Apple last week announced 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 yr is streamlining each the visible UI and have units throughout Apple units, whereas making extra apps and options out there on them, punctuated by Apple Intelligence.
Additionally: Everything announced at Apple’s WWDC 2025 keynote: Liquid Glass, MacOS Tahoe, and more
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, nevertheless.
Let’s check out the largest bulletins Apple made for MacOS.
1. The Cellphone app on Mac
The Cellphone app has lastly arrived on MacOS, permitting for a extra streamlined person expertise between your iPhone and laptop. Customers can now entry current calls and contacts synced out of your iPhone, and make calls with a single click on in the identical approach. What’s extra, the Cellphone app will embody the brand new options added in iOS 26, together with Maintain Help and Name Screening.
Along with calls and contacts, reside actions from the iPhone will likely be seen in your Mac, resembling monitoring an Uber or a supply from Seamless. Clicking on the reside exercise will open up iPhone Mirroring, which is able to mean you can 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 plenty of of these updates are filtering over to MacOS, streamlining the person expertise throughout units.
The dock, sidebars, and toolbars have been redesigned in the identical translucent aesthetic that is meant to point out extra content material on display screen with out UI muddle. As well as, the rounded components and added dimensionality look much more like what you’d see on the iPhone. Customization additionally lets you alter the management heart in the identical approach because the iPhone
Additionally: What is Liquid Glass? Here’s everything we know about Apple’s major UI overhaul at WWDC
Identical to the iPhone, Macs will assist further personalization choices, together with darkish or gentle mode, an all-clear icon, and dock theme, in addition to personalized colour 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 sensible 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 enhancing app, with the person adjusting the colour tone by looking for that operate within the Highlight. In a fancy app like Photoshop, for instance, if you cannot discover a particular operate, Highlight may step in to behave as a top-level search operate.
Additionally: Apple’s secret sauce is exactly what AI is missing
In supporting further productiveness options, Highlight may even include clipboard historical past and mean you can create automations along with Apple Intelligence to make advanced actions like summarizing textual content or creating pictures. You’ll be able to entry Apple Intelligence fashions in your gadget or ChatGPT.
Highlight may even assist a handful of shortcut Fast keys, resembling “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, in fact
A number of the Apple Intelligence options that debuted on the iPhone will now be out there in MacOS, together with a extra sturdy, customized Siri, and a better Shortcuts app.
Apple can be opening up MacOS 26 so third-party builders can begin creating apps that really combine with Apple Intelligence. It is a sensible transfer, permitting some respiration room to additional innovate by itself AI options (which some say have fallen behind competitors’) whereas permitting exterior builders to deliver 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 pals and communications.
Steel 4 involves MacOS 26 as effectively, providing greater high quality graphics with MetalFX Body Interpolation and MetalFX Denoising for smoother visuals and quicker body charges.
Let’s discuss compatibility
All of those updates sound nice, however not each Mac will likely 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 units from earlier than the 2020 mark is not going to.
Additionally: Your Apple Watch is getting a major upgrade. Here are the best features in WatchOS 26
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. In case you do have a Mac laptop with an Intel processor, you possibly can nonetheless run the earlier MacOS, Sequoia, or its predecessor, Sonoma, relying on how previous your gadget is.
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