Full transcript of “macOS 26 Tahoe - 60+ New Features & Changes!”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 Mac OS Tahoe is one of the biggest updates ever for the Mac. It includes new customization options, a clipboard manager, the journal and phone applications, and best of all, Spotlight has finally been supercharged with brand new capabilities. So, in this video, I'm going to show you all of those features and many more in the first beta of Mac OS 26 Tahoe. So, this is one of those updates where immediately after you install it, you can tell a difference in the design language because we have that new liquid glass design on Mac OS Tahoe, just like we see with iOS and iPad OS and all the other operating systems. So, you'll see down in the dock that all of our icons have a fresh coat of paint on them. They look a little bit different than before. You'll also notice that
0:45 Finder has a new look. So, the blue and white have been swapped. Before the blue was on the left side of the face and the white was on the right side. That has been flipped. Also, the control center has an all new look. So, you can see it's a lot more translucent now than it was before. And take a look at the menu bar at the top of the screen. That is now fully transparent. So, it's now looks like it's kind of floating up there at the top of the screen. Also, if we press on the Apple button up here in the top leftand corner, we now have glyph icons for each one of these options. And also about this Mac right here, this little Mac icon that corresponds to the current Mac model that you are using. You'll also notice that this pop out window right here is more rounded off than it was beforehand.
1:31 And while we're here, you might as well also notice that the cursor is changed. So, we now have a different cursor than we had before. And part of that customization is that you can now change the icon and widget style. So if you want to have dark icons on Mac OS now you can see it will change that to give you dark icons. You could also set it to be auto or always in dark mode where it goes from auto where it's light mode during the day and at night it switches to dark mode or of course you have clear. This is the new look. So you can have it set to either a light version of the clear icons. Take a look at how that looks down there in the dock or you can have a dark version of the clear icons. This actually looks surprisingly good especially the widgets over here. They look pretty awesome in this new clear view. You could also tint your app icons on Mac OS now. So you could set that as
2:18 well to be a light or a dark version of tinted icons or of course you can have it set to auto. So I personally really like the dark icons and I also really love the clear icons here in Mac OS Tahoe. Also, you'll see that we have a new wallpaper here in the background. So this is the new Mac OS Tahoe wallpaper. And if we go into our system settings, you will see also the window here has a new design. So it's more rounded off the settings menu right here. And you'll notice that with every application, it has a more rounded off look along with new UI elements like the forward and back right here. Those are new as well. So if we go into here, we go down to our wallpaper. You can see that right here we have the Mac OS beta wallpaper. That's what it looks like in light mode.
3:03 And if we switch over to dark mode, you can see this is what it looks like in dark mode. And also this UI is a little bit different here for the wallpaper section as well. And your photos is now up higher on this menu. Before it was all the way down here near the bottom. Now it's close to the top underneath of dynamic wallpapers. And you'll also notice a couple of other changes here. So screen saver is now built in to wallpaper. So before it was a separate section in the settings. Now it's built in to wallpaper. And if you click on that, it will take you to this screen right here where you can set your screen saver. And then also for the first time on Mac OS, we have clock appearance. So we can change how the clock appears on the lock screen. And you can see that you get a preview of what that will look like right here in this little menu. And
3:48 you can change it for the lock screen or the screen saver and lock screen. Also, the trash icon down in the dock has a new look. So it's different than it was before. And if we go ahead and delete something. So we'll just go ahead and move this to the trash. You can see that there's a new look when there's actually something in the trash as well. Okay, so we have to take a moment of silence now for Launchpad because Launchpad has died with Mac OS Tahoe and it's been replaced with an application just simply called apps. So now when you click on apps, it will show you suggested applications up top and then it goes in to all of the applications that you have installed on your device and it's categorized by utilities, productivity, photo and video and so on. We also have a new volume and brightness UI in Mac OS Tahoe with a
4:34 really nice animation. So now we no longer have that really ugly square that shows our brightness and our volume going up or down in the middle of our screen. Now it's up here in the top right of the screen with a nice little animation. And here's what it looks like for the brightness as well. And when you go to connect AirPods to your Mac, you'll see that we have a new UI here as well. So the way it pops up is new. And I already mentioned that there's a new default cursor with more rounded corners, but it also changes when you hover over a link. So the hand here has a new look as well. And while we're in the notes here, I may as well show you the new contextual menu as well. So if you select some text and then you right click, the contextual menu has a new look as well. So not only is it more rounded off like everything else in the OS, but also we have a lot more glyph icons now to the left of all of these
5:21 options, and also the lookup and translate options are now underneath of add link. So, they've been moved in this menu. Also in notes, if you go up to file and export as, we now have a new option to export a note in Markdown. We'll get to the big features in a minute, but I need to address all of the design changes. And we're going to go into the control center now because the control center has quite the change with Mac OS Tahoe. So, not only do we have an all new look here, but we also have edit controls down here at the bottom. And when you click on that, you can see that we have this new interface for adding controls to our control center. now. And it really just acts a lot more like iOS and iPad OS now than it did in the past. And we also have a lot of additional options down here. A lot of new toggle types. So for instance, desktop and
6:07 finder. So we can add certain things to the control center now like doc autohide stage manager tiling windows to corners. That's a cool one. So I'm going to go ahead and add that. When you click on the plus, it will add to menu bar or add to control center. So you get the option from the control center settings. And now that lives there in the control center, you can see you have display and brightness. We can go down. We have the lock screen options. So if you want to lock your screen from the control center, you can do that right there. We'll add that to the control center. We have notes to add a quick note. You have screenshot options if you want to screenshot. And you have several additional ones including accessibility and vision accessibility options. And you can also rearrange these items really easily as well. And it's surprisingly stable and it works very well even here in an early beta. Uh, so
6:53 if you wanted to move things around to your liking, you can do that. We can even move this up here. And you can see you have a lot of functionality and a lot of flexibility with the control center here in Mac OS Tahoe. Here's something else new in Mac OS Tahoe. So you can now change the color of folders. So it's not just a little colored dot next to the folder anymore. You can change the entire color of it by right-clicking and choosing a color. So you can see we have red right there. We have green. You can change it to whatever color you would like. And if you go to customize folder, you can even add an emoji or a little glyph icon down here. So we'll add an emoji. We'll just do this one right here. And you will see that shows up right there in the folder. There's also a new animation when you drop a file into the folder. So if we drop this in right here, you can see there's a subtle new animation right there. And you also see that inside of
7:38 Finder as well. So if we drop something into this folder, you can see that subtle little animation there. If you right click on the desktop, we have new glyph icons to the left of most of these options. And if we head back into our settings and go down, you can see that we have a new menu bar option here inside of settings with a better UI. So before this section was at the bottom of the control center settings. Now it has its own separate menu inside of settings. And from here you can change what shows up in the menu bar. So you can see you have menu bar controls right here. And then if you go down, you have the ability to disallow certain applications in the menu bar. So, for example, Creative Cloud, if you don't want that showing up in the menu bar, you can just deselect that. That's one that always annoys me up there in the menu bar. And we'll get to the new
8:24 applications in Mac OS Tahoe and of course the new spotlight changes in a moment. But I also want to show you a change under displays. So, if you go into displays, you will notice that we have a new UI for the slider toggles right here. So, take a look at that. when you hover over it or when you click down and kind of move over, you will notice that we have that almost looks like a raindrop effect when you move a slider throughout Mac OS. So, this is not just in this section. This applies throughout Mac OS and the settings and also the buttons down here have a new look as well. So, they're slightly skinnier and slightly longer than before. And down here at the bottom, we have the arrange and the plus button. Before those were up near the top. So, really a big change to the buttons and the sliders throughout Mac OS Tahoe and just a slight change to the displays
9:11 section here in settings. And speaking of displays, anytime you guys watch a Mac video of mine on the channel, you'll probably see this icon in the menu bar. And that is for Clean My Mac, one of the few apps that I actually use several times a week. And they're also proudly the sponsor of this video. Clean My Mac will spot and remove those unnecessary files that clog up space on your Mac, including duplicate files, system cache, and other junk that you likely don't even know was eating away at your storage. And I typically just run the all-in-one smart care scan to get an overview of what's eating up my storage. And it just takes one click to remove those files. But of course, you can review them beforehand as well. But if you want to be more precise, on the left panel you have cleanup to clear cache and junk files, protection to scan for
9:56 security threats, performance to manage background tasks, applications to properly uninstall apps and remove the leftover files, and also my clutter to remove duplicate or large and old files that you may no longer need. But once again, my favorite part is that menu bar icon. If you just click on that, you get quick access to your available storage, your CPU and RAM pressure and temperatures, your Wi-Fi speeds, and more. So, like I always say, Clean My Mac makes my life easier and saves a ton of time and storage space by finding and removing those elusive files that a lot of times I don't even know exist on my Mac. So, if you want to try Clean My Mac Free for 7 days, click my link in the description below and if you use my code Brandon 20, you'll get 20% off. Okay, so here's something I did not expect to see with Mac OS Tahoe, but I could not be
10:42 any more excited because we have the biggest upgrade ever for Spotlight here in Mac OS 26 Tahoe. So, first off, if we do command space to pull up our spotlight search, spotlight results are way better since Mac OS Tahoe now uses ondevice intelligence to present the most relevant files and results. So, if I search for a folder by its name, it will actually pop up now instead of showing 20 other results before it. And you'll quickly notice that when you search for something in Spotlight, you have several different options down beneath it. So if you're searching for AI app and it's a folder, you know the file type is a folder, you can just simply click on folders and then it will show every folder that applies to AI app or every folder that includes AI app in it. And there you go. You can see it's very accurate with those details. And if
11:28 I go ahead and search that again, you can see that we can also break it down by mail, photos, messages, and so on. So for example, if I was searching for AI app as maybe a subject line in mail, I can click on that and you can see it will show anything that shows AI app in mail. But that is not even close to everything because when you launch Spotlight search, you will also notice that we have these new icons to the right of the search field and we have applications. When you click on that, it will show you exactly what we have down here, the applications section. But if we click on this, you can see it kind of turns into a back arrow. We'll click on that and then go over here to files. So you can search for files specifically right there. We also have right here actions. So you can perform actions within Spotlight. And then most importantly and my favorite is
12:14 clipboard. So we now have a built-in clipboard manager in Mac OS Tahoe. I cannot believe it. We do not need a thirdparty application anymore. So if I were to copy this text right here and then go into my Spotlight search and then go to command 4, which is clipboard. So we'll do that again. And so we go command space and then command 4 to go straight to my clipboard. You can see that it shows what I copied, what it was. So it was text. It shows what the application was. It shows it was notes. And it shows exactly what time I copied that as well. And then right here we have the ability to recopy something that was copied earlier, including all the way down here to stuff that was copied yesterday. And then if you click on the three dots right here, you can clear the history if you want to. But there is so much more for Spotlight because we can also now
12:59 perform system and app actions from Spotlight. So if we go over here to the actions button. So if we go to command three, it shows that little preview right there. We have actions now built into Spotlight. So basically what this does is you can see for messages, we can send a message, we can start a timer, we can create a note, we can start a new event, we can send an email, all with a simple sequence of keys in the spotlight search. Let me show you what I mean the old school way first. We're just going to click on new event right here. So we'll just do new event and we'll run that. So we click return and now we can add in what our event is going to be. So I'll just say dinner and we'll press tab to go over to the start date. I'll just put today and the end date will be tomorrow. So this is just an example and we can go ahead and run that. So we
13:44 click on return. You can see it will run that action there to add that to my calendar. And sure enough, if we pull up the calendar, you can see it did add that to my calendar for tomorrow at 12:00 a.m. because I did not specify a time, but it did add it. Now, if we go back here, there's a much easier way to do that because if you take a look to the right of all of these quick actions, you can add what's called quick keys where you can just do this with keyboard shortcuts. So, if I wanted to do that same thing, but maybe this time we'll do send an email. So, we'll go over here next to send email and we can add quick keys. So, if I just type in email, for example, that might be too long. So maybe just EM. We'll just do EM for email. Press on return. And now if we go up to actions and just type in EM, you can see it automatically detects since we have that set that we want to send an email to somebody. So we'll just press
14:31 EM and then return. And then it gives us the option to choose what we want to say. So I put in the body of the email that I want to say and then I put who I want it to go to along with the subject line right here. And now if we click on return, it will run that and send that email all without ever actually going into the mail application itself. Amazing. But those were just the suggestions. You could also run quick actions straight from the spotlight search and also add quick keys for pretty much anything. So calendar chat GPT, we have eject disk through dis utility. You have finder options to create folder and delete files. And you even have system settings like the ability to get device details, change the background sound, and so on. You have all these different ones that you can do right here. Even some for terminal for running a shell script. And
15:16 by the way, if we go into our system settings and scroll down to spotlight, you do have some new options in here as well. So if you want to reset all of your quick keys, you can do that right here. And then you do also have the show related content, help Apple improve search, and also you can change your results from applications right there. And also the results from system. And if you have your iPhone connected using iPhone mirroring, you can also see your applications from your iPhone inside of the Spotlight search on your Mac. So if we go out of actions, if we go just go back here to regular Spotlight search and I start searching for applications that are only on my iPhone, for example, you can see right here it shows the application, but that's actually on my iPhone, not on my Mac. And speaking of the iPhone and the Mac, thanks to continuity, you can also now see live activities that were started on your
16:03 iPhone, they'll now appear up here on the Mac. And when you click on that live activity, the application will open up in iPhone mirroring. There's also a new popup that I got with Mac OS Tahoe, and this is related to applications that were running and they were forced quit. So, you can see it shows Final Cut Pro is running in the background after it was closed. So, it says the apps in the background retain their access to sensors or personal data even though they don't appear to be open. And it says if you need this app to perform tasks such as updating or syncing data when it's not open, you can allow it to run in the background. And then you get the option to not allow or to always allow. And by the way, you'll notice that the UI of that popup is different as well. So, we have the more clear buttons and of course it's more circular. The shortcuts application
16:48 finally gets shortcut automations in Mac OS Tahoe. So, if you go into shortcuts, you can see right here we now have automation. And from here, you can create an automation based on several different criteria. So, if you go up to plus, you can set the automation to be triggered based on a time of day, when you receive a specific email, when a display is connected, when stage manager is connected, and also down here, you have different ones for folders, files, and external drives. So, if we go to file, for example, and we choose a file, we'll just choose this one right here. And now you get to choose what you want to happen once that file has been changed. So if you want to send an email or send a message, you can do that. You can just plop it in over here and that will trigger once that you know automation trigger has been achieved. Now also over here we have Apple
17:34 intelligence. So we now have Apple intelligence support inside of shortcuts not just for automations all shortcuts in general on Mac OS Tahoe. So if you go to use model, you can choose between the ondevice model, the cloud model, or even chat GPT. So you can do chat GPT. You can even ask for a follow-up right here as well after your chat GPT request. And there's other options as well for writing tools where you can adjust the tone and also image playground where you can create an image as part of a shortcut. Oh, and there's also a new icon for the shortcuts application as well. And speaking of new applications, we also have a new phone application on Mac OS. So, we've always been able to take calls from Mac OS, but now you can send outgoing calls. You can make calls from your Mac. And we also have that new
18:20 redesign in the phone application like you see on iOS 26. And right here, you can see that we do have also the call screening option. So, this is a call screening call right here that asks about my extended warranty. So, we have the call screening and also the hold assist feature like on iOS along with the live translation feature if somebody is speaking another language. And if you click on this little grid icon right here, that is the phone dialer. So, from here, you can dial the phone number using the keys on your keypad and make a call. And any call that you make on your Mac will be synced with your iPhone as well. So, everything will be synced together on your iPhone and your Mac. And also, when you are receiving a call on your Mac, there's a new UI where you now see the contact poster of the person calling. And then here's one I've been
19:06 waiting on for a while. The journal application has finally made its way to the Mac. So, it's on the iPad as well this year. So, we have journal on iPhone, Mac, and iPad, which is great. So, now if you have some journal entries that you want to write down, you can do that with your full keyboard instead of doing it on your iPhone or through iPhone mirroring. We also have the new games application on Mac OS. just like we have on all the other operating systems. So, we have the home view, we have arcade, we have play together if you want to play with friends and also see leaderboards, and then you also have library right here where you can see your achievements and some of your other games. And if you are wondering what this icon down here in the dock is, that is the new app icon for the preview application. And the preview application as a whole has a nice update with Mac OS Tahoe. And it looks a lot more modern
19:52 with the new UI elements all throughout. So, the more rounded edges and also the toolbar is much easier to access and it's always just kind of floating right there at the top which makes marking up your PDFs just a lot quicker. And if you go into dark mode while you have a file open in preview, you can see you have an option here to use dark appearance for PDF. And if you do that, it will turn the entire PDF into dark mode. And now if you go in and out of dark mode, you can see that it changes based on the mode that you are in. But there's even another new application in Mac OS Tahoe and that is Magnifier. So the magnifier application has made its way over to Mac OS with Mac OS Tahoe. And now you can not only zoom in using the built-in camera, but if you go up here to camera up in the menu bar, you can choose one of your iPhones or any other external
20:40 cameras. We'll go to my 16 Pro Max betas camera. And now it will launch the camera from my iPhone. And you can see here that I can use my camera for my iPhone to be able to zoom in on that camera right here on my Mac. So, this is excellent. And Apple actually shows a demo of this working really well. Like if you're in a classroom and you need to zoom in on a presentation to be able to get the slides and get a screenshot of it, this is the way to do that with your iPhone connected. You just press this blue button right here to take a photo of that zoomed-in view. And with an iPhone, you can zoom in quite a bit as you can see. like you can go from all the way here to all the way in like this. So, this will be great in an environment like if you're in school and you need to take a screenshot again like
21:25 of a slide or something like that. We have some interesting changes inside of the Safari application. So, first off, you can see that the top bar, this whole top section of Safari now adjusts based on the dominant color at the top of a website. So, you can see as I scroll down that red is no longer there. So, it does not show that. It just shows the white. But as I go to the top, you can see it changes this whole section up top to red. And if I go to another website that's in dark mode, you can see it all stays in black. If I go to another website here that has a slightly different color. You can see kind of how that adjusts right up there in this top bar. The tab view looks a little bit different here in Safari. So you can see that when you hover over a tab, it gives it that more circular icon in the background along with the X right there. But aside from that, you can see that
22:11 they just have a slightly different look. And by the way, you can no longer change the tab layout. So if you go into your settings right here and you go to tabs, you can see that you can no longer change the tab layout in Safari with Tahoe. And if we head over here to Apple's release notes for Safari 26, which is Mac OS Taho's version of Safari, we have quite a few changes. A lot of these are going to apply only to developers, but there are a few that non-developers will be able to understand. So first off, any website can now become a web app on iOS and iPad OS. That's something new in Safari across the board, not just on Mac OS. Also, we now have added support for HDR images on iOS, iPad OS, Mac OS, and Invision OS. Safari now fully supports SVG icons on websites. So, website icons
22:58 might look a little bit sharper now. If you were having issues with pictureand picture in the past, we now have a fix for pictureand picture to exit when the video element is removed. And also some other fixes for MP4 seeking. And there's another one right here where you can now report a website compatibility issue right from Safari. In the passwords application, you have a new view history button down here. So, if the password has been changed, it will show when it was changed, it will show the date right there. And if you click on the drop-own menu, it will show what the password was changed to. And if you click on the drop down from the green password right here, it will show what the previous password was. The music application gets the same redesign that we saw on iOS. And this was much needed for Mac OS because this is one of the worst looking default apps in my opinion. But it's been updated
23:44 with this new sidebar view right here. Also, the now playing bar is down here at the bottom and it has that translucent look. The photos application also gets the same redesign that we saw on the other operating systems where we have library and collections now separated. In the messages application, we have support for backgrounds. We could also do polls. If we click on the plus right here, you can see that we can do polls from the Mac OS version of the app. And we also have typing indicator and group chats. And of course, Apple Pay supports in group chats as well. In the clock application, if you go to create a new alarm, you now have the option to change your snooze duration. And of course, reminders is an application I use all the time on Mac OS. So, I should also point out that this got the same redesign as an iOS and iPad OS as well with the colorcoordinated little boxes up here.
24:29 And one of the great new features with reminders is the ability to autocategorize a reminder. So, you can see I have a bunch of different ones written down here. Now, if I go up to file, you can see we have a new option for autocatategorize. And when I press that, it will autocategorize all of the reminders that I have set in here. And if we head into the settings, we have quite a few changes in here as well. So, first off, if you go into your settings and then go into appearance right here, you can see that auto is now first. Before auto was at the end, now it's been moved to the first selection. Also, the icon and widget style selection is right here inside of the appearance section now. And you could also see a preview of what each of the different icons and widget styles will look like. And right below that is the folder color option where you can set this to be automatic or you can set a specific
25:16 color to be the default for folders. And then underneath of that we have a new subheading for windows and it shows our sidebar icon size and allowing wallpaper tenting. Neither one of those are new, but this windows little heading here is new. And of course, the design for this button right here is new as well, along with the animation and the desktop and dock settings. If you go into window title bar, doubleclick action, and you go into that, we now have no action. Before that said do nothing. So, it does the same thing, just a different wording choice there. And if we scroll down to the desktop and stage manager section and go to show desktop, we also have some wording changes here. So, it used to say always and only in stage manager. Now it says always on wallpaper click and only in stage manager on click. Mac
26:01 OS Tahoe also includes some nice accessibility features. So if you go into the accessibility settings and then you go into motion right here we now have vehicle motion cues. You can now set vehicle motion cues and you can also customize the appearance. So you can change the color of the dots that you see on your screen along with the change of the pattern and you can also make the dots larger and add more dots if you would like to. And this is great for reducing motion sickness in moving vehicles or even for some people while on a plane. And then right underneath of motion, we have read and speak. Before that was spoken content. And if you go into here, we have a new option as well for reader. And you click on the I next to reader, you have the option for autoplay and reader. And you could also set a keyboard shortcut for this. And what this does is it brings the Safari
26:48 like reader view to other applications. And so of course in Safari you have the reader view where it basically gets rid of all the distractions. You can now have that in other applications as well with this accessibility feature. The name recognition feature has also come to Mac OS Tahoe just like an iOS and iPad OS 26. So you can teach your Mac to recognize a specific name and notify you when it hears that name. And then right here for hover text, this is not new, but in Mac OS Tahoe, we do have a new option for hover color. And if you have this enabled and you press the control key, it will describe the color underneath of the pointer. And there's also Braille access in Mac OS Tahoe to create an all new interface for braille displays. So there you have it. That is a look at the new Mac OS 26 Tahoe. Not only with a radical redesign, but also with some significant new features and
27:35 changes, including the clipboard manager, the journal app, the new spotlight search, the phone application, and so much more. Now, keep in mind, we are still in beta as of the time of recording this, so expect new features to be added and some of these other features to be improved with time. But if you enjoyed this video, I would appreciate if you gave it a thumbs up. Also, be sure to subscribe to the channel so you don't miss out on future Mac OS videos. But anyways guys, thanks for watching and I'll see you [Music]
