are they giving any hints that in high vis/accessibility modes this will be fully disabled? I've been largely insulated from changes like this for a while by that, if that were to change however, more drastic measures may be needed
Disappointed with the background image. I was expecting a similar treatment like with Sequoia and previous versions with a beautiful and inspiring scene in nature. Instead it is vaguely inspired by water?
Any actual interesting changes under the hood other than UI changes? I cant remember the last time macOS release that actually brings any useful feature I use.
I'm not quite sure what to make of Liquid Glass, I developed an allergy of sorts to the term while listening to the keynote.
Any 'relevant' new features for power users / cmd line geeks that you know of?
Apple Notes now supports Markdown import and export.
Spotlight now supports actions, so you can do things directly from Spotlight (kind of like Quicksilver back in the day, or Raycast more currently). Your custom made Shortcuts can also be triggered. It’s also context aware, so you can do things for the app/document you’re in.
Spotlight also integrates clipboard history.
The Terminal gets Powerline glyphs, new themes, and new fonts.
A reminder, if you dislike the liquid glass look, that going into System settings / Accessibility / Display and toggling “Increase contrast” gets you a properly nice design with actual borders and solid backgrounds. 100% recommended.
I'm normally on about 1 year delay on upgrading macOS for a multitude of reasons. I might not wait the full year but something else will have to force me to upgrade within the first few months.
I'd heard from people who were running the betas that it's not ready and they are surprised Tahoe wasn't delayed.
No way I'm upgrading any time soon to Apple's least cared for OS with a change this big (and this untested).
I should know better, but I'm still surprised they're shipping this version of Liquid Glass. Performance is stable but there are so many UI bugs and inconsistencies that haven't been fixed from early betas, including low-hanging fruit that a second year design student would notice. I don't mind change or interface elements moving around but keynote-level UI overhauls should be fully implemented at launch, otherwise people are stuck using a broken OS for a year.
At this point I'm doubtful that these will be addressed in the 26.X updates, so the wait begins for 27.0...
This is always how it goes. The big change happens, and it’s refined over time.
For what it’s worth, there where threads here on HN where people complained at length about the bugs and inconsistencies in the previous version of the Apple operating systems.
They went way too far with the corner radii and pill shapes imo, looks like a Fisher Price toy. Some inner buttons retained the old radii and don't match the outer window radii anymore.
I swear I don't usually complain about UI styling updates, because it's usually not a big deal - but this looks really, really bad [1]. It's less functional with bizarre transparency choices destroying legibility, and big rounded corners taking up more dead space. And stylistically, the layouts just look unbalanced and amateurish (It reminds me of what happens when I attempt to do CSS layouts). Most Linux desktops unironically look better than this.
As a rule almost any UI redesign of just about any product in the last decade will increase padding and reduce information density. I don't know if it's because the average designer/user is getting older or large screens are more common so it seems like there's lots of room available thus it can be wasted.
Sadly, this often applies to Linux as well, so there's no escape. I guess Xfce is still around at least.
Can anyone speak to whether the performance of the Settings app has been improved? In Seq and every version since they redid it in presumably SwiftUI, if you select one of the navigation panes and then hold either the up or down arrow keys to quickly navigate between them, something like a memory leak occurs due to (seemingly) launching all of the nested panes as separate apps (this is what appears to be the case in activity monitor) and the Settings app will start lagging until you fully quit and reopen.
Is that call screening example a new feature or something I can do now that I didn't know about? That's something I've missed since switching from a Pixel to an iPhone last year.
I've been running it since the RC and am currently in the process of uninstalling it. The new UI is so incredibly ugly I honestly cannot understand how they thought it was acceptable to even released as a beta let alone an RC and now release.
There's SO much padding and wasted screen real estate, disjointed looking floating inner panels, window corners that are so rounded you see gaps in full screen apps, inconsistencies everywhere and - well, I could go on.
Basically the vibe I get from it is that they think their users are dumb - they won't care about things like this and that they want everything to look like a preschoolers tablet.
I just installed it (had to; if I am using the Mac, I'd rather be on the latest OS for security and compatibility reasons), and it is just disgusting. It is more disgusting than the iOS 26 monstrosity.
I mean, how do you even provide constructive feedback to such a pathetic design choice? Not that this company ever deals in feedback (unless it's a strong feedback directly to its wallet).
I do believe they are just exhibiting sheer incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy as a corporation. Is it beginning of an end? I don't know. Do giga corps even die anymore?
> The new UI is so incredibly ugly I honestly cannot understand how they thought it was acceptable to even released as a beta let alone an RC and now release.
I just tried it and maybe I've just been primed by the internet, but by god, I did not like it.
The side-bar design is terrible and lots of application (Maps, Music, etc) always look like they have a window overlapping the current application. So even with a single window open, my desktop already looks messy.
For people like me, with a slight OCD about certain details (don't talk to me about notification-bubbles), this is absolutely infuriating.
I'll disable auto-updates on all iDevices and Macs, and just keep on security-updates for previous gen OS as long as I can.
> The new UI is so incredibly ugly I honestly cannot understand how they thought it was acceptable to even released as a beta let alone an RC and now release.
I feel like if you replaced all of the paper in a company's printers with transparency sheets you'd be fired because that's obviously a stupid idea that would never work. But then I guess that's why I'm not a software UI designer.
I am lucky to read this after before deciding to update. Unforunately did update to the new ios and it's incredibly ugly. Wish there would have been an easy way to roll back on iphone
Yeah, agree the UI is not great, but after using it for a week I feel it's actually... fine. Probably because I use a lot of third-party apps who don't use the new design.
Awful cheap UX, cartoonish style with huge padding, lack of structure and hierarchy. The spacing is inconsistent, everything is rounded. The app launcher stutters, the icons load one by one, it flickers each time I do the 4 finger gesture. Why does the volume bubble have tick marks but the one in the menu doesn't? The trash icon looks like the windows recycle bin or gnome theme from 20 years ago, not sure why it's flattened like that.
Whoa, you can now search clipboard history. Go to Spotlight Search, Command+4. You'll get a list of entries, each with a copy button, and is searchable. Even shows the app it was copied in.
190 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadSpotlight now supports actions, so you can do things directly from Spotlight (kind of like Quicksilver back in the day, or Raycast more currently). Your custom made Shortcuts can also be triggered. It’s also context aware, so you can do things for the app/document you’re in.
Spotlight also integrates clipboard history.
The Terminal gets Powerline glyphs, new themes, and new fonts.
The full list of changes is here:
https://www.apple.com/os/pdf/All_New_Features_macOS_Tahoe_Se...
It's embarrassing that it took them that long but they have in fact fixed it.
I'd heard from people who were running the betas that it's not ready and they are surprised Tahoe wasn't delayed.
No way I'm upgrading any time soon to Apple's least cared for OS with a change this big (and this untested).
At this point I'm doubtful that these will be addressed in the 26.X updates, so the wait begins for 27.0...
For what it’s worth, there where threads here on HN where people complained at length about the bugs and inconsistencies in the previous version of the Apple operating systems.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/macos-26-tahoe-the-a...
Sadly, this often applies to Linux as well, so there's no escape. I guess Xfce is still around at least.
There's SO much padding and wasted screen real estate, disjointed looking floating inner panels, window corners that are so rounded you see gaps in full screen apps, inconsistencies everywhere and - well, I could go on.
Basically the vibe I get from it is that they think their users are dumb - they won't care about things like this and that they want everything to look like a preschoolers tablet.
I mean, how do you even provide constructive feedback to such a pathetic design choice? Not that this company ever deals in feedback (unless it's a strong feedback directly to its wallet).
I do believe they are just exhibiting sheer incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy as a corporation. Is it beginning of an end? I don't know. Do giga corps even die anymore?
I just tried it and maybe I've just been primed by the internet, but by god, I did not like it.
The side-bar design is terrible and lots of application (Maps, Music, etc) always look like they have a window overlapping the current application. So even with a single window open, my desktop already looks messy.
For people like me, with a slight OCD about certain details (don't talk to me about notification-bubbles), this is absolutely infuriating.
I'll disable auto-updates on all iDevices and Macs, and just keep on security-updates for previous gen OS as long as I can.
Eww.
I feel like if you replaced all of the paper in a company's printers with transparency sheets you'd be fired because that's obviously a stupid idea that would never work. But then I guess that's why I'm not a software UI designer.
Sigh.