WWDC 2025 delivered a packed keynote, and while the spotlight often shines on the iPhone and iPad, macOS certainly wasn’t left behind. Apple unveiled macOS Tahoe 26, bringing a striking visual redesign, enhanced integration with iPhone workflows, and a wealth of new capabilities powered by Apple Intelligence. This release feels significant, ushering in a new era with the unified Liquid Glass design language across all Apple platforms.
Let’s break down the most notable macOS 26 features.
A Gorgeous New Look with Liquid Glass
The headline visual change in macOS Tahoe is the introduction of the Liquid Glass design. This translucent material reflects its surroundings and dynamically transforms, aiming to bring greater focus to content. Elements like the Dock, sidebars, and toolbars have been refined with this aesthetic. Perhaps most strikingly, the menu bar is now completely transparent, which Apple suggests makes the display feel larger.
Users gain extensive personalisation options. You can customise app icon tints, change folder colours and even add emoji symbols to them. The Control Center layouts are also enhanced, allowing users to tailor the controls present. While some early reactions noted concerns about readability with the translucency, the overall goal is visual consistency across Apple’s ecosystem.
Enhanced Continuity and iPhone Integration
Continuity features have seen significant upgrades, further blurring the lines between Mac and iPhone. A major addition is the arrival of the Phone app on Mac. This brings familiar iPhone features like Recents, Contacts, and Voicemails directly to your desktop. New call management capabilities include Call Screening, which automatically answers unknown calls and gathers caller information, and Hold Assist, letting you maintain your place in phone queues while continuing work on your Mac.
Live Activities from your iPhone will now conveniently appear in the Mac menu bar. This means real-time updates for things like flights, ride-sharing, and sports scores are easily visible. Clicking on these activities will open iPhone Mirroring, allowing you to access more details and take actions directly from your Mac. This level of integration feels genuinely bloody useful for managing everyday tasks.
Spotlight Becomes a Powerhouse
Spotlight, the Mac’s built-in search feature, has received its most substantial update ever. It now intelligently ranks all search results together and introduces filtering options for specific file types. Crucially, you can now execute hundreds of actions directly from Spotlight without switching apps, such as sending emails, creating notes, or playing podcasts.
Powered by Apple Intelligence, Spotlight learns your routines and surfaces personalised actions. It also includes “quick keys” for rapid access to frequent tasks. A particularly nifty addition is the inclusion of Clipboard History within Spotlight. This is a feature many Windows users (like myself) have relied on for years, allowing you to easily browse and paste previously copied items. Having this integrated natively into macOS Tahoe is a huge win for productivity and might just convince some users to switch back from Windows machines they only used for this feature. Spotlight can even function as a top-level search for features within complex apps, like finding a specific tool in a photo editor.
Deeper Apple Intelligence Integration
As expected, Apple Intelligence plays a significant role in the new macOS 26 features. Live Translation is now available across Messages, FaceTime, and Phone calls, providing automatic real-time translation with processing handled on-device for privacy. The Shortcuts app gains more powerful, intelligent actions that can tap directly into Apple Intelligence models for complex automation. Apple Intelligence can also help by identifying action items from emails and websites and automatically organising them into Reminders.
Enhancements to Genmoji and Image Playground allow users to modify existing emoji and access new creative styles, including oil painting and vector art, with ChatGPT integration. Third-party developers are also being given tools to integrate Apple Intelligence into their own apps.
A New Home for Gaming
Gaming on the Mac gets a dedicated space with the new Apple Games app. This app centralises your gaming experiences, offering personalised recommendations and social features. The new Game Overlay provides quick access to system settings (like Low Power Mode for longer battery sessions on MacBooks), friend interactions, and achievements without leaving your game. A new ‘Challenges’ feature lets players compete with friends in score-based showdowns.
Under the hood, Metal 4 arrives with macOS 26, bringing advancements like MetalFX Frame Interpolation for higher frame rates and MetalFX Denoising for real-time ray tracing and path tracing, promising more realistic visual effects. Updated developer tools like Game Porting Toolkit 3 and Mac Remote Developer Tools for Windows also support game development on the platform.
Other Noteworthy Updates
Beyond the major highlights, macOS Tahoe includes several other improvements. Safari boasts 50% faster loading speeds and provides four additional hours of video streaming battery life compared to Chrome. The Journal app finally arrives on Mac, offering multi-device sync and tools for capturing and reflecting on moments. Messages sees additions like backgrounds and polls.
Accessibility features have also been bolstered. These include Magnifier for Mac, using an iPhone or USB camera to zoom distant objects onto the screen, and Accessibility Reader for viewing book pages with adjustable settings. There’s also a new Braille Access experience and Vehicle Motion Cues to help with motion sickness. Developers can now add Accessibility Nutrition Labels to App Store pages to inform users about supported features.
Availability and Compatibility
macOS Tahoe 26 was announced at WWDC 2025. The developer beta is available now, with a public beta scheduled for next month (July). The general release is planned for fall 2025.
Regarding compatibility, macOS 26 Tahoe will support Macs with Apple Silicon (M1 chip or later). A few specific Intel models are also supported, including the MacBook Pro 16-inch 2019, MacBook Pro 13-inch 2020 with four Thunderbolt 3 ports, iMac 2020 or later, Mac mini 2020 or later, Mac Pro 2019 or later, and Mac Studio 2022 and later. However, it was also announced that macOS Tahoe will be the final release for Intel Macs, marking the end of software updates for older models and solidifying Apple’s focus on its own processors going forward.
Overall, macOS Tahoe 26 brings a mix of noticeable design changes, enhanced cross-device integration, and powerful new intelligence features that look set to make the Mac experience more cohesive and capable than ever.
