Apple has just revealed macOS Tahoe 26 at WWDC 2025 and as well as taking the wraps off the next incarnation of its desktop OS – known as Tahoe – the company gave us the scoop on hardware compatibility.
In other words, we now know which Macs will be good to run macOS Tahoe, and which Apple laptops and computers will be left out in the cold, stuck on the current version which is macOS Sequioa.
And as you might expect, continuing the trend set last year, more of Apple’s Macs with Intel CPUs are going to be barred from entry with macOS Tahoe.
So, which Macs will be compatible with macOS 26? Here’s the full list for the various models of Apple’s computers:
- MacBook Air M1 or later
- MacBook Pro 16-inch 2019 or later
- MacBook Pro 2020 or later
- MacBook Pro 13-inch 2020 with four Thunderbolt 3 ports
- iMac 2020 or later
- Mac mini 2020 or later
- Mac Pro 2019 or later
- Mac Studio 2022 and later
Newer hardware that’s out of luck
As you might realize, this leaves some relatively new Mac hardware languishing in the land of macOS 15, never being able to make the leap to macOS 26.
Most notably, that includes a laptop from 2020 – the MacBook Air with an Intel CPU, as only the MacBook Air with M1 from that year is supported by macOS Tahoe.
While that’s the worst offender in terms of being prematurely shuffled off the support coil, those who own a MacBook Pro from 2018 are also left in the lurch, as are Mac mini 2018 owners for that matter.
All of those are still pretty recent machines – you could argue the iMac Pro 2017 is, as well – and none of them will be able to upgrade to macOS 26. Boo, hiss and so forth…
That doesn’t mean these Macs are suddenly rendered unusable, though. Even though Tahoe isn’t an option for them, Apple will continue to provide security updates for macOS 15 Sequoia going forward. So, it’ll remain a perfectly good operating system for as long as that happens (which should be a couple of years of updates, typically).
You just won’t get the new features that macOS 26 delivers (and you can read more about them here).
If your Mac is compatible and you want to try out macOS Tahoe 26 right now, then we show you how to download the macOS 26 Tahoe developer beta.
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