macOS "Tahoe" 26.5 released: Is it time to upgrade from Sequoia? (poll)

[PotentPeas]

I'd like to try this poll after each minor macOS upgrade is released (X.1, X.2). I'm curious how community sentiment changes over time, and it could also help other users gauge the community consensus on whether upgrading at this time is a "good idea" or not.

The poll will remain open for 30 days. I'll post another one when macOS 26.6 drops. If Apple follows their typical release pattern, the release window for macOS 26.6 is late July. (I will not post a poll for 26.5.1. If there is such a release, it will most likely include just a small number of targeted fixes and won't change the overall picture by much.)

Past polls:
macOS "Tahoe": 26.1 (37.5% yes); 26.2 (36.1% yes); 26.3 (37.4% yes); 26.4 (43.0% yes)
(I'll put some kind of chart here when I have some more data.)

———

As someone who values stability and "things working right" more than access to the latest new features, I'm holding off on upgrading to Tahoe until I believe that it will be a reasonably smooth experience.

With the initial Tahoe release, reading comments and posts from the community, I saw a lot of repeatedly noted issues. For example: Dock randomly going to autohide. Network printers not working. Rounded corners on PDFs. Large "hit box" for the green maximize button at the top of windows. To me, it really seems like Apple pushed Tahoe out to hit a self-imposed deadline, and it was still somewhat "beta" quality at launch; they did not wait for it to be adequately polished. ...However, these kinds of things seem to have been largely cleaned up and are largely addressed in 26.1, 26.2, and 26.3.

I haven't been seeing as many consistent issues recently, so I am thinking that this OS may finally be solidifying. However, there has been a number of concerning reports of earlier Apple Silicon MacBook Pros being bricked when attempting to upgrade to 26.4 or 26.4.1 (recovery requires restoring 26.3 via DFU mode, and Apple support people haven't been consistently offering that option, usually opting for hardware replacements instead), and there have been issues with network filtering apps in both the 26.4 and 26.5 beta cycles (ironed out by release, but clearly Apple is still messing with stuff).

I am interested in your take, after using macOS Tahoe 26.5 for a bit. Did they make any improvements that meaningfully fix or improve any issues you were experiencing with prior 26.X releases? Should a "regular" user upgrade yet? Is it "safe"? Or is it still not worth it, because of the bugs and UI jank?

Vote in the poll, and comment if you like!

Thanks.

 

[M5RahuL]

Subb'd.. Interested in this as well!

 

[DankeBrutus]

I only played around with Tahoe in a VM so I haven't used it on real hardware yet. At this point I'm just sticking with Sequoia until I see macOS 27. For me my primary issue is usability. I haven't tried a Tahoe since 26.1 so I should whip up another VM but when I last used it I did not like the new Finder layout. I found Liquid Glass led to a lot of wasted space, just less usable surface area for similar sized windows between Sequoia and Tahoe. Also breaking column view, even if they've since fixed it, was unacceptable. Your released product should not break something so basic.

I've moved both my Macs to the Sequoia beta since those are now just security updates for the most part. Depending on how things look in June I'm either sticking with Sequoia until it is EOL or I'm updating in September/October.

 

[Antares23]

26.4.1 finally made me upgrade from Sequoia, that was two days ago, I upgraded to 26.5 and everything is fine. Tahoe is finally as smooth as Sequoia was, I have yet to test battery life tho

 

[PotentPeas]

I actually just upgraded myself after waiting for 8 months.

I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

I don't like some of the "wasted space" especially as it concerns the weird sidebar in things like Finder. But I have a 16" screen, and it is bearable. I'd be way more annoyed if I had a smaller screen, I am sure.

The window border radius does bother me, especially as it is inconsistent between apps. I run a lot of apps filling the entire desktop, so sometimes I can see the "corners" of apps behind my current one at the edges. This wasn't an issue prior to Tahoe, when all windows had the same border radius.

The rest of the liquid glass experience is … fine. I did set it to "Tinted" and turned on the menu bar background.

Took a battery hit after the upgrade, but that is to be expected as it is reindexing and such. Will see if battery life is "normal" while doing regular work over the next few days.

There are some weird animation glitches. For instance, if I lock the system (Ctrl+Cmd+Q), it does a weird flicker as it transitions to the lock screen. I wonder if this will fix itself once the system gets done with the just-upgraded-background-work or not.

A couple of minor niggles, like the Messages app was only showing me phone numbers instead of contact names after the upgrade, until I rebooted again. Several of my apps seemed to have the "remembered" window position slightly off when opening them for the first time.

We'll see how I feel after using it for a few days…

 

[TheGeneralist]

I don't think it makes any sense to ask this question right now.
26.5 has just been released, absolutely no one knows anything about its stability.
In a few days, this will not really have gotten any better.

In about two weeks (at the earliest!), the community will have satisfactory knowledge about the stability of 26.5.
By then, this thread will likely have been long forgotten.

 

[SDAVE]

M class Mac: Yes
Intel Mac: No

 

[SDAVE]

I don't think it makes any sense to ask this question right now.
26.5 has just been released, absolutely no one knows anything about its stability.
In a few days, this will not really have gotten any better.

In about two weeks (at the earliest!), the community will have satisfactory knowledge about the stability of 26.5.
By then, this thread will likely have been long forgotten.

.5 has been in beta for a month so people know if its good or not...

 

[smithdr]

Apple has released 26.5. Let’s see if display calibration works with on a M1Max MBP16 using the MacOS display calibration. Nope. You release 26.4 and calibration works. Then Apple breaks it with 26.4.1. Apple then releases 26.5, a semi-major update, and this calibrate routine still does not work. Gee Apple. Do you not validate your software before releasing it to the public?

 

[Miles Fu]

my reply under this

Still on Sequoia? Why waiting to switch to Tahoe?

I just updated Sequoia to 15.7.5 on my M3 iMac. I've already updated to Liquid Glass on my M2 iPad Air 13 and iPhone 14, and on those devices I haven't seen a huge difference. But from what I've seen on MacBooks and iMacs I've setup for customers Tahoe with Liquid Glass looks really different...

forums.macrumors.com

on my base model M4 Mac mini. I downgraded from macOS 26.4 back to 15.7.5, and with the fan speed staying the same (~1000 RPM), system temperatures dropped by around 10°C. Overall responsiveness also feels noticeably smoother on 15.7.5 .

This is the reason I still running Sequoia

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Apple has released 26.5. Let’s see if display calibration works with on a M1Max MBP16 using the MacOS display calibration. Nope. You release 26.4 and calibration works. Then Apple breaks it with 26.4.1. Apple then releases 26.5, a semi-major update, and this calibrate routine still does not work. Gee Apple. Do you not validate your software before releasing it to the public?

No, Apple does not validate before release to the public. Apple treats us like forced beta testers, in particular if one buys new hardware.

 

[flowrider]

"macOS "Tahoe" 26.5 released: Is it time to upgrade from Sequoia?"​

Well, you might as well - OS27 will be announced on June 8 along with the developer beta. I've been running the developer betas of Tahoe since the first one last June. I've watched it develop and am happy with it. But, it's up to you

Lou

 

[psingh01]

Upgraded to 26.4 on an intel mac and it has been fine for me. I’m sure 26.5 will be the same.

 

[Steph.fr]

What's the point at this stage? We might as well wait for "27. Snow Tahoe," or maybe "28. Frozen Tahoe," and finally "29. Blizzard Tahoe."

I wonder if Airbnb demand around that cursed lake has dropped since this Apple OS update? 🤔


Notice to moderators: Please consider that this post contains no political undertones; I have no grievance against the governors of California or Nevada.

 

[SilentSpecter]

No, as I've posted here:

macOS 27: Two More Changes Leaked Ahead of WWDC Next Month

I just do not and cannot... for the life of me... understand how in the hell of any universe real or imagined, is this better: Than this: It's like, really. Look 👀 at 👏 it 👏. Why those bubbles? Why those shadows? Why? Why? I mean... why? I have a feeling I'll be stuck with Sequoia for a...

forums.macrumors.com

Things are faaar away from being "fixed". And those things will not be fixed, since the people behind all of those abominations do not see them as a problem.

Do you guys remember when we used to say Apple Design is great, and when they did something, well, there was a reason for that particular change? Not anymore. Now, they don't know why they do what they do. They kinda ruined the HIG, because... reasons, and started to change things just for the sake of a change. It is sad.

 

[thebart]

26.5 does not seem to be better or worse than 26.2 .3 .4 for me. YMMV hugely

 

[bogdanw]

@PotentPeas My vote for Tahoe 26.6 - 26.9: No 🙂

 

[nmt1900]

It looks like 26.5 has decreased system overhead to a point where it is uncomfortable to rest palms on the machine because it is significantly colder than before update.

I had Safari crashing (since updating to 26.5) but resetting feature flags and webkit internal feature settings cured that problem.

 

[jdw13]

Yes, I agree with nmt1900. It seems to be a good time to upgrade, at least for me. Currently in South America on M1 Mac mini with only 8GB / 256 GB SSD, two external SSDs, Dell external disk, Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and all seems well, stable, and performance is not an issue even with moderate use of Xcode 26.5. Using MacPorts to compile and use UNIX tools such as emacs is without any issues at least for me. My major difficulties with earlier versions of Tahoe for me was the unfortunate decision of Apple do the 'Liquid Glass' and that was horrid if I configured external disk over HDMI to use UHD. Performance is not an issue with as I do not do video editing, and the only AI use has been with python libraries from python programs; I have Siri and Apple Intelligence configured OFF.

 

[throAU]

Things were fairly reasonable eon 26.0, 26.2 certainly fixed most of the little niggles.

I've only run it on my m4 max though for what it's worth.

 

[JulianL]

I'm a very new MacOS user, I moved from Windows after 35 years of using that on my desktop PC (most recently Windows 11) to MacOS when my first ever Mac hardware (M5 MacBook Pro) arrived 15 days ago, initially with 26.4 installed but I installed the 26.5 update as soon as it was released so that is what I'm running now.

While I'm blown away by the speed and smoothness of the system - I suspect a combination of the spectacularly good hardware specs and probably some very competent kernel engineers who do actually live up to Apple's messaging that tight integration of Apple-controlled software with a reasonably well-constrained set of Apple-controlled hardware yields good results - I am surprised and disappointed by some other aspects of Tahoe. One thing in particular bugs me a lot and I'm wondering if it is an artefact of Liquid Glass or if it was an issue before that. The issue that is bugging me is the handling of the mouse pointer, something that I would have thought would be a very basic thing to get right.

What I see is that, even in core Apple apps such as Mail or Safari (I haven't actually installed a single third-party app yet and am copying data/bookmarks/etc ver manually rather than using the migration tool so I'm running a very clean system), if I'm doing something in the main app display area and then go up to the app's toolbar to click a button, maybe to archive an email in the Apple Mail app, the mouse pointer often (very often - maybe 50% of the time) stays stuck on whatever state it was in when it was within the main Mail display area so I often find myself navigating the app's toolbar not with a mouse arrow but with the mouse pointer still as a grab-hand or a tall thin text edit cursor. Clicking the toolbar button still does what's expected but it's annoying clicking a button with a big grab-hand or a text editing cursor rather than an arrow pointer and it's something I never encountered in any Microsoft Windows release that I can remember so I'm rather surprised and disappointed to see such sloppy glitches in MacOS.

Is this something that others have noticed and if so is it a new glitch with Tahoe/Liquid-Glass or was it always like this? I'm struggling to think it might be something specific to my setup because my MacBook was set up as new so no migration tool has had a chance to interfere with anything and as I mentioned above I haven't installed a single third-party app yet so it's pretty much a factory-fresh machine still.

 

[CasualFanboy]

It looks like 26.5 has decreased system overhead to a point where it is uncomfortable to rest palms on the machine because it is significantly colder than before update.

You mean the OS has been more optimized and uses fewer resources? Or the opposite?

 

[QuantumZero]

I'm a very new MacOS user, I moved from Windows after 35 years of using that on my desktop PC (most recently Windows 11) to MacOS when my first ever Mac hardware (M5 MacBook Pro) arrived 15 days ago, initially with 26.4 installed but I installed the 26.5 update as soon as it was released so that is what I'm running now.

While I'm blown away by the speed and smoothness of the system - I suspect a combination of the spectacularly good hardware specs and probably some very competent kernel engineers who do actually live up to Apple's messaging that tight integration of Apple-controlled software with a reasonably well-constrained set of Apple-controlled hardware yields good results - I am surprised and disappointed by some other aspects of Tahoe. One thing in particular bugs me a lot and I'm wondering if it is an artefact of Liquid Glass or if it was an issue before that. The issue that is bugging me is the handling of the mouse pointer, something that I would have thought would be a very basic thing to get right.

What I see is that, even in core Apple apps such as Mail or Safari (I haven't actually installed a single third-party app yet and am copying data/bookmarks/etc ver manually rather than using the migration tool so I'm running a very clean system), if I'm doing something in the main app display area and then go up to the app's toolbar to click a button, maybe to archive an email in the Apple Mail app, the mouse pointer often (very often - maybe 50% of the time) stays stuck on whatever state it was in when it was within the main Mail display area so I often find myself navigating the app's toolbar not with a mouse arrow but with the mouse pointer still as a grab-hand or a tall thin text edit cursor. Clicking the toolbar button still does what's expected but it's annoying clicking a button with a big grab-hand or a text editing cursor rather than an arrow pointer and it's something I never encountered in any Microsoft Windows release that I can remember so I'm rather surprised and disappointed to see such sloppy glitches in MacOS.

Is this something that others have noticed and if so is it a new glitch with Tahoe/Liquid-Glass or was it always like this? I'm struggling to think it might be something specific to my setup because my MacBook was set up as new so no migration tool has had a chance to interfere with anything and as I mentioned above I haven't installed a single third-party app yet so it's pretty much a factory-fresh machine still.

The mouse pointer issue happens to me as well on my Air M4, currently on latest Sequoia version, and has been doing so since the first day of usage. I've noticed MacOS has a couple of these small bugs here and there, but luckily they don't impact functionality.

 

[turbineseaplane]

If I had the ability to run Sequoia on my M5, I would, as I'm still getting odd behavior in Finder and some bugs like HDMI audio out getting wonky and requiring a reboot after 24 hours and sleep/wake cycles.

Having said that, Tahoe & macOS LG implementation is getting less and less offensive.
Apple is clearly "working on it".

I still really wish I had the ability to dial back the window corner rounding and excessive padding.

It's incredible how much usable workspace it steals, for no actual tangible benefit.
Very frustrating

 

[August West]

I've been toying with the idea of upgrading my M1 MBA. Since it is only my sofa machine that I use in the evenings to surf, YT, text, email etc. there is little to be lost if I don't like Tahoe. TM backup is up to date and I have the Sequoia installer so I can always revert. Tried it when it was initially released and hated it but figured it might be time to give it another try. I don't really like running outdated versions. I'll probably wait for macOS 27 to update my mini though.