Top 10 New Features In macOS Tahoe 26

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the top ten new features in macOS Tahoe. 

Now if you see this video earlier enough you're still waiting for macOS Tahoe to get released. But for most people it will already be out and you can update to it. Either way here are the top ten new features to look for. 

The one that gets the most attention is the new design called Liquid Glass. It changes pretty much how everything looks although not really how much works. It just has a basic new design to it. Like any design change you're going to get some people saying they hate it, some people saying they love it, and most people not saying either one. Which is fine. The important thing is that this is the first unified design that Apple has released. In the past macOS elements have made their way into iOS, iOS elements have made their way into macOS and so on. But this is the first time Apple has really come up with a design and implemented it across all its different operating systems at once. 

But this new design also comes with some new options. You can now go into System Settings and then go to Appearance and there are some new things here. You can change the Icon & Widget style to theme your Mac. So default makes it look like before, but you can now switch to Dark and notice how the icons in the Dock change and also elements here in the left sidebar change as well. You can also go with a Clear look instead, like this, and the clear can be dark or light, like this. For each of these first three you can change the Folder color. You can see the Folder color there in its default blue but you can change it to another color, like this, and the default folder color will change and you can choose any color, basically, from some sliders. 

But in addition to that you can go over to the Tinted option here. That will use that folder color for more things. So, for instance, I can change the tinted color to red and notice how not only do the Folders change and the sidebar buttons here, but also other icons as well. You have more options and can choose from more colors if you want. 

Now in addition to changing the default folder color to something you can also change individual folder colors. I can choose the folder here and then Control Click, right click or two-finger click on it and select Customize Folder. Then I've got the option here to change the color. It's actually using Tags, the Tags that are applied here and pulling the color from them. You can use anyone of the Finder Tag Colors to change the color.

In addition to that you can also change the Icon that's on a folder. So by default there is nothing there. But you can choose something else from this list of objects and other icons. You can also click on Emoji down here and then choose an emoji character and use that on the folder. So there's lots of ways to customize folders to make them stand out. 

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Now nowhere is Liquid Glass more on display than in Control Center. It's no longer really any kind of window. It's now really just these floating glass buttons above your Desktop. In macOS Tahoe you can customize Control Center. At the bottom here, you'll see Edit Controls. Click that and you have this whole interface here for finding new controls. If you find something you want to add to it, whether it is just a button or some sort of larger feature, you can drag it into one of these slots. You can use the Minus buttons here to remove things or just drag things to change their order in Control Center. So there is a lot you can do to get the functions you want now in Control Center and remove ones you never use. 

Now a big new change in macOS Tahoe is that there is no more Launchpad. Launchpad has been removed! It has been replaced with a new aspect of Spotlight. Most of us use Spotlight to launch apps before anyway. You can still do Command Space and then type the name of an app and launch it that way. But in addition to that after you bring up Spotlight you can do Command 1 and it goes to list of applications. When you search now it's only going to find Applications. Or you can just scroll through them yourself or use one of the categories here to find what you want. You can also get to this by launching Spotlight from the Menu Bar and you'll see these buttons here. You can click this one or use Command 1 at this point to go to the Applications List. 

Another new part of Spotlight is a Clipboard History. So, instead of Command 1 you would use Command 4, or click this button here. You get a history of your Clipboard, text, images, and other things that we save here. You can just click on something to insert it where you are, like if you were working on a document and there is a piece of text you can click here to Copy it to the current clipboard or Control Click, right click, or two-finger click and perform a variety of other actions on each individual item here. This means for most people you won't need a Clipboard Manager anymore. Third party Clipboard Managers will still have a lot of advanced functionality that this doesn't have, but for the basics you can just use this new feature of Spotlight.

As you can tell Spotlight has had a major overhaul and another aspect of it is this third part here, the Command 3 part that goes to Actions. This gives you a variety of different Actions that you can take in Spotlight. So you can select one of these by, say, double clicking on it and then if there is more information you would fill it in. So you can type a message and then type recipients and send a message right from Spotlight. You can also assign Quick Keys to anything you want. So, for instance, if you wanted to have Create Note be assigned to CN, I can do that. Now I can bring up Spotlight, type CN, and you can see that will be the first hit there. Then Return. Then I can type in, in this case, the contents and folder for the new note. 

There are a bunch of new apps that come with macOS Tahoe. For instance, there's the Journal App which is the same that's been available on the iPhone but now you can do it on your Mac and it will all sync over iCloud. But in addition to that there is a new app called Phone. This connects to your iPhone and allows you to do things. Like, for instance, make phone calls on your Mac through your iPhone. You can also access your list of calls and voicemails through this app as well without having to get your iPhone out. 

Perhaps the most powerful new feature of macOS Tahoe is in the Shortcuts App. So in the Shortcuts App now you can create Automations. Automations are just regular shortcuts but they are triggered not by you actually triggering the command manually, but by something like the time of day, an alarm going off, receiving and email message, or regular message from somebody. When stuff in a folder changes, kind of like Folder Actions in Automator. There are a whole bunch of different triggers here for automations and then you can have these perform certain actions or link to existing shortcuts. 

Finally, another new app is the Games App. The Games App ties together all sorts of aspects of gaming. Kind of what we had in game center before but now this will also list things that are in Apple Arcade. If you're a subscriber to that it will show your complete library of purchased games including iPhone and iPad games that you can play here on your Mac. You can launch them from here. You can manage them from here. You also have ways to play against other players and challenge others with scores and things like that. So a lot of different aspects of gaming, especially the casual games, found in the App Store and Apple Arcade can now be managed here in this new Games App. 

There are a ton of smaller features available throughout macOS and the apps that come with it. I'll be taking a look at these ten new features and some of the smaller ones in upcoming videos. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.