macOS 26.2 Tahoe Released - What's New?

What's up, guys? My name is Brandon and today Apple released Mac OS Tahoe 26.2 and it comes with several new features, changes, and bug fixes. So, in this video, I'll be covering everything new

in the update, including all of those new features, the performance, the battery life, and of course, if you should update or not. All right, so now what's new here in Mac OS Tahoe 26.2?

And the first feature is a big one. It's

one of my favorite features that we've seen come to Mac OS in quite some time and it's called Edgite. So if you're in a video call, like a video conferencing call like a Zoom, a Google Meet, a

FaceTime, or even if you're recording a video of yourself using QuickTime, anytime you're using the webcam on your MacBook, we have a brand new feature to add light to your video. So basically,

if you go up to the top right here and you click on the video icon where you have a FaceTime or a video call and you go to the tab right here, you can see that right here where we used to have, you know, center stage, portrait, studio

light, all of that, you can see that we have a brand new option now called edge light. And if you click on that, it will

light. And if you click on that, it will turn this on and it will add a ring light, a virtual ring light around your screen to light up your face in low light conditions. So, here's what my

light conditions. So, here's what my face looks like in a low light condition without the edge light feature turned on. And here's what it looks like with

on. And here's what it looks like with the edgelight feature enabled. Take a

look at how much it brightens up my face. And I noticed that the further

face. And I noticed that the further away from the screen you are, the more of an impact it has. And I assume that's because the screen being close to your face like already gives you some light, but if you move it back, there's not as

much light from the actual computer screen. But the edge light feature since

screen. But the edge light feature since it's so bright and it adds this virtual ring light, it will light up your face more, especially the further away from your screen you are. But there's even more because you can customize this. So

if you click on the arrow right here to the right in this drop down, you could see that we do have a slider for the intensity. So all the way down is going

intensity. So all the way down is going to be a really thin light around your screen. It's going to give you less

screen. It's going to give you less brightness, but you could also boost this all the way up to make that ring light around your screen thicker and emit more light for your face. And then

right below that, we have the temperature slider where you can go from a warm tone to a middle ground tone all the way to a more cool tone. So you

could adjust the tone and the intensity of that edge light. And then there's also an option down here to turn edge light on automatically or manually. So,

I personally have this set to automatically. That way, anytime my, you

automatically. That way, anytime my, you know, MacBook detects that the lighting conditions are lower, they're not optimal, it will automatically turn edge light on for me. But if you want that to

be on manually, if you always want that to be on no matter what, you can select manually. Now, keep in mind this feature

manually. Now, keep in mind this feature right here to turn on edge light automatically is not available for all Macs. This appears to be only for M4 and

Macs. This appears to be only for M4 and M5 Macs, but the edge light feature overall works on any M series Max. So

you can change the intensity and the temperature right here on all Macs. It's

just the automatic edge light on is limited to the newer Macs. Next up is a very small change in Mac OS Tahoe 26.2, but it makes a big difference, at least for me. And that is if you go to the

for me. And that is if you go to the lock screen of your MacBook and you turn the brightness or the volume up or down, you will now see the indicator up top.

Before there was no indicator. There is

no UI for your volume or your brightness from the lock screen. You kind of had to guess and just base it off of the sound or the brightness that you see, but now we have the HUD, the HUD right there

above the time on the lock screen. This

update also brings a big change to reminders. And this is the same as on

reminders. And this is the same as on iOS 26.2, but if you're like me and you use reminders predominantly on your Mac, this is going to be a nice new feature for you. So now if you go to add a new

for you. So now if you go to add a new reminder, we'll just say something like grab bananas. So we'll say grab bananas.

grab bananas. So we'll say grab bananas.

If we tap on the I right here to customize this, you know, reminder, you could see that we have a brand new option here for urgent. And it says mark this reminder as urgent to set an alarm.

So if you go ahead and enable that, it will say go to your device, your iPhone to allow alarms. So it says this right here to make sure you get them. Mark a

reminder as urgent and confirm that all alarms are allowed in settings app reminder. So once you have that set, go

reminder. So once you have that set, go ahead and click on okay. And now you could set a time that you want that, you know, obviously when you want that reminder to be done by and also when you want that alarm to go off to hold you

accountable, make sure that you completed that task. And if you did not complete the task, you will have the ability to snooze that alarm if you would like to. Or you can mark it as complete from the lock screen of your

iPhone. And keep in mind it will say

iPhone. And keep in mind it will say where the alarm happens. So it is going to be on your main device that you use or the main iPad that you use. As of

right now, you cannot change where that alarm, you know, goes. So that is one thing to keep in mind. And unfortunately

on Mac OS, there's no type of alarm that you get on Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. It all

happens on your phone or your iPad, whatever is listed right here. And you

can see that we have this little alarm clock glyph next to that reminder in our reminders widget here on the desktop.

And by the way, you will also see this splash screen the first time that you open up reminders to tell you about the new features that I just showed. So, it

says add an alarm. Mark your reminder as urgent to get an alarm when it's due on your iPhone or iPad. And also snooze.

You can snooze your alarm if you can't get to it right away. Now, here's a very niche, but a very interesting change in Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. So, with this update, Apple is introducing a new low latency

feature that lets you connect several Macs together using Thunderbolt 5. So,

you can basically turn a cluster of Macs into an AI supercomput. And this is going to allow four Mac studios, which can each run up to 512 gigs of unified

memory, to run the 1 trillion parameter KI2 thinking model far more efficiently than PCs with power hungry GPUs. And

this update will also give Apple's open- source MLX project full access to the neural accelerators on the M5 chip, which should dramatically speed up AI

inferencing. But keep in mind, this does

inferencing. But keep in mind, this does require Thunderbolt 5, which the M5 MacBook Pro, the 14-in, does not support Thunderbolt 5. It only has Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt 5. It only has Thunderbolt 4. So, it will not be able to take

4. So, it will not be able to take advantage of the Mac clustering capability. So, you will need one of the

capability. So, you will need one of the M4 Pro machines, the M4 Pro or the M4 Max, and of course, some of the future Macs that are coming as well. You will

need those to take advantage of these features. In the music application, we

features. In the music application, we have a new look for the mini player. So,

if you go into music and you go into window and you activate the mini player and you go into the Q view right here.

So, if you click on these three lines, it will take you to this view right here. So on the left is what this looked

here. So on the left is what this looked like in Mac OS 26.1 and over here on the right is what it looks like in Mac OS 26.2. So first off the album art up top

26.2. So first off the album art up top is much smaller now. So it's up there in the top left. Also take a look at the numbers right there for the song. So how

much has elapsed and how much is remaining. Those numbers are now below

remaining. Those numbers are now below the now playing scrubber. The scrubber

right here that also has the liquid glass grabber right there. And then also the autoplay and automix buttons look a little bit different. And even if you're not hovering over the music player right

here, it still shows all the buttons. So

the previous play, next, the shuffle, and the repeat buttons along with the time right there, the grabber, all of that is visible without having to be hovering over it like you had to before.

We also have a change to the podcast application. So, if you go to the now

application. So, if you go to the now playing screen of a podcast episode and you click right here on these three lines to show the queue and also the chapters, you will see up top we do have

chapters even if the podcast episode host did not add chapters to the description. And that's because you

description. And that's because you could see it says automatically created.

So, with Mac OS 26.2 along with iOS and iPad OS 26.2, you have autogenerated chapters for podcasts if they did not add it themselves. So you can see right here from the show notes of this podcast

there are no you know timestamps right there but it does show up automatically now thanks to Mac OS Tahoe 26.2 in the news application we have a new section over here on the sidebar. So we scroll

down you can see that we have a new section called sections and this will show you different categories that you can quickly access via this menu. So if

you want to go to sports quickly, if you want to see puzzles or politics or business or food, you can quickly access those news related articles from this new sections button. So it makes navigating throughout the news

application just a little bit easier to see exactly what you want. Now, here's a pretty big change with Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. So the big electron GPU bug

26.2. So the big electron GPU bug appears to have been fixed with Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. You could see up here at the

Tahoe 26.2. You could see up here at the top it says, "This issue appears to be fixed on the latest betas of Mac OS 26.2." So, if you're not aware, there

26.2." So, if you're not aware, there was an Electron bug that clashed with Mac OS Taho's graphics engine that caused apps like Slack, like Discord, Notion, and many more. As you can see

right here, Canva, Bruno, Bit Warden, Beeper, all of these had issues where they would really lag and just run very slow. But that appears to be fixed with

slow. But that appears to be fixed with Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. And you can see this GitHub right here does track this and it shows how many have been fixed and how

many are still left unfixed and it shows when it was last updated right here. So

that is great news. If you do run any of these applications, especially like notion, notion mail, Obsidian, all of those, they should run better now after updating to Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. And then

we also have some changes to Safari with Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. So of course when you install Mac OS Tahoe 26.2 do that will come with Safari version 26.2 and we have quite a few changes here. Now, it's

not a flashy update, but it does fix a ton of small things that will make the web feel smoother, faster, and less buggy when you're browsing. So, here's a pretty big one for privacy. So, we now

have added support for chips. So, you

can see that acronym right there.

Basically, what this does is it isolates thirdparty cookies so they can't track you across websites as easily as before.

HDR images will now render properly, including for backgrounds and SVGs. We

also have a ton of little bug fixes related to sticky elements, animations freezing the page, and also subtitles not scaling right. So, all of those have been fixed. You can see when I search

been fixed. You can see when I search for sticky, we have one, two, three things where, you know, sticky elements were just not working properly. It was

not, you know, showing up properly on websites. So, that appears to be fixed

websites. So, that appears to be fixed as well. Also, if we go ahead and search

as well. Also, if we go ahead and search for largest, we now have added support for largest contentful paint web performance metrics. And basically, this

performance metrics. And basically, this will help websites load faster over time. And this update also fixed a bug

time. And this update also fixed a bug where extremely long animation durations could freeze the page. So, that's been fixed if you had any type of freezing.

And also, any website with a lot of scrolling or transitions, those should feel smoother as well with this update.

Now, as far as the performance goes, aside from all the Safari fixes, Mac OS Tahoe 26.2 does appear to be smoother overall than what I experienced on 26.1

specifically with the animations and just all the UI throughout the OS. So,

I've noticed a difference there. Also, I

did run a Geekbench test and you can see what we scored right here. So before on version 26.1 we scored a 3684 single core 1598 on the multi-core and then

after updating we did score a 3764. So

that is higher on single core and then also higher on multiore because we scored a 15422 versus a 1598. So we do have a bump up in performance there at least according to the Geekbench test.

And of course, I did also mention that I have noticed a difference in terms of just overall UI, you know, fluidity and smoothness. Everything feels a bit

smoothness. Everything feels a bit better here on 26.2. And then as far as battery life goes on the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air, it seems to be the same for me. So, I am using this on my M4

for me. So, I am using this on my M4 MacBook Pro along with my M4 MacBook Air. So, it seems to be fine on both of

Air. So, it seems to be fine on both of those. I'm not really seeing any type of

those. I'm not really seeing any type of difference in battery life on either one of these devices after updating to 26.2.

So, I would say that unless you're having like a major issue with battery drain or anything like that, you're probably not going to see a big improvement in battery life, which isn't a bad thing. Battery life for me on 26

has been great. On Mac OS Tahoe, it's been great ever since the very first official release. So, not expecting

official release. So, not expecting anything to change much there. Again,

unless you were having battery drain bugs, then it could be fixed. So, with

all that being said, should you update to Mac OS Tahoe 26.2? And I would say that if you have an M1 Mac or newer, you absolutely should update so you can get access to the all-new Edge Light feature

and of course all the other changes with reminders, the bug fixes and Safari and all of that. So I would say it's definitely worth updating if you do have an M1 series Mac or newer. Now, as for

everybody else, it is also a pretty big update because you will get the reminders, features, and of course, security patches and bug fixes as well, which is why I always advise you to stay as upto-date as possible, especially on

your Mac since you will have sensitive information on there. So, it's always important for those security patches alone. So, for most people, I would say

alone. So, for most people, I would say absolutely it is worth it to go ahead and update, especially if you're already on Mac OS Tahoe right now. And then

finally, let's go ahead and talk about what to expect next from Apple. So, next

up is going to be Mac OS Tahoe 26.3 and I would expect that at some point in January. So, we should be seeing that

January. So, we should be seeing that most likely near the end of January. And

like I mentioned in my previous videos for iOS 26.2, I don't expect 26.3 to be a major update, especially for the Mac.

But the major update should be coming in March. So, we should be seeing Mac OS

March. So, we should be seeing Mac OS Tahoe 26.4. That's going to be a big

Tahoe 26.4. That's going to be a big update that's going to bring the new revamped Siri, Siri 2.0 0 as some people call it. We could be seeing that as

call it. We could be seeing that as early as, you know, March, maybe even before that in the betas. But as far as the official public release of 26.4, we should be expecting that sometime in

March. So, that is Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. I

March. So, that is Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. I

hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you

did, give it a thumbs up. Also, leave a comment down below with your thoughts on the Edge Light feature and if you can actually see yourself using this on a daily basis or at least a, you know, weekly basis when you have those video

calls. I see it being a very useful

calls. I see it being a very useful feature far into the future. So anyways,

let me know your thoughts down there below and of course make sure you do stay subscribed so you don't miss out on future Mac OS update videos just like this one. But anyways guys, thanks for

this one. But anyways guys, thanks for watching and I'll see you