Apple has finally unleashed a brand new version of macOS, with a standardized version number and a fresh, glassy look. In addition to the obvious differences, macOS 26 Tahoe has a few extra settings you might want to tweak compared to the previous release.
While you might not want to change every one of these, it’s good to know they’re there.
Make Liquid Glass Opaque
Liquid Glass is Apple’s new design, and there’s not a lot you can do about it. If you’re not a big fan of the transparency and you’d like things to look a little more iOS 7, head to System Settings > Accessibility > Display and toggle “Reduce Transparency” on.
You’ll still get some light and color bleed, but things will look altogether more frosted. It can be easier to see what you’re doing, and it may speed up performance on older machines.
Customize Your Mac’s Theme
Apple has finally brought iOS-style customization options to the Mac, and you can access all of them by heading to System Settings > Appearance. There are a lot of things to tweak here, and some returning familiar options like being able to pick from Auto, Light, and Dark modes.
What was once known as the “Accent color” is now “Theme,” though not a lot has changed in terms of its implementation. What has changed is the new “Icon & Widget” which lets you choose between the default Liquid Glass look, its equivalent dark mode, a new clear mode, or a “tint everything” mode. Experiment with these to see what you prefer, but don’t forget how useful color can be when quickly navigating your dock.
The “Folder color” picker is another setting you might want to change if you’re going for a particular look, and you can adjust the precise color and its opacity against the Liquid Glass effect. You might also want to play around with the “Tint window background with wallpaper color” option, which causes color to bleed through into windows when enabled.
Customize Your Favorite Folders
Speaking of folders, you can now customize individual folders by right-clicking on them and choosing “Customize Folder.” When you tag a folder, its tag color will be displayed more prominently, but remember that this goes beyond simple customization and that it’s actually a powerful way to organize your files.
In addition, you can apply symbols to your folders (it’s the same set that Apple uses for apps like Reminders and Shortcuts) or go a step further and click the “Emoji” button to use any emoji instead.
macOS 26 features a new transparent menu bar at the top, which Apple reckons makes the desktop feel a bit less claustrophobic. If you disagree with this assessment, you can get the old-style separated menu bar back by heading to System Settings > Menu Bar and enabling the “Show menu bar background” toggle.
Disable Safari’s Color-Matching Tab Bar
Sticking with themes for a moment, Safari now matches the color of the tab bar (and the entire top of the window) with the tab you’re currently browsing. From what I’ve seen, this comes from the background color of the website you’re currently browsing, rather than the color at the top of the page.
It means that the window will change color as you change tabs, which not everyone will like. You can disable this for a more unified look that respects your theme via Safari > Settings > Tabs and disabling the “Show color in tab bar” check box.
Prevent iPhone Apps Showing Up Everywhere
Apple’s mission to further integrate macOS and iOS marches forward, and most of these changes are good if you happen to use both devices. One thing that Apple has done this year is better integrate iPhone apps into macOS using the iPhone Mirroring feature. This means that iPhone apps will show up in the new app launcher, which was formerly known as Launchpad.
You can disable this by invoking the Apps interface either using the old Launchpad gesture (pinch with four fingers) or using the Apps icon in the dock. From here, click the “…” ellipsis and disable “Show iPhone Apps” in the menu that appears.
While you’re at it, you might also want to prevent iPhone apps from showing up in Spotlight searches. Disable this using System Settings > Spotlight by unchecking the “iPhone Apps” toggle at the bottom of the window.
Turn on Clipboard History
Spotlight has a few other big features in macOS 26, the first of which we’ll cover here is clipboard history. You can now recall text, images, files, and anything else you can store in your clipboard using Spotlight directly. But the feature won’t work until you specifically turn it on (which is a privacy safeguard, since not everyone wants macOS recording everything they copy).
If you’re ok with this, you can turn it on by triggering Spotlight (Command+Spacebar) and then waiting a second for the four additional controls to appear. Next, click on “Clipboard,” where you’ll be invited to turn the feature on. Alternatively, you can use a third-party app like Maccy instead, which features arguably better keyboard controls.
Add Quick Keys in Spotlight
Quick Keys is another useful Spotlight feature that requires some setup. This allows you to quickly access apps and functions within the Spotlight interface by typing a short phrase. The feature is especially useful when combined with Spotlight’s new actions, which can greatly speed up multi-step actions like adding a reminder or setting a timer.
To get started, invoke Spotlight using the Command+Spacebar keyboard shortcut and then search for an item that you want to create a phrase for. Many third-party apps have compatible actions too, so have a good poke around to see what you can find. When you find a function, hold off on pressing Return to trigger it and instead take a look at the “Add Quick Keys” field that appears to the right when you hover it.
Click within this box and type your shortcut. For example, if you’re creating a new workflow in the Shortcuts app, you might type “ns” but for the Maps app’s “Get Travel Time” function, you might type “travel” instead. These choices are up to you, but you can reset all Quick Keys assignments if you want under System Settings > Spotlight.
Change the Lock Screen Clock
Just like on iOS, you can now change the way the clock appears on your lock screen. To do this, head to System Settings > Wallpaper and click on the Clock Appearance button. You can also decide whether it shows up when your screensaver is active, too.
Set Up Control Center Just the Way You Like It
Control Center is quite different in macOS 26, and you can now set it up exactly the way you want. There’s a lot more to this than simply toggling a few checkboxes, and you might want to take your time to get things looking just the way you like them.
To get started, click on the Control Center button in the top-right corner of the screen and then hit the “Edit Controls” button. If you’ve used this feature in iOS, it will all look a bit familiar. Click and drag things from the main menu into place, drag existing items around to move them, or remove things you don’t find useful.
Click the “+” plus icon in the menu bar to create another area in which you can put controls. Once you’re done, you’ll be able to invoke this second Control Center separately. You can also drag and drop icons into the menu bar directly, and remove things you don’t want to see (except for Control Center itself and the clock).
