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The oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet, TidBITS brings you the Apple Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, and iPod news, reviews, tips, and commentary that matters. Join us each week for audio versions of award-winning coverage from industry stalwarts Adam Engst, Glenn Fleishman, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Michael Cohen, Rich Mogull, Jeff Carlson, Tonya Engst, and others.

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Nick Heer Peers Through Liquid Glass

TidBITS ·

2025/09/30

In a deep examination of Liquid Glass on the iPhone and Mac on his Pixel Envy blog, Nick Heer writes:I am spending an awful lot of words on the MacOS version because I think it is the least successful of the two Liquid Glass implementations I have used. MacOS still works a lot like MacOS. But it looks and feels like someone dictated, context-free, that it needed to reflect the redesign of iOS. The iOS implementation is more successful since Liquid Glass feels — and I mean feels — like something

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OS 26.0.1 Updates Fix Early Bugs

TidBITS ·

2025/09/29

Apple has released small updates across its operating system lineup to fix early bugs that came to light after the official launch of the OS 26 upgrades: macOS 26.0.1: Apple says that the update resolves the problem that prevented some users from upgrading to Tahoe on the M3 Ultra Mac Studio (see “macOS 26 Tahoe Won’t Install on the M3 Ultra Mac Studio,” 17 September 2025). iOS 26.0.1: This update fixes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth dropouts on the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17 Pro, suggesting an

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Predicting When We’ll See OS 26 Updates

TidBITS ·

2025/09/26

On his Eclectic Light Company blog, Howard Oakley has pored over the past two years of macOS releases to predict when we might see macOS 26 Tahoe updates—and, by extension, updates to Apple’s other operating systems, which typically come out on the same day. He suggests:If Tahoe follows the same pattern [as Sonoma and Sequoia], you can expect releases to occur on the following dates: 26.0 – 15 September 2025 26.1 – 27 October 2025 26.2 – 15 December 2025 26.3 – 26 January 2026 26.4 – 30 March

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Lunar 6.9.1

TidBITS ·

2025/09/26

Alin Panaitiu released version 6.9 of Lunar with support for macOS 26 Tahoe. The display brightness control utility also enabled Enhanced Contrast to function even when Overlay dimming is in use, and resolved an issue with the Paddle window not being clickable. A quick update to version 6.9.1 enhances the visibility of on-screen display (OSD) text on white backgrounds and corrects an incorrect brightness value in OSD when making fine adjustments. ($23 new, free update, 20.8 MB, release notes, macOS

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Default Folder X 6.2.1

TidBITS ·

2025/09/26

St. Clair Software has issued Default Folder X 6.2.1, a maintenance release that eliminates excessive CPU usage when viewing photos or other media in Open dialogs. The Open/Save dialog utility also corrects a problem with the search field in Open and Save dialogs prematurely hiding its menu, fixes a bug that prevented menu item previews from displaying enlarged images for some documents, and resolves several crashes. ($39.95 new, free update, TidBITS members save $10 on new copies and $5 on

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Tracking My iPhone Camera Usage With a Deep Dive into...

TidBITS ·

2025/09/25

I “downgraded” from the iPhone 16 Pro to the iPhone 17 this year because there was only one unique feature of the iPhone 17 Pro that interested me: the 4x/8x zoom courtesy of its Telephoto camera. In the end, I decided that it was more important for me to experience the plain iPhone 17 than to test Apple’s newest Telephoto camera, which the iPhone 17 lacks. I don’t think that I regularly use the iPhone 16 Pro’s 5x zoom, courtesy of its Telephoto camera and tetraprism lens, because I’m more

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Apple’s DMA Criticism Highlights Tech-Government...

TidBITS ·

2025/09/25

In a statement, Apple writes: It’s been more than a year since the Digital Markets Act was implemented. Over that time, it’s become clear that the DMA is leading to a worse experience for Apple users in the EU. It’s exposing them to new risks, and disrupting the simple, seamless way their Apple products work together. And as new technologies come out, our European users’ Apple products will only fall further behind. … That’s why we’re urging regulators to take a closer look at how the law is

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Zoom Workplace 6.6

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

Zoom Video Communications has issued Zoom Workplace 6.6 with a variety of additions, improvements, and bug fixes for the videoconferencing/communication app. The release introduces the Zoom Video Management add-on for creating, viewing, and managing organization-wide video content; adds an auto-framing feature that automatically keeps meeting participants centered in the camera view; simplifies meeting transfer from Zoom Workplace mobile app to Zoom Rooms; adds a Running Late notification option;

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Tinderbox 11.0

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

Eastgate Systems has released version 11 of its Tinderbox note-taking assistant, bringing AI integration and a new Information City visualization. Tinderbox can now interact with Claude Desktop and other AIs to examine Tinderbox documents and revise them. Turn on Enable AI Integration in the Tinderbox Menu; enable or disable AI integration in specific documents using a checkbox setting in Document Preferences > General. Tinderbox 11’s Information City visualization The upgraded Tinderbox

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Timing 2025.7

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

Daniel Gräfe has released Timing 2025.7 to add full support for macOS 26 Tahoe and its new Liquid Glass design. Now requiring macOS 11 Big Sur or later, the time and productivity tracking app now remembers recent searches in the toolbar search field (limited to those confirmed by pressing Enter), improves support for tracking URLs in a variety of browsers (including Dia, Station, Stack, and Shift), improves tracking of email addresses in Spark Mail, works around an issue where Timing would send two

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SpamSieve 3.2

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

C-Command Software has published SpamSieve 3.2 with further updates and optimizations for macOS 26 Tahoe. The update refreshes the app icon for Tahoe’s new Liquid Glass design language, changes icon badging behavior to show current training or filtering status as glyphs using the system standard red badge, updates the window toolbar appearance, and rejiggers the appearance of the Uncertain spam messages and Spam-catching strategy sliders. The spam-filtering utility improves the speed of

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SoundSource 5.8.7

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

Rogue Amoeba has issued SoundSource 5.8.7 with workarounds for bugs in macOS 26 Tahoe and an update to the ARK plug-in, which powers SoundSource’s audio handling. The audio control utility now stops processing audio in problematic configurations to avoid issues found in the initial release of Tahoe, and a new “Auto-adjust device sample rates to avoid Tahoe bugs” hidden setting has been added. Rogue Amoeba recommends leaving it on so SoundSource will automatically adjust sample rates to avoid lost

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OmniFocus 4.8.2

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

The Omni Group has released OmniFocus 4.8 with a refreshed interface that adopts the Liquid Glass design elements when running macOS 26 Tahoe. The task management app also adds support for new operating system features, including OmniFocus Shortcuts actions in Spotlight and the ability to leverage the new on-device Apple Intelligence Foundation Models for automating actions and generating content when running OmniFocus Pro with Tahoe on a supported Mac. The release also displays the Perspectives Bar

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Fantastical 4.1.2 and Cardhop 2.4

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

Flexibits has released Fantastical 4.1.2 and Cardhop 2.4, updating the calendar and contact apps’ user interfaces for Apple’s Liquid Glass design in macOS 26 Tahoe. Fantastical’s natural language parser now uses Apple Intelligence to recognize events and tasks from complex sentences (requires Tahoe and Apple Intelligence). It also adds an option to show or hide calendars quickly, resolves an issue where custom repeat or custom alert settings could appear off the screen, fixes a bug

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Mimestream 1.8.1

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

Mimestream has released version 1.8.1 of its Gmail-specific email app to improve compatibility with macOS 26 Tahoe. The Tahoe-targeted update ensures the Message list retains its new size between launches, fixes inconsistent vertical padding in the Format bar, fixes a bug where arrow key navigation skipped the message list, resolves an issue that caused default label backgrounds not to be visible, and fixes a visual issue for the +/- buttons in the settings bottom bar. ($49.99 annual subscription,

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Alfred 5.7

TidBITS ·

2025/09/22

Running with Crayons has released Alfred 5.7 with support for macOS 26 Tahoe. The keyboard-driven launcher overhauls the built-in macOS System Settings searching so that you no longer need to use Alfred’s workflow, adds a new macOS Settings proxy in Alfred Remote to launch settings correctly in macOS 13 Ventura and later, introduces an AppleScript option to reveal and open the details of a workflow in Alfred’s Preferences, resolves an out-of-bounds issue in Music Mini Player that

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Support for FireWire Removed from macOS 26 Tahoe

TidBITS ·

2025/09/19

Early in the macOS 26 Tahoe beta cycle, reports emerged that Apple had removed support for FireWire, the once-ubiquitous peripheral connection technology that took over from SCSI around 1999 and powered high-speed Mac accessories until Thunderbolt 1 and USB 3.0 superseded it in 2011 and 2012. Also known by its technical standard name of IEEE 1394, FireWire operated first at 400 Mbps and later at 800 Mbps, much faster than SCSI’s paltry 40 Mbps but far behind USB 3.0’s 5 Gbps and Thunderbolt 1’s 10

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macOS 26 Tahoe Won’t Install on the M3 Ultra Mac Studio

TidBITS ·

2025/09/17

Thanks to our old friend Ken Gruberman, who wrote on TidBITS Talk in response to “When Should You Upgrade to Apple’s OS 26 Releases?” (15 September 2025):If you have an M3 Ultra Mac Studio, like me, the answer is NEVER. That’s because macOS 26 Tahoe WILL NOT INSTALL on these machines; you can’t update the existing system nor install it onto an external drive. Others are also reporting the issue on the Apple Support Community, so it’s not an isolated problem. While some Apple support reps may not

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macOS 26 Tahoe Pushes FileVault Use

TidBITS ·

2025/09/17

In his review of macOS 26 Tahoe at Ars Technica, Andrew Cunningham writes: One other tweak to the install process is the default behavior for Apple’s FileVault disk encryption. If you sign in to an Apple account as part of setting up macOS, FileVault now turns on automatically, and also automatically uses your Apple Account for recovery in the event something goes wrong. … But if you decline to sign in with an Apple Account during setup, just creating a local account, the macOS installer

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Apple Updates Older Operating Systems with OS 26...

TidBITS ·

2025/09/16

Along with the various OS 26 releases that appeared yesterday, Apple rolled out a series of updates to older versions of its operating systems and Safari to integrate the applicable security fixes and catch up with the zero-day exploit from last month. The updates include: macOS Sequoia 15.7: Includes fixes for 34 vulnerabilities, all of which are also present in macOS 26 Tahoe. Apple says it also “introduces 8 new emojis, the ability to create Memory movies in Photos with Apple Intelligence, a

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