Your Apple MacBook is getting a free upgrade – here are the best MacOS 26 features

Apple just announced its latest update for MacOS 26, codenamed “Tahoe.” It’s full of new visual design elements like Apple’s Liquid Glass design theme, better integration with the iPhone, and a more robust Spotlight feature that’s better integrated with Shortcuts. 

The theme of all of Apple’s updates this year is streamlining both the visual UI and feature sets across Apple devices, while making more apps and features available on them, punctuated by Apple Intelligence. 

Also: Everything announced at Apple’s WWDC 2025 keynote: Liquid Glass, MacOS Tahoe, and more

Following the same trajectory as the last few years, Apple’s announcement of MacOS 26 comes during WWDC, with a developer beta opening up now, and a public beta in July. The full release of MacOS 26 won’t be out until this fall, however. 

Let’s take a look at the biggest announcements Apple made for MacOS. 

The Phone app on Mac

The Phone app has finally arrived on MacOS, allowing for a more streamlined user experience between your iPhone and computer. Users can now access recent calls and contacts synced from your iPhone, and make calls with a single click in the same way. What’s more, the Phone app will include the new features added in iOS 26, including Hold Assist and Call Screening. 

In addition to calls and contacts, live activities from the iPhone will be visible on your Mac, such as tracking an Uber or a delivery from Seamless. Clicking on the live activity will open up iPhone Mirroring, which will allow you to take action directly from your Mac. 

Liquid Glass and visual consistency

Apple dropped a major visual overhaul for iOS with its Liquid Glass design theme, and many of those updates are filtering over to MacOS, streamlining the user experience across devices. 

The dock, sidebars, and toolbars have been redesigned in the same translucent aesthetic that’s intended to show more content on screen without UI clutter. In addition, the rounded elements and added dimensionality look a lot more like what you’d see on the iPhone. Customization also allows you to adjust the control center in the same way as the iPhone

Also: What is Liquid Glass? Here’s everything we know about Apple’s major UI overhaul at WWDC

Just like the iPhone, Macs will support additional personalization options, including dark or light mode, an all-clear icon, and dock theme, as well as customized color tones. This customization extends to folder icons themselves, with colors, themes, and even emojis. 

Shortcuts and Spotlight get smarter 

MacOS 26 adds a handful of smart integrations for the Spotlight feature. Instead of just being a simple search bar, Apple’s updates to Spotlight make it into a more powerful control panel that works with Shortcuts and can take app-specific actions, while powered by Apple Intelligence. 

For example, during the WWDC keynote, we saw a demo in a photo editing app, with the user adjusting the color tone by searching for that function in the Spotlight. In a complex app like Photoshop, for example, if you can’t find a specific function, Spotlight could step in to act as a top-level search function. 

Also: Apple’s secret sauce is exactly what AI is missing

In supporting additional productivity features, Spotlight will also contain clipboard history and allow you to create automations in conjunction with Apple Intelligence to make complex actions like summarizing text or creating images. You can access Apple Intelligence models on your device or ChatGPT. 

Spotlight will also support a handful of shortcut Quick keys, such as “sm” for “send message,” for example. That opens a thread where you can send a message directly from the Spotlight app itself, without swapping to Messages. 

Apple Intelligence, of course 

Some of the Apple Intelligence features that debuted on the iPhone will now be available in MacOS, including a more robust, personalized Siri, and a smarter Shortcuts app. 

Apple is also opening up MacOS 26 so third-party developers can start creating apps that actually integrate with Apple Intelligence. It’s a smart move, allowing some breathing room to further innovate on its own AI features (which some say have fallen behind competitors’) while allowing external developers to bring useful AI functions to the Mac. 

Apple Games 

Coinciding with the launch of the Games app on the iPhone, we’re also seeing Games come to MacOS 26 as a dedicated store, launcher, and leaderboard. The Games app also brings an overlay showing system settings like low power mode, as well as online friends and communications.

Metal 4 comes to MacOS 26 as well, offering higher quality graphics with MetalFX Frame Interpolation and MetalFX Denoising for smoother visuals and faster frame rates.

Let’s talk compatibility 

All of these updates sound great, but not every Mac will be compatible with MacOS 26 Tahoe. Older Macs with Intel processors, unfortunately, will not support the new OS version. This means any Mac with an M1 processor or later will run MacOS 26, but most devices from before the 2020 mark will not. 

Also: Your Apple Watch is getting a major upgrade. Here are the best features in WatchOS 26

This move all but seals the deal on phasing out older Intel-based models, something we’ve been expecting from Apple for a while. If you do have a Mac computer with an Intel processor, you can still run the previous MacOS, Sequoia, or its predecessor, Sonoma, depending on how old your device is. 

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