacBook Pro or later
• MacBook Pro or later
• MacBook Pro or later
• Mac mini or later
• iMac or later
• Mac Pro or later
• All Mac Studio models

Release history