is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
Apple’s new version of macOS, Tahoe 26, launches today for all compatible Macs. I’ve already shared many feelings about Liquid Glass in my look at the developer and public betas, and my opinion on the new, polarizing UI remains lukewarm. But after using Tahoe through the beta periods to full release, I can confidently say that there are some decent improvements to macOS worth diving further into.
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1 / 2 A brief walkthrough of Spotlight’s UI behavior: using the keyboard shortcuts, using the arrow keys, and hovering over with the mouse to show the icons.
Command + Spacebar was always a helpful shortcut for calling up Spotlight and launching an app with just the keyboard. Now, you can do much more with it, and if you train up the muscle memory it could be one of the most helpful new features of macOS Tahoe. You can feel a little power user-y without being overwhelmed by a million controls and options found in third-party apps like Raycast.
When summoning Spotlight in Tahoe, you have easy access to applications, recent files, customizable / actionable shortcuts, and a clipboard history via just the keyboard (you can click stuff too, but bouncing between keyboard and mouse slows you down). In addition to jumping between those four functions with Command and numbers one through four, you can rotate between them one at a time with the arrow keys. This gives you a more helpful graphical guide, because it shows the four icons as you navigate instead of having to remember which number key corresponds to each function. Otherwise, the icons are hidden and require hovering your mouse over the Spotlight search bar to see them bubble out — all liquid-like. Cute animation, Apple, but it’d be better to not tuck away those icons.
Clipboard history is oh-so-handy
Clipboard history houses recently copied texts, screenshots, and files.
One of the new Spotlight functions is one of my favorite features of Tahoe. A clipboard history is incredibly useful for just about anyone. I’m sure we’ve all had moments where we copied text or a link and forgot to paste it before copying something else. Clipboard history helps with that by temporarily storing up to eight hours of copied text, files, and even screenshots (including screenshots ones didn’t save to a file). It makes those items easy to copy again and paste, and it also helps in situations where you have multiple fields to copy over in batches.
The only downside of a clipboard history are the slight security and privacy risks if you use a shared computer and accounts. It could reveal sensitive information or gossip to others in your household — that is, if you copied anything incriminating and they know how to access the clipboard history. (Apple maintains an eight-hour time limit on the clipboard history and doesn’t put copied passwords into it, but if it’s copied from plain text, then it’s fair game.)
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