macOS Tahoe Review: Spotlight Shines, Liquid Glass Disappoints

We're on the fourth developer beta and first public beta of macOS Tahoe, which means we're getting closer to the launch version that's set to come out in September. With macOS Tahoe now available to the public, we thought it would be a good time to share an initial review of the update.

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Like iOS 26, macOS Tahoe adopts the Liquid Glass design. It's used for the Dock, widgets, Control Center, menu bars, navigation bars in apps, app icons, and a few other places, but its implementation is less widespread than it is in iOS and iPadOS. It's clear that Liquid Glass was not a Mac-first design, and the glass parts of the interface feel cobbled together with the previous design language.

The floating element of Liquid Glass looks natural on the iPhone and the iPad, where glassy buttons hover over the app's content to provide a sense of depth, but macOS Tahoe doesn't have enough of the glass-like transparency to make that work in the same way on the Mac. There are not-so-transparent gray-shaded buttons and navigation bars that have a dated-looking shadowing behind them, and the rounded look doesn't help make things appear modern either. Liquid Glass looks better on darker backgrounds, but it very much feels like a work in progress. This is a beta, of course, so we could see further updates to Liquid Glass on the Mac before Tahoe launches.

Apple has been updating the macOS Tahoe design from beta to beta. Up until beta 4, Safari had a design where non-active tabs were denoted as such with an underline, while the active tab had none. That's typically not how underlining works, so determining which tab was in use was confusing. Apple thankfully adopted a color-based design in beta 4, so it's now clear which tab is at the forefront.

Though Liquid Glass doesn't feel fully developed in macOS Tahoe, there are other new features that make a positive change to customization and function.

The Control Center and Menu Bar can be customized with the apps and features that you need most, and other less useful options can be tucked away or removed. The Control Center is more like the iOS Control Center, and you can create multiple pages with options organized in a way that works for you. Third-party app functions will be able to be added to the Menu Bar and Control Center too.

macOS adopts the tinted icon option from iOS, so you can tint your icons all the same color, or choose the Liquid Glass-style clear option (though be warned, it's more gray than clear on macOS). Folder colors can be customized too, and you can add an emoji to a folder to make it stand out.

One of the biggest changes in macOS Tahoe is to Spotlight, which is now a one-stop spot for everything that you might need to do on a Mac. You can use it to open apps, find anything on your Mac, see your clipboard history, and complete actions. Spotlight replaces Launchpad, so when you want to open an app, you'll now use Spotlight.

Search is more comprehensive and you're more likely to find what you're looking for using the file searching feature, plus you can keep tabs on what you've copied and pasted with the new clipboard history option. It stores a log of what you've copied for 24 hours.

Actions is an all-new Spotlight function. You can do all kinds of things without ever opening an app, like sending an email or message, starting a timer, creating a note, placing a call, creating a reminder or calendar event, and much more. Apple added quick access buttons that are easy to learn, so you can use Command 1, 2, 3, and 4 to get to the different Spotlight functions. For things you use most often, you can set up your own quick keys.

The Phone app is now on the Mac, which could be useful depending on your daily habits. There was already an option to answer a call on the Mac or make a FaceTime audio or video call, but now you have access to the full suite of phone functions for placing calls from the Mac. You'll need a connected ‌iPhone‌ with Wi-Fi Calling, of course. The Phone app on Mac includes the new features like Hold Assist, Call Screening, and Live Translation that you'll also find on the ‌iPhone‌.

There's a new Games app that basically includes what's in the Games section of the Mac App Store and Apple Arcade. There's a 'Play Together' option for challenging friends to beat you at a specific goal in a single-player game, and there's a multiplayer section for finding games to play with friends. The Games app doesn't seem all that useful as of right now, but maybe it will get additional features to make it more appealing in the future.

The Journal app is also now available for Mac, which will be a welcome change for those who want to write journal entries using a Mac's keyboard.

Many of the most useful ‌iOS 26‌ features and changes are also available on the Mac, like personalized Messages backgrounds, Apple Intelligence support for organizing Reminders, new ChatGPT styles for Image Playground, and support for the updated Genmoji.

Have you tried macOS Tahoe yet? Let us know what you think of the update in the comments.

Read More About macOS Tahoe

We have a macOS Tahoe roundup that walks through all of the different features in the update.Related Roundup: macOS Tahoe 26Related Forum: macOS TahoeThis article, "macOS Tahoe Review: Spotlight Shines, Liquid Glass Disappoints" first appeared on MacRumors.comDiscuss this article in our forums