26 Answers To 26 Questions About macOS Tahoe 26

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some answers to questions about macOS Tahoe 26.

So what is macOS Tahoe 26?  It's the name of the latest version of the Mac Computer Operating System, the one that Apple is releasing in late 2025. The operating system is the software that runs all the basics on your Mac. It allows you to manage files and folders and includes lots of different productivity applications and different functionality and it is what other apps run on top of. When you're using your Mac you are using macOS, the operating system for your Mac. 

Now how do you get macOS Tahoe 26? Well you get it by going to System Settings. In there go to General and then Software Update. Wait for it to look for the latest update and you should see one listed there for macOS Tahoe. Then it will give you instructions to update to macOS Tahoe. 

But what if it doesn't appear there? Well there could be several reasons. One is it simply hasn't been released yet even if today is the day of the release and you're trying it you may have to wait a few hours or until later in the day to get it or even until tomorrow. So you have to have a little patience. Also, if your Mac isn't running macOS Sequoia, the macOS operating system before Tahoe, then you probably won't get a prompt update to Tahoe. You're going to have to go into The Mac App Store and search for Tahoe there. Of course another reason you might not see it there is your Mac simply isn't compatible with macOS Tahoe 26. Only Macs that have been released in the last few years will be compatible with it. Older Macs won't. 

So, is your Mac compatible with macOS Tahoe? Well, Apple has the answer right there on the page about macOS Tahoe. You can see it right here. You can see which models are compatible. So basically any Mac running Apple Silicon, that's the M1, M2, etc., chips from Apple. 

How should you prepare before updating? Well you shouldn't really have to do much preparation at all because you are already backing up your Mac, right? You already have a Time Machine backup and/or you are doing an online backup. So you have a backup so you are ready to update. If you don't have a backup, well hold off on updating and pretty much anything else and get a backup solution going for your Mac. Just get an external drive and start using Time Machine. It's built-in. You should definitely have a backup before updating to macOS Tahoe. But you should also have a backup all the time everyday anyway. The only other thing you need to do is make sure you've got enough free space on your Drive for downloading the update and performing the update and also make sure you've got some free time. It's going to take a little while to download and install the update. So don't do it while you're in the middle of a workday. Do it at the end of the day or just before lunch if you know you have a fast internet connection. As a general rule set aside a hour or two although it may take a lot less time but you also have to consider it may take a lot more time. So, just be prepared for anything. 

How much free space should you have in order to do the install? Well, there's no exact number. But you can count on the download to be about 14 or more gigs and it is going to need space to work with as it is doing the update. Plus, you really should have extra space on your Drive for it to use for memory overflow for swap space. So, in general, try to have at least 50 gigs available on your Drive. 

What is this new version of macOS really called? Is it called macOS Tahoe? Is it called macOS 26 or some combination of those? Well, I've been saying macOS 26 Tahoe because it seems to make sense and it covers all bases. But, Apple in several places refers to it as macOS Tahoe 26. You can also just refer to it as macOS Tahoe and everybody will know what you are talking about and you can also just refer to it as macOS 26. That's pretty clear as well. 

So why is this macOS 26 when the previous version of macOS, also called Sequoia, was macOS 15. What happened to macOS 16 to 25? Well, Apple just decided to change the naming scheme for not just macOS but all of its operating systems. Like iOS for the iPhone and iPad OS for the iPad and just name them after the year that they come out in. Apple seems to be doing updates every year. That's pretty consistent. So might as well name them after the year and make it easy to figure out when an operating system came out. So, they've renamed not just macOS from 16 to 26 but also iOS and iPad OS also have a 26 after them. Even other operating systems like tvOS and watchOS. 

But why 26? After all it's 2025 so shouldn't this be macOS 25. Well, for a long time now it has been the custom among software developers that using years in the names to name it after the coming year. In other words the year where this will be the predominant operating system or version of the app. So many other developers have used that, including Microsoft and Adobe and such, and even other industries do it. Like, for instance, the automobile industry does this. You can think about it like this. When January 1, 2026 rolls around then macOS 26 will be the latest version of macOS that you should have installed. 

But what about Tahoe, what's with that name? Well, if you're from the United States or especially from California you know that Lake Tahoe is a well known location in California. For awhile now Apple has been naming versions of macOS over scenic locations in California, which is the state that is the home to Apple. It is just a fun way to refer to versions of macOS. Before they used California place names they used cat names like Lion and Leopard and Jaguar and all that.

So what at the major changes between macOS Sequoia and macOS Tahoe? Apple mostly talks about the whole new look. It's called Liquid Glass and it is basically a new design for all the interface elements. It's kind of this translucent look to all of the buttons and windows and things like that. It really doesn't necessarily change any functionality. It is just kind of a new design to refresh things and modernize them. But there is some functionality in there. Like, for instance, Folders in the Finder now can have colors and also can have little icons on them. You can do it very easily. You don't have to use any third party tools or anything. There are also some changes to other parts of the operating system like, for instance, Spotlight gets a whole new update and can do different things now. Like have different sections for apps and files and even a Clipboard history. Launchpad is gone and replaced by Spotlight which is how most people launch the apps anyway. There are some new apps included and there are some new functionality particularly in the Shortcuts App. 

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So, did Apple change too much in the jump between Sequoia and Tahoe? Or, did they not add enough new features? Well, that's a matter of opinion. Like every year you're going to hear people saying that they don't think Apple changed enough for macOS Tahoe, that they should have added more and changed more. You're also going to hear people say that they changed too much and that they shouldn't change so much on an annual basis with these macOS updates.  

So what is the big new feature? If you had to sum up macOS Tahoe with one feature and it wasn't the liquid glass new look. Well, I would say that it is Spotlight. Spotlight really has changed quite a bit. One mode of it really replaces much of what Launchpad did and is kind of an App Library like we have on the iPhone and iPad. There's also the new Clipboard History functionality and the ability to perform lots of different actions from a list and assign these little shortcuts to them. 

So the big thing that has been removed is Launchpad. How do you launch Apps now? Well, before most people launched apps using either the Dock or Spotlight. Of course you can still do that. But if you did actually use Launchpad to do it you're probably going to just switch to using the mode of Spotlight that acts like an App Library. But Launchpad was also used as a way to uninstall apps that you installed from the App Store. How do you uninstall apps without Launchpad now? Well, like before you can still Drag & Drop from the Application Folder to the Trash. For a long time now Apple has really insisted that the developers put all of the components for an app inside the App File itself and not install extra things in the library. So you can just Drag & Drop the app to the Trash and that's what Apple has been suggesting for years. But if you don't like dragging an application folder to the trash you can find a way to delete the app by going to the list of your Apps in the App Store. There's a way to delete an app from there. You can also delete them by going to into System Settings, going to Storage and looking at the list of apps in there and you can remove them. 

So are there any new apps that now come with macOS starting with Tahoe? Indeed there are! There's the new Journal App. This app was previously available on the iPhone but now you can use it on the Mac as well. It syncs over iCloud so you can use both to update your journal. There is also a Phone App that basically connects your Mac to your iPhone and allows you to make phone calls, check your voicemail and things like that. There's also a new Games App that shows you all the games you've got installed and takes over some of the functionality from Game Center that was previously part of macOS. 

Are there any new wallpapers? People are often fixated on the new wallpapers in a new version of macOS. Indeed there are. There is a new kind of default blue design that you can get. Also a nice view of the lake. 

So are there any little tiny things that have changed that people may like?  I think the one feature that people may really enjoy is a little animation that Folders now have. You can now see when a folder is empty or when there is something in it. When you Drag & Drop something into a folder you can see the folder open up to accept the item.

A lot of people want to know about Siri with every update with macOS. They want to know has Siri become more useful? Especially now that we have Apple Intelligence has Siri now intelligence? Can it actually really understand anything you say and perform actions? The answer is No, we are not there yet. Apple definitely seems to be working towards this, but they haven't overhauled Siri yet. It does have more functionality and hook into some of the things that are new in macOS but we're not going to see a substantially different Siri with Tahoe, at least not now. We may see that somewhere mid-year with an update. 

Every time there is a major macOS update people want to know will it break their third party apps. This goes back to years ago when Apple had an update that removed the ability to run 32 bit apps, much older apps and you couldn't run those anymore. So, during that update people found that some old software stopped working and since then, every year, people are afraid that when they update stuff is going to stop working. But there is no big change like that with macOS Tahoe. Basically anything that runs in macOS Sierra should run in macOS Tahoe. Now there is always a chance, even with a tiny minor update that it could interfere with something in an app that you use. So if there is a critical app you should definitely check with the third party developer of that app to make sure that they've tested it in Tahoe. 

Every update of macOS always has some things that Apple doesn't really feature that much in their advertising but it could make a substantial difference to a lot of people. In macOS Tahoe there are a few things like that. One of those is in the Shortcuts App. Shortcuts can now actually trigger shortcuts using automations. In other words a shortcut can automatically run at a specific time of the day or when you connect a certain drive. Things like that. There are a whole bunch of automations. There have been automations on the iPhone before but this is the first time we've got them on the Mac. 

A big question people have with every macOS update is, will my Mac get slower if I update? The answer is almost always no. A new update shouldn't make your Mac slower. As a matter of fact there are probably optimizations that make your Mac faster. But, once you update to macOS there is usually a lot of system maintenance that is performed. For instance, all the files on your Mac are probably reindexed for Spotlight. So, with any update you might see some slowness in the initial hours or days but as soon as it catches up on all the maintenance you shouldn't see any substantial slowdown. Now every machine is different. You may have third party software that has some sort of trouble. You may have other things going on. So it is not 100% thing. But in general your Mac shouldn't get slower going from Sequoia to Tahoe. 

Are there any bugs in macOS Tahoe? The answer is definitely Yes. There are bugs in macOS Tahoe. There are also bugs in macOS Sequoia and every version of macOS before that and probably every piece of software that you use and have ever used. Software doesn't operate perfectly. It is created by humans. There are tons of different ways to use it and tons of different ways to configure software especially operating systems and there are always things that don't work perfectly. Your Mac doesn't work perfectly now and it won't work perfectly after upgrading to macOS Tahoe. There may be some things that get fixed and there may be some new things that you need to work around. 

So I know the big question a lot of you have is should you upgrade? In general yes. When you bought your Mac you paid for the annual updates to macOS with new features in them. So if you don't upgrade to macOS Tahoe you're basically turning down the thing you paid for when you originally bought your Mac. Even if there aren't any new features that you really need having the latest optimizations and updates to things can be helpful, kind of in the background in ways that you don't notice. 

Should you wait to upgrade? So, maybe it makes sense to wait a month or two until the bugs are worked out. I should say there is no rush to upgrade. Just because today is the day you notice that Tahoe exists doesn't mean you have to upgrade today. You can do it tomorrow when you have more time or next week or even next month after you finish some projects and know you'll have a few days where you can do the upgrade and play around with the new features. There is no reason to rush things. But at the same time there is really no reason to delay things either. In the distant past Apple used to release operating systems almost completely untested. See they were released to developers. So only a few thousand people saw the new version of macOS before Apple released it to the public. But after Apple started doing beta tests online and then they started doing public beta tests online, which meant that hundreds of thousands of people were testing out macOS. So by the time macOS was actually released it is pretty well tested. Not just internally by Apple but by lots of people outside of Apple, just like you and me. So the idea that the point zero version of the operating system is pretty untested and unstable isn't true anymore. It's more like what point one used to be decades ago. 

I know a question a lot of people are going to ask it, can you upgrade and then decide you don't like it and then downgrade. The answer is not easily at all. There is no Undo button. If you want to downgrade to a previous version of macOS you're going to have to save all of your files, completely wipe the machine, reinstall macOS an earlier version and then put all your files back. It is going to be a long complex process that is very dangerous because you can very easily forget something and loose some data or files or projects. Moving forward this is the new version of macOS. If you buy a new Mac now you're going to get macOS Tahoe on it and you won't be able to go back. So the plan to go back to macOS Sequoia, say, and stick with it forever really doesn't work out. You're much better off trying to get the most from your Mac using the latest version of macOS, learning the new tool, exploring it, enjoy exploring the new functionality that is there, the new look that is there, and if you have any issues or any problems find workarounds for them, just like you would have had to find workarounds for issues you may have discovered six months ago when there wasn't a macOS update. 

In the coming weeks and months I'll be doing lots of videos on the new features of macOS Tahoe 26, so stay tuned for those. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.