Alongside the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, macOS Tahoe 26.1 is rolling out right now. Here’s what’s new.
Here’s what’s new on macOS Tahoe 26.1
Following a few weeks of developer and public betas, macOS Tahoe 26.1 is rolling out right now, and it brings a couple of small user-facing features, as well as groundwork preparation for upcoming AI enhancements.
First, Apple has been working to add MCP support to macOS, iPadOS, and iOS. In a nutshell, MCP is an open standard developed by Anthropic, which allows AI models to interact with user-facing platforms and tools. Despite back-end changes to bring MCP support, Apple hasn’t publicly commented on when or how that will be integrated.
macOS Tahoe 26.1 also brings a few under-the-hood improvements to Image Playground, laying the groundwork for support of third-party image generation models beyond ChatGPT. Like with the MCP support, Apple hasn’t publicly commented on the upcoming extended support, but based on the code, this may happen sooner rather than later.
As for user-facing features, the highlight of macOS Tahoe 26.1 is a new option to either keep the standard Liquid Glass appearance or switch to a Tinted mode, which slightly adjusts the visuals to improve contrast. On macOS, the visual changes are subtle, but they become more noticeable on iPadOS and iOS.
The update also introduces a slightly tweaked Macintosh HD icon, removing the ports and holes that made it to macOS Tahoe 26.
Finally, macOS Tahoe 26.1 updates the Apple TV app icon, introducing the first hints of Apple’s promised new, more vibrant design language alongside the Apple TV+ rebranding to simply Apple TV.
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