macOS 26 Tahoe Will Be the Last Release to Support Intel-Based Macs

Apple released the first developer beta of macOS 26 Tahoe yesterday, and the upcoming release will be the last version of macOS to support a small selection of Intel-based Macs. macOS 27, which will be coming next year, will only support Apple Silicon Macs released in 2020 and later.

Overall, the support list for macOS 26 Tahoe includes the Intel-based 16-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Pro released in 2019, as well as the 13-inch MacBook Pro and iMac with Intel chips released in 2020. All Intel-based MacBook Air and Mac mini models are not supported, however.

macOS 26 Tahoe will receive security updates until fall 2028, which is when macOS 28 will be released. This year, Apple is shifting to a year-based system for its OSes, which is why we’re about to jump from macOS 15 to macOS 26. The company is following the same logic for iOS 26, iPadOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and visionOS 26, which are also available as developer betas before their public release later this fall.

As reported by Ars Technica, Apple is also planning to scale down its Rosetta 2 translation layer for running apps written for Intel-based Macs on Apple Silicon models. Rosetta 2 will continue to work as it does today on macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27, but starting with macOS 28, it will only support a subset of apps, including older games that depend on Intel-specific libraries to run on Apple Silicon Macs. This may prompt developers who have been slow to release native versions of their apps for Apple Silicon to finally do so.