macOS Tahoe 26 Beta 2 is Out! - What's New?

Hi everyone. Aaron here for Zollotech and Apple released macOS Tahoe 26 beta 2. MacOS 26 beta 2 is available to developers and the macOS 26 public beta one should be out in early July. Now this came in at 4.13 gigabytes on my M4 MacBook Air that we're using here and was released alongside a lot of other updates with iOS 26 beta 2, iPadOS 26 beta 2, updates for tvOS and HomePodOS 26 beta 2, along with VisionOS 26 beta 2. Now this update has some changes and updates in it, but first let's take a look at the build number and then we'll talk about what's new. If we go into system settings, then go to about within about, you'll see that it now says macOS Tahoe right here. We have a new icon where before it just said macOS, we have a new little Tahoe icon and it says version 26 beta and the build number is 25A-5295E. So that's the current build and this one seems to be a lot better than beta one. The first thing is the menus seem to be a little bit more rounded right here. You can see the overall curvature is a little different and you'll find this throughout, whether it's Safari or finder, you can see here, everything's just a little bit more rounded. The same is true for the little pop out menus. They seem to have changed some of the curve here and also they've reduced some of the liquid glass effects similar to what they did on iOS. So you can see this here where it's translucent, but just barely. So some slight updates there. If we go into the control center that hasn't changed a whole lot as far as its translucency, but you can see sound and display and everything else pretty familiar at this point. If we go into an app such as music, you can also see that they've changed the translucency a little bit at the bottom bar here. So it looks less like liquid glass. You can see there. So if we expand this out, you'll see things behind it here, but it's not quite like it was before. So it doesn't bubble as much. They'll probably change this a little bit more as we get closer to the final release and you'll see all of a sudden it got a little choppy. So it's not without its issues, but it's pretty good overall. If we go ahead and close that, we'll go into the finder icon down here at the left and you'll see that they've reverted it back to where the light part of the face is on the right. If we go down to system settings and then we go to appearance under appearance, we have of course, auto light and dark mode. We're in light mode, but the icons are in dark mode. If I switch them back to default, you'll see that the finder icon is all new. So they've updated that as well. And many of these icons have been changed such as final cut pro where it's now nested within the overall design of the new liquid glass icons. I would imagine apple will update these in the future to sort of fill in everything here now that they own pixelmator pro and final cut pro we'll probably see those icons revised as we get closer to the final release or once they release the apps after this is released to the public. Also, if we go to another app, the color picker here. So if we go to color, you'll see the color picker icon and everything else has been updated. Also, if we go to migration assistant, the icon has been completely updated. It looks completely different from what it does currently. You can see what it looks like on the side here. And so it's just an updated icon this time around and apple continues to change design here and there. Now there's also a change to the menu bar and maybe you haven't noticed because it looks so familiar, but you'll see, we now have the border here on the menu bar. This is actually off by default, but if you go into your system settings and go to menu bar, you'll see, we now have an option to show the menu bar background. If we turn it off, it's what we had before. I actually like it with it turned off, but for those that actually want borders, you can just re enable this if you'd like. So that's a new option that they've added back in. Also, if we go into the mail app, there's a slight update within mail. You'll see here, if we slide over on one of these, the icon expands and it's fluid now. Before it was a little bit jumpy. This overall animation isn't really new from beta one, but you can see it looks a little bit nicer if we take action on the email and how things just pop in definitely smoother with this particular beta. They've fixed quite a bit of this. Another thing that's been updated a little bit is the overall look of the folders. If we go into movies, you'll see the folders have been updated slightly. The gradient is slightly different. It's not a huge change, but it is an update. And you'll see, I have one here that I colored blue and put a little icon on the front. So it's changed a little bit small visual changes throughout as far as bugs and bugs fixes. Well, apple did fix the Mac virtual display working in vision pro. That seems to work just fine now, very fluid and fast. And there's also a lot of release notes. If we go into safari and within safari, if we go to the public facing release notes, apple has really updated quite a few things here. We're not only do we have some that are carried over from beta one with known issues, but there's also a lot of resolved issues. For example, things in image playground and Genmoji have been updated. There's also known issues that still remain of course throughout, but you'll see resolved issues with background assets. There's also new features with catalyst. Finder has a resolved issue where finder does not display dark mode app icons or tinted folder colors. When the folder color setting and system settings appearance is set to automatic. So again, small changes as they continue to refine this. Now that we're getting into beta two and moving into hopefully the public beta in a couple of weeks. So again, as we scroll down, you'll see there's hundreds of updates here. And if you do have issues, make sure you check this first, see if it's a known issue. If it is, they're already working on it. And if it's not, make sure you report feedback in the feedback app. So just go into your apps here and report feedback in the feedback assistant. So lots of great things in this update. Now, as far as overall performance, I've been using this for about a day or so, and it definitely feels more fluid and fast. I've had far less issues. I've had zero crashes so far and the overall experience so far is smooth. Sometimes, for example, this magnification effect on the dock would not work at all. And the overall experience seems to be nice and fast. Now, if we go into maybe apps here, we click back, click again. You'll see the animation super smooth to get to our clipboard or our applications or files. Everything seems to be working much, much better. So you can see that here. So if we go back, click again, everything seems to be refined quite a bit. And of course, I'm sure it will get much better as time goes on and we get closer to the final release. As far as battery life, if you're wondering what it's like, if maybe you're on a MacBook, this is a current MacBook M4 MacBook Air. You'll see here battery health since it's new should be at 100%, but again, everything's nice and fast and fluid. As we go into it battery life, I would say at this point, it's not really that relevant as it is an early beta. Just keep in mind that it could affect it, but overall it seems to be decent. It's good in standby mode. I left this for about a week or so without plugging it in and it drained down maybe 10%. It's doing pretty well. As far as that goes, if you're wondering if you should install Mac OS 26 Tahoe beta two, I would say if you're wondering about that, if it's on a production machine or anything that you get serious work done on, I would probably avoid it at this point. If you have an extra older Mac to try it out on, or maybe one that you don't use as much for production, then you can try it. But generally I would wait for the public beta and you can see that by going to beta.apple.com. You can try it out here coming soon, sign up for it, and you can try all the latest ones once they're available for public. So that's something I would wait for. If you're wondering if you're going to have issues as they are betas, there is a feedback app and you should report those issues. Of course. Now, as far as the next release, well, if we take a look at the calendar here, now, if we go into the calendar, we'll take a look here. And since we had the beta release yesterday with macOS Tahoe beta two, I would expect usually the first three to four betas releasing every two weeks. Based off of that, we could see macOS Tahoe 26 beta three release on the 7th, along with iOS 26 beta three. And if there's no issues, we could see macOS 26 public beta one that week. So we don't have exact dates from Apple yet, but that seems likely. Of course, we have other betas going on with iOS 18.6 betas. I would expect the macOS 15.6 beta to release on the 30th with beta two, and then maybe staggered every week throughout until it's public release. So we'll probably get a release of that in July. Again, we don't have specific dates. And so that's everything so far with macOS 26 Tahoe beta two. Let me know if you've found anything else that I haven't mentioned in the comments below. And of course, if I find anything major, I'll let you know in the followup video on the weekend. Of course, if you'd like to get your hands on this wallpaper, I'll link it in the description like I normally do. And if you haven't subscribed already, please subscribe. And if you enjoyed the video, please give it a like as always. Thanks for watching. This is Aaron. I'll see you next time.