macOS Tahoe: The MacStories Public Beta Preview

Author’s Note: Apple released the public beta of macOS 26 Tahoe last Thursday, two days after developer beta 4. Instead of rushing a preview of Tahoe to publication at the risk of missing important aspects of the release, I chose to spend the time necessary to thoroughly test Tahoe first.

A year ago, the macOS Sequoia public beta debuted with a long list of caveats. Many of the features that had been shown off at WWDC 2024 weren’t in that initial public beta release or even the initial macOS 15.0 release, and some features, like a smarter Siri, still haven’t shipped. That made Sequoia feel incomplete.

The release of macOS Tahoe 26 promises to be different. The features highlighted during WWDC 2025 are all in the public beta. Some are more polished than others, but everything is there to try today. With its surprisingly long list of new system apps, changes big and small at the macOS system level, and, of course, Liquid Glass, Tahoe’s public beta release is a fun one for users who like to explore Apple’s latest macOS innovations as early as possible.

I’m not sold on every feature, but it’s still early, and this is a beta, so I’ll reserve my final judgment for the fall. However, there’s a lot coming in macOS Tahoe, which makes it worth taking a closer look at today, so let’s dig in.

Should You Install macOS Tahoe?

It always pays to be careful when installing beta software. Apple’s public betas have historically been stable, but you should back up your data and have a plan in case an app you rely on doesn’t work.

I’ve had developer beta 4 running on my Mac Studio for a week, and many of the small bugs and annoyances from the earlier developer betas have been cleaned up. I’ve still had apps like Music and News crash here and there, and Spotlight seems to have lost track of my shortcuts, but overall, the first week with developer beta 4 (which is effectively the same as the public beta) have been fine. So my advice is that you should exercise caution, but don’t worry about Tahoe too much. Even before the public beta, the fun of trying macOS’ upcoming features outweighed the occasional headaches it caused.

Design and Customization

Liquid Glass

Apple’s Icon Composer lets developers create Liquid Glass icons. Source: Apple.

Before getting too deep into the many features and new apps Tahoe has to offer, we should consider where things stand with Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language on the Mac. The short answer is that Tahoe’s new design has been a moving target during the developer betas, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to settle down until much further into the summer.

In most places, Liquid Glass is applied in a less heavy-handed way on the Mac than it is on the iPhone, where text can be hard to read and features are often tucked away behind an extra tap. UI elements on the Mac emphasize translucency more than in the past, and there are touches of reflection and refraction of light coupled with playful animations, but the effect is more muted than on the iPhone overall.

A hallmark of Liquid Glass on the Mac is the way sidebars and toolbar icons sit on a layer above the file list in Finder.

In fact, some of the more prominent design choices from the earlier developer betas have been toned down for the public beta. For example, the sidebars in Finder and other apps had a layered look that made it seem as though there were two windows sitting on top of each other with a slight offset. That’s been changed to make the components look like part of a more unified whole. Dramatic drop shadows beneath toolbar controls have been softened in most places, too, which I appreciate.

The translucence of Liquid Glass can be distracting when dark text is layered behind something like the Spotlight search bar.

I generally like this interpretation of Liquid Glass on the Mac. It feels more vibrant and has a freshness I enjoy that retains the legibility of text in a way iOS 26 doesn’t. There are edge cases where icons and text beneath a translucent window can generate a smudgy effect that doesn’t look nice, but by and large, it’s a workable design.

If that were the whole story of Liquid Glass on the Mac, I’d say it accomplishes Apple’s stated goal of focusing on a window’s content by differentiating elements like the toolbar and sidebar. However, there’s more to Liquid Glass than that.

The Liquid Glass effect in apps like Games is much closer to iOS and iPadOS than it is to Finder and many other Mac apps.

If you look at the newest apps coming to macOS Tahoe, like Games and Journal, you’ll find the same glassier look found in iOS 26. Buttons are transparent and shaped to distort content beneath them, leading to some of the same legibility issues as iOS.

Between the two treatments, I greatly prefer the translucent look of Safari and Finder, and I think the more transparent version will look dated quickly. At the same time, I’m left wondering whether Apple simply hasn’t gotten to those existing apps yet, especially since the iOS 26 look extends to the Music app, too. The two designs are so different that it’s impossible to say whether Games, Journal, and Music are the beginning of a trend or apps that need to be Mac-ified.

Tahoe’s Lock Screen.

Other Liquid Glass highlights include Tahoe’s Lock Screen, where the clock takes on the same sort of transparency found on the iPhone and iPad. There are now multiple font choices for the Lock Screen clock as well.

A gradient behind the menu bar makes it more legible against a light wallpaper.

Also, by default, Tahoe’s menu bar is transparent. Whether or not you like this will undoubtedly depend on the wallpaper you use. I tend to use macOS’ system wallpapers, and the ones I’ve used all work well with the new menu bar look. Tahoe does put a dark gradient behind the menu bar, which helps with legibility, but if you find it hard to make out the icons in your menu bar against a light wallpaper, you have the option to revert to the Sequoia-style menu bar.

Liquid Glass makes an appearance in Tahoe’s Dock, too, where your app icons sit on a translucent, glass-like surface that lets the colors of your wallpaper shine through. The ⌘-Tab UI is similar. And icons for system apps have been updated with a layered glass look that gives them a subtle dimensionality.

Once you poke around Tahoe’s UI, I think you’ll see why I’m not sure what to think of Liquid Glass on the Mac yet. The design was a moving target throughout the first four developer betas, and to my eye, it still looks unfinished in the public beta. That likely means that Liquid Glass will undergo further changes between the public beta and its release this fall, so it’s not worth dwelling on the details too much or drawing any conclusions yet. However, if you have a preference for one of the approaches that Apple has taken with Liquid Glass in Tahoe over the other, I’d encourage you to file feedback, so Apple can get a feel for user sentiment on Tahoe’s design.

Colors and Folders

Theming allows you to colorize large portions of the macOS UI to your tastes. Source: Apple.

With Tahoe, macOS will gain additional customization options, too. The system has had an option to pick an accent color since Mojave. With Tahoe, you will be able to take your customization a step further, choosing between Default, Dark, Clear, or Tinted icons and widgets. You can also choose a theme color, which is set to Multicolor by default. Switching your theme changes the text highlight color and folder color by default, but they can be independently changed, too. However, icon and widget tinting follows your theme color and can’t be set independently. That’s a lot of new settings, and they open up a lot of options that I haven’t fully explored yet. I expect I’ll probably land on the macOS default out of familiarity, but all the same, I’m glad Tahoe gives me more choices.

Folders are more customizable than before as well. Color tags in Finder aren’t new, but now, when you apply one to a folder, the folder takes on the color of the tag. Right-click on a folder, and you have even more options to set folders apart from one another by choosing from a long, although not comprehensive, list of SF Symbols or emoji to add to the folder’s icon. As someone who manages lots of files every week, I greatly appreciate the added visual cues Tahoe lets me add to folders.

System Features

I’ve never been a heavy user of Control Center. Also, aside from beta testing every summer, I’ve always used custom launcher apps like Raycast instead of Spotlight. With Tahoe, I can already tell that’s going to change. Both features have a lot more to offer than in the past. Additionally, Tahoe introduces new ways to manage your menu bar, which are more limited than similar third-party apps in some ways but will probably be enough for most users.

Control Center

The new Control Center offers a lot more customization and support for third-party apps.

To start, let’s take a closer look at Control Center. In the past, I’ve primarily used Control Center on my Mac to access the Now Playing widget, set Do Not Disturb, and adjust audio and video settings. Those features have all been useful, but with Tahoe, Control Center will gain iPhone and iPad levels of customization, including third-party controls.

Among the new system controls, which share a similar Liquid Glass treatment as Apple’s other devices, are controls to:

run a shortcut,

take a screenshot,

tile windows,

set a timer,

take a voice memo,

access the Calculator app,

enable accessibility features,

and more.

The Controls Gallery is a lot like the Widgets Gallery.

New controls are accessed from the Controls Gallery that opens when you click on the ‘Edit Controls’ button at the bottom of the Control Center view. From the Gallery, you can drag new controls into Control Center or the menu bar. Alternatively, if you click on a control, you’ll get a pop-up menu that allows you to choose where to place it. Existing controls can also be resized and reordered when the Gallery is open.

In addition to new system controls from Apple, the Controls Gallery will include options from third-party developers, who will be able to offer controls for their apps in the fall. I’ve only tried a few third-party controls so far, but I expect to spotlight my favorites this fall in my full review.

Tahoe lets you create multiple Control Center-style panels in the menu bar.

Control Center lacks the pagination found on the iPhone and iPad. Instead, when you activate the Controls Gallery, a plus button appears in the menu bar that lets you pick an icon and then add a separate Control Center panel that appears when you click it. It’s a great system that’s been tailored to the Mac, which I love. However, these new panels can only house the new Tahoe-style controls. Existing menu bar items will need to be updated by developers before you can tuck them behind a customized menu.

Tahoe gives you control over which apps can put icons in your menu bar.

Other Control Center features bleed into the menu bar, too. The controls don’t just live in Control Center; you can drag them out onto your menu bar if you prefer. That’s not new for system controls, but this fall, you’ll be able to do the same for third-party controls, too. From System Settings, Tahoe also lets you hide the menu bar items for any OS feature or third-party app. Menu bar management apps can do more, but I expect this will satisfy the needs of a lot of users, myself included.

I like having Live Activities from my iPhone on my Mac, but in their collapsed state, many (like this Flighty Live Activity) aren’t very useful until expanded.

Also new among your menu items are your iPhone’s Live Activities. If your iPhone is nearby and a Live Activity – like a timer or food delivery order – is running, it will appear in your menu bar. Click on a Live Activity, and it will expand from what you’d see in your iPhone’s Dynamic Island to full size, which is a good thing because I’ve found that text in the shrunken menu bar-height version is often too small to read at a desktop distance.

Spotlight

Spotlight has a lot of new productivity tricks up its sleeve.

Spotlight gets tweaked at the margins with most macOS updates, but Tahoe goes much further. It turns Spotlight into an app and shortcut launcher, system-wide file and search tool, clipboard manager, and action launcher. Whereas some recent additions to Spotlight made it feel like a front end for content sources like Wikipedia, IMDb, and other repositories of web information, Tahoe’s Spotlight updates take a decidedly productivity-oriented approach.

The top row of Spotlight’s App section offers suggested apps, followed by all of your other apps, including iPhone apps if you’d like.

Triggering Spotlight brings up the same familiar text field you’re used to, but with a lot more options, many of which are keyboard-driven. Hit the Up Arrow key, and you’ll move through past searches in reverse chronological order. Use the Right Arrow key or move the pointer with your mouse or trackpad after Spotlight is invoked, and four buttons will appear to the right of the text field for Apps, Files, Actions, and Clipboard. Alternatively, once Spotlight is activated, you can jump between the four categories with ⌘ + 1 – ⌘ + 4.

Spotlight’s Files section makes suggestions followed by recents, which are in line with what I’ve been working on today.

The keyboard goodness doesn’t stop there. Search for an app, and you can open it by pressing Return, or hit the Tab key to search within that app. Alternatively, if you search for a keyword first, you can limit the search to a particular app by clicking on one of the app names that appear just below Spotlight’s text field. Plus, Shortcuts you create, App Shortcuts, and actions can all be assigned ‘quick keys,’ custom key combinations that serve as aliases for launching them with the press of a couple of keys. There are even slash commands for limiting your file searches to certain folders.

Actions include an app’s menu items and App Shortcuts.

Of the four categories accessible from Spotlight, Actions is the most interesting because it’s one of the first places that Apple’s App Intents system is on display. If you scroll through the actions available in Spotlight, you’ll find many of the one-off system and third-party actions that you’ll also find in the Shortcuts app’s action library. The difference, of course, is that they can be quickly accessed from Spotlight using quick keys without opening Shortcuts or setting up a shortcut first.

Using Spotlight to open the iPhone app Shop with iPhone Mirroring.

Spotlight also has access to every menu command for the active app. I’ve found this incredibly useful for tiling windows on my screen and sharing documents and URLs using the Share menu.

Other enhancements to Spotlight include:

The addition of cloud-based file services that are Mac file providers like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box to Spotlight’s file index,

The option to search for content and apps on your iPhone from your Mac and launch them via iPhone Mirroring, and

A clipboard history that appears to save items you’ve copied in the last eight hours.

My first month with the new Spotlight has been a good one. It doesn’t offer the same depth of features that many third-party launcher apps and clipboard managers do, but it covers the core feature set well and in a flexible, keyboard-driven way that I appreciate. In the past, my Spotlight use didn’t last long after I published my annual macOS review. This year is shaping up to be different.

System Apps

macOS Tahoe isn’t all about design and system features. It’s also an app-rich update, which is my favorite kind of macOS update.

Shortcuts

Finally. Shortcuts automations on the Mac.

With all of Apple’s focus on App Intents and integrating them with Siri, I was concerned going into WWDC that Shortcuts would sit untouched on a shelf. So I was very pleasantly surprised to find that Shortcuts will get some important updates with Tahoe. There is still a lot more that can be done to make it better, but this year’s updates are nonetheless big ones.

First, Tahoe will introduce automations, allowing shortcuts to be triggered automatically when:

a time of day occurs,

an alarm goes off,

files and folders are updated,

an external drive or display is connected or disconnected,

an email message with certain metadata is received,

a message is received from a certain sender or with specified content in the Messages app,

a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection is made,

an app is opened or closed,

Stage Manager is started or closed,

a Focus mode is activated or turned off, or

a Mac laptop’s battery level is reached.

I can think of other triggers I’d like to see added in the future, but this is an excellent start. Since installing the Tahoe beta, I’ve used the time of day trigger to generate a templated series of tasks for myself every week, and I’m happy to report that it has worked flawlessly.

I feel seen.

The other big addition to Shortcuts, which is also available on other OSes, is a set of Apple Intelligence actions. Apple’s Writing Tools are included, as are actions for Image Playground. However, the action with the most wide-ranging potential is the ‘Use Model’ action that allows users to access the local and Private Cloud Compute versions of Apple’s foundation models or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The availability of all three models allows users to pick one based on considerations like speed, privacy, and context window size, and with natural language prompts, the action greatly simplifies many formerly complex shortcuts that required multiple conditional statements.

Phone

The Phone app.

macOS Tahoe now has a Phone app of its own. A lot of iOS’ phone functionality was already embedded in macOS and apps like Contacts and FaceTime, but the combination of a standalone app and Apple’s Continuity features allows the Mac’s Phone app to work seamlessly with the iPhone version.

I don’t use the Phone app a lot, but I’ve already found its presence on macOS useful when I’m at my desk. It’s great for making and receiving the kind of everyday calls that would be a bigger interruption if you had to reach for your iPhone. I’ve used it to make appointments and, even better, to screen calls. If you have call screening turned on and a call comes in, the notification on your Mac provides a play-by-play so you can see the caller being asked for their name and whether they leave one. At any time, you can intervene and answer the call yourself or hang it up.

Screening a call from an unknown number.

Another feature I recommend trying is Hold Assist. If you get stuck on a long hold, it saves your spot in the queue and lets you hang up. When a person comes on the line, you’re reconnected to the call in the Phone app, and the other person on the line is told you’ll be available in a moment.

I’m also a fan of the voicemail summaries and the Unknown Callers list, which stays out of the way until you have time to review it and move any callers whom you actually know but aren’t in the Contacts app to your Known list.

The design of the Phone app is nice too. I’ve never used Contacts’ favorites feature, but now that favorites appear at the top of the Phone app, I’m taking advantage of the option because it makes it so much easier to place a quick call to one of my family members.

Another feature coming to Phone, Messages, and FaceTime in the fall is Live Translation, a feature that allows users to communicate in multiple languages using an on-device AI model for privacy. I’ll have more to say about Live Translation in my fall review, after I’ve had more time to test it.

Reminders

Reminders.

With Reminders, Tahoe tiptoes into the sort of contextual use of AI that I hope we see a lot more of from Apple in the future. Reminders’ share extension has been infused with Apple Intelligence, allowing the extension to suggest tasks based on email messages, webpages, notes, and more. In my testing so far, it doesn’t always come up with a suggestion, but when it does, it feels like magic.

I just wish I had more control over how Apple Intelligence suggestions work. I’d like to be able to supplement whatever prompt Apple is using to tailor suggestions to what I’m viewing. For example, that would allow me to generate a short summary along with a link for URLs I save for link posts.

Suggested reminders from a Game Boy modding how-to guide on Reddit.

Reminders has a couple of other fun tricks up its productivity sleeve, too. First, you can add tasks directly from Spotlight. As I discussed in its section above, Spotlight’s new app action approach has transformed it from a file and information retrieval tool to a lightweight automation helper, and Reminders is a great example of that, offering a way to add a task quickly without getting distracted from whatever else you’re doing.

Second, the automatic categorization found in grocery lists has migrated to other lists. Under the hood, Reminders is using Apple Intelligence to organize long lists of tasks into neat and tidy sections when you want it to. I just wish section creation and organization actions were built into Shortcuts as well.

Safari

Safari’s Liquid Glass treatment is much more subtle than some other apps.

The biggest change coming to Safari this fall is its Liquid Glass design. Buttons and the sidebar sit on a layer above webpage content. Tabs have been rounded into button-like elements, and the selected tab is more prominent than before. As in other apps, webpage content bleeds through the translucency of the toolbar, but the effect is less pronounced than on iOS or iPadOS.

As for substantive features, Apple is bringing Advanced Fingerprinting Protection, which previously only applied to Private Browsing, to all tabs. Video Picture-in-Picture mode is easier to engage with a command in the Page menu that appears on the left side of the address bar. You’ll also be able to skip forward and back in a PiP video; however, despite the presence of a scrubbing bar at the bottom of a PiP video, you cannot drag the playhead forward and back in a video as of the public beta.

You may also start seeing more Safari extensions this fall because developers will no longer need to have a Mac to develop and distribute them. Developers of Chrome and other extensions who work on Windows and Linux will be able to package their extensions for sale on the App Store without a Mac and a copy of Xcode to compile them. It’s a good move that I wish had been made long ago.

Games

I love Alto’s Odyssey, but this screenshot is a good example of how the Liquid Glass UI can be unreadable at times. That’s a Home tab on the far left.

When rumors of an Apple Games app were first reported, many people assumed games were being moved out of the App Store and into their own storefront. As it turns out, Games isn’t that at all. It’s something much more ambitious.

Games is Apple’s attempt to consolidate everything about gaming that happens after a game is first downloaded. First and foremost, Games is a way for Apple to showcase content, whether it’s on the App Store or Apple Arcade. The app also surfaces what you’ve recently played, making it easy to jump back into a game. As someone with a collection of dozens of games downloaded over the course of more than a decade, I also appreciate Games’ Library tab, where I can search and scroll through my games, although I’d like a genre filter to go along with the name and date sorting that the app currently offers.

There’s definitely overlap between Games and the App Store, but I don’t think that’s a problem. In Games, the lists and editorial content have more room to breathe, which makes browsing and discovery easier, and additional details are always available via a button that takes you to a game’s App Store page.

For developers, Games is a way to connect with fans without sending them to the App Store. Games are good candidates for the App Store’s events feature, which debuted with macOS Monterey, but it’s never made much sense to me that I had to go back to the store to find out about an event after I’d already downloaded a game. Now, those events appear in Games, where they can be part of the calculus for what to play next.

Games encourages you to challenge your friends.

Games is also an attempt to build a sense of community around its offerings. Game Center’s features like leaderboards are here, plus there’s a new Challenge system that aims to make single-player games competitive asynchronously. Setting up a challenge is as easy as picking a game, inviting a friend, and setting up a custom set of rules. The process is low friction, which I like, and incorporates Messages and FaceTime for getting in touch with whomever you’ve challenged. Whether people will use challenges, though, is another story that will depend on whether the Games app becomes the kind of hub for mobile gaming that Apple hopes it will be.

I like the idea of Games and plan to spend more time with it this summer. The mix of game discovery and rediscovery with a touch of community has potential, but I’m not yet sure whether it will stick.

Journal

It always struck me as odd that Journal debuted on the iPhone, which is the hardest platform to type on after the Apple Watch. I get that Apple was emphasizing the media angle of Journal and the iPhone is where we are most likely to take pictures and enjoy media – not to mention that it travels with us. However, for a lot of people, a physical keyboard is a must-have when journaling, so it’s good to see the app is on both the iPad and Mac now.

There’s not a lot more to say about Journal. It’s the same app available elsewhere, but that doesn’t make it any less important that it’s now on the Mac. Journaling is a habit that isn’t always easy to keep up with. The significance of Journal on the Mac is that it will help make it that much easier to form a journaling habit in the first place.

Maybe 2025 will be the year I start journaling, but probably not. In a lot of ways, MacStories and the podcasts I co-host are my very public journal, and I already write a lot. So I don’t really expect to become a Journal user any more than I’ve been a user of any third-party journaling app. Still, every time I try Journal, I’m impressed by how easy it is to jot down a few thoughts and add a photo or other media in a way that’s fun to revisit.

Notes

Exporting a note as Markdown-formatted plain text.

Notes hasn’t added a lot this year, but what it has added is something very important to the way I evaluate apps. No matter how good an app is, it gets a lot of side-eye from me if it’s hard to get your data out of it in an easy-to-use format.

That was one of Notes’ perennial problems. It’s become a powerful note-taking app, but I always knew that using it was signing up for a lot of cleanup work if I wanted to move a highly formatted and structured note to another note-taking app or text editor.

Tahoe’s Notes update resolves a lot of those issues by allowing notes to be exported and imported as Markdown, which is highly portable and easy to convert to other formats. Apple even has a solution for notes that include images: they get bundled with the exported note and file path references where they appear in the note.

Messages

I have yet to find a Messages background that isn’t distracting.

The public beta of Messages includes a surprisingly large collection of small but meaningful features. A lot of MacStories’ planning happens in Messages, so I’m most excited about the improvements to search. The results look the same as in the past, divided into categories like Messages, Links, and Photos, but they are generally easier to navigate.

Another useful addition coming to group threads in the fall is an indicator of who is typing a response. In addition to the three-dot typing indicator of the past, the profile picture of the typist is shown, too. I didn’t know how much I wanted this feature until I had it, and now that I have it, I love it.

The redesigned conversation details sidebar is an improvement too. The profile picture of the person or group you’re texting with appears at the top of the window, making it harder to send a message to the wrong person. Then, when you click on the profile, the details sidebar opens, where you’ll find settings for the conversation, a list of participants, a new button for adding someone’s phone number to the Contacts app from a group thread, and tabs for links, documents, photos, and other content. A lot of what you’ll find in the sidebar was here before, but it’s better organized, making it easier to navigate.

One new feature you’ll find in that sidebar is the option to set a background for your conversation. You can pick from a suggested list of built-in backgrounds, generate one using Image Playground’s tools, or choose one of your photos.

I thought backgrounds might offer a nice way to distinguish one Messages thread from another, which they do, but I don’t really like the backgrounds Apple has added, and I find any background – my photos included – too distracting. As a result, I’m no longer using backgrounds and don’t have plans to use them again, except for further Tahoe testing purposes.

Texts from unknown senders are more tucked away in Messages on Tahoe. So far, these have ranged from confirmation texts for doctor’s appointments to discount codes from a local pizzeria. What I appreciate most is that the texts are easily accessible but less disruptive. Of course, you can always approve a sender so they appear in your main Messages list. According to Apple, they are also actively screening spam messages. I’ve still seen a few, but the overall number has been low so far this summer.

Finally, you can send polls in Messages, watch as people vote on your choices, and revise the choices. I need to spend more time with this feature, but I could see it coming in handy for deciding on things like where to go out for dinner with a group of friends.

Music

I wish Music’s playback controls hadn’t been moved to the bottom of the window.

I wanted to touch on Music because it moves playback controls to the bottom of the window over the window’s content. The controls also use the iOS and iPadOS 26 flavor of Liquid Glass. I’m not a fan of this variety of Liquid Glass on the Mac, but I like the placement of Music’s controls even less.

I may get used to the playback controls being at the bottom of the Music window eventually. However, even though I understand why Apple has moved controls like search bars to the bottom of apps’ views on iOS, there doesn’t seem to be any inherent logic to moving playback controls to the bottom of a window on the Mac.

On the more functional side of things, Music now allows you to pin albums and playlists to the top of the app’s sidebar. There’s also a new AutoMix feature that’s supposed to blend one song into the next, but my experience with the effect has been underwhelming during the betas.

Genmoji and Image Playground

Genmoji have been added to Image Playground.

I’m not a fan of generative image creation regardless of whether it’s pitched as lighthearted and fun, so Genmoji and Image Playground are not for me. However, both will be expanded with macOS Tahoe in notable ways.

First, two Unicode emoji can be combined to create a hybrid Genmoji. This feature is a way to fill gaps in the official set of emoji by creating your own that look similar to their component parts. In my beta testing, the results have run the gamut from exactly what I was going for to weird and creepy.

ChatGPT adds style options like Anime.

Image Playground has been expanded as well to include access to ChatGPT image creation. You won’t find the full range of image generation tools available from OpenAI’s image models directly. Instead, you’ll have to choose between oil painting, watercolor, vector, anime, print, and ‘any style,’ which I believe picks one of the other styles at random.

Using ChatGPT takes much longer than the local models offered by Apple, but the feature gives users more style options. Unlike Apple’s models, ChatGPT doesn’t let you view multiple outputs based on your prompt, which is undoubtedly due to the time it takes to generate each image, but you can always redo an image from scratch with the same prompt if you’d like. As of the public beta, it’s also worth noting that Image Playground remains labeled as a beta app.

Other

Themes in Terminal.

There are other changes and new features coming to macOS Tahoe that I’ll explore in more detail in the fall, including:

new parental controls,

additional accessibility features,

facial expression and personal attribute options in Genmoji,

Game Overlay, low power mode while gaming, and enhanced controller support,

Pinned Collections and new UI elements and customizations in the Photos app,

support for 24-bit color and themes in Terminal,

a new look for FaceTime that incorporates Contact Posters,

a timeline of your password changes in Passwords,

a sprinkling of Apple Intelligence throughout other parts of the system, such as Phone and Messages,

and more.

That’s all I have for now. I’m sure the design and other aspects of macOS will continue to evolve over the remainder of the summer, but for those interested in diving into the changes today, the public beta, which is available here, is the most stable version that I’ve tried so far. If you install Tahoe, be sure to have a backup plan in case something goes wrong, but enjoy the sneak peek at what is shaping up to be a good release overall, and I’ll see you in the fall with more details and a closer look at how Tahoe evolves between now and then.