macOS Tahoe 26.3 Beta 2 - Bug fixes, changes, and more

[thadoggfather]

Probably too soon to say / might take a few days, but for the love of macOS and MacBooks is the brightness flicker bug resolved?

So sketchy since Tahoe.

 

[fisherking]

Copy some text from a Claude AI reply, paste it into iMessages and it crashes immediately 100% of time. Notified Apple about a dozen times.

i don't use claude ai, but... is anyone else reporting this?

if need be (as a temp workaround), paste your text into a pages (or textedit) doc first, then paste that text into messages; see if that works. can you paste text from other sources? (website, a document, etc)...

 

[PotentPeas]

You can paste without formatting too, maybe that would be better. Cmd+Shift+V

 

[318iphone]

Anyone notice if the screen flickering is completely gone?

 

[Adora]

I have seven icloud.com-accounts in Apple Mail. Three of them don't work anymore since the update or today. Just noticed it.

They are activated in System Settings - Internet Accounts and in Mail - Settings - Accounts.

I deactivated all three of them in System Setttings and activated them again, the switch is on now:

In Mail they are all still offline:

Removing the checkmark and enabling it again did also not help.

But after deactivating the first one in System Settings this appeared on top in the sidebar under my main account:

I know clicked on agree about 10 times:

But the red 1 isn't going away and is also in the Dock:

My main iCloud account is working normally. The other 6 are only activated for Mail and half of them also work like before. Very strange.

I also think I accepted new Terms and Conditions already after updating yesterday and it was gone.


Edit: One of those accounts asked for the password again when looking into all three again in System Settings. Now the Terms and Conditions notification is gone, but all three accounts still don't work in Mail.

 

[Adora]

Anyone notice if the screen flickering is completely gone?

What flickering do you mean exactly? Sometimes there is a short flickering somewhere. But I don't have an Apple display and also use Better Display, so I am not sure what is causing this.

 

[nekton1]

i don't use claude ai, but... is anyone else reporting this?

if need be (as a temp workaround), paste your text into a pages (or textedit) doc first, then paste that text into messages; see if that works. can you paste text from other sources? (website, a document, etc)...

I asked Claude AI a question and got this answer "Since today is Friday, January 16, 2026, there are 63 days until the spring equinox." If I paste that directly into iMessages, it crashes instantly, even before pressing Return. If I paste the answer first into TextEdit and then copy and paste that into iMessages, no problem. So there is something hidden in the Claude text answer that crashes iMessages.

 

[fisherking]

I asked Claude AI a question and got this answer "Since today is Friday, January 16, 2026, there are 63 days until the spring equinox." If I paste that directly into iMessages, it crashes instantly, even before pressing Return. If I paste the answer first into TextEdit and then copy and paste that into iMessages, no problem. So there is something hidden in the Claude text answer that crashes iMessages.

ok, but is anyone else experiencing this? and have you tried 'messages>edit>paste and match style'? that might work

 

[JoeSilver]

Until you discover that they have changed some obscure network parameter that is important for an application you rarely use and that now no longer works. Now that you notice it, you fill out the feedback form and pray that they fix it... This reasoning is fine in the very early beta versions, but later on, being clear and precise about the changes made could be much more effective.

I agree on that. I don't expect over-detailed changelogs such as in the open source projects (in which case you can even go and check the commits online). And surely many patches are not going to visibly affect the average users. However, "no new release notes for this software update" is completely useless.

Then they drop a 10GB OTA for the final release and you ask yourself: "how is it possible than nothing worthy a mention has been updated"?

 

[318iphone]

What flickering do you mean exactly? Sometimes there is a short flickering somewhere. But I don't have an Apple display and also use Better Display, so I am not sure what is causing this.

its hard to describe. I sometimes think it's when the light changes in the room and the display is trying to change its True Tone or Brightness. But I haven't really narrowed down an exact scenario to reproduce etc. It's a very subtle fast flicker. It is happening on my Apple Display.

 

[lilwashu]

My current hypothesis on the flicker: I have an M4 iMac and have turned the auto brightness off, and get the flicker seemingly when certain images are displayed on the screen (brightness increases then seems to decrease again when whatever image has triggered it is off-screen). When this happens changing screen brightness manually gives a similar flicker rather than the normal smooth change. A reboot will stop the manual brightness flicker for a while, and whatever has changed as a result probably makes the image-related brightness changes unnoticeable as I don't see it for a couple of days.

 

[mrdunderhead]

on beta 2 not impressed reinstalled regular mac os x tahoe non beta.

bugs:

machine got hot fast. fixed in beta 2 on certain mac silicon macs.

keyboard disconnect error still there

far from that nothing really major that changed

 

[mikecwest]

Strictly, there is no PM or AM appended to a 24-hour time display so the problem with 12:00 (no AM or PM) is that it means midday/noon. Since the last second before midnight is 23:59:59 and the first second after midnight is 00:00:01, should midnight be 24:00 or 00:00?
Got me but I'd bet there is an international rule.
And here it is:
In standard 24-hour clock notation, midnight is designated as 00:00.
However, there's a nuance: 24:00 can also be used to represent the end of a day, which is technically the same moment as 00:00 of the following day. So:

• 00:00 = midnight at the start of a day (e.g., 00:00 Monday means the very beginning of Monday)
• 24:00 = midnight at the end of a day (e.g., 24:00 Sunday means the end of Sunday, which is the same moment as 00:00 Monday)

In practice, 00:00 is far more commonly used and is the standard in most contexts, including digital clocks, timetables, and ISO 8601 (the international standard for date and time). The 24:00 notation is typically only seen in specialized contexts like transportation schedules where it's important to clarify that something happens at the end of a particular day rather than the beginning of the next.

Yeah, that is totally correct. I don't mine 00:00 AM, I am not getting 12:00 PM. I don't have it set to 24 hour time. I have hit set to PST (or is it PDT now?) but either PST and PDT show 00:00 PM.

11:58AM, 11:59AM, 00:00PM, 00:01PM....it not correct in any sense.

We are talking about noon, which is mid-day, I don't know anywhere that calls noon 00:00 PM. 00:00 AM is also not normal in 24 hour time..I am ok with that though, but 00:00 PM for noon is never right.. check out the highlighted files in the screen shots.

 

[nekton1]

Yeah, that is totally correct. I don't mine 00:00 AM, I am not getting 12:00 PM. I don't have it set to 24 hour time. I have hit set to PST (or is it PDT now?) but either PST and PDT show 00:00 PM.

11:58AM, 11:59AM, 00:00PM, 00:01PM....it not correct in any sense.

We are talking about noon, which is mid-day, I don't know anywhere that calls noon 00:00 PM. 00:00 AM is also not normal in 24 hour time..I am ok with that though, but 00:00 PM for noon is never right.. check out the highlighted files in the screen shots.

Looks like an Apple coder needs to learn more about time conventions. What does it display when you set to 24-hour clock with PDT? It should be 11:58, 11:59, 12:00, 12:01 ... which is much less confusing and is correct too!

 

[nekton1]

I asked Claude AI a question and got this answer "Since today is Friday, January 16, 2026, there are 63 days until the spring equinox." If I paste that directly into iMessages, it crashes instantly, even before pressing Return. If I paste the answer first into TextEdit and then copy and paste that into iMessages, no problem. So there is something hidden in the Claude text answer that crashes iMessages.

While the Paste and Match function gets around the problem, now iMessages has started crashing on EVERY message received from one person. Again, no idea why but the incoming message is received without causing a crash on iOS26.2 and looks OK with no unusual content or characters. Sent FBA to Apple each time this new crash happens.

 

[fisherking]

While the Paste and Match function gets around the problem, now iMessages has started crashing on EVERY message received from one person. Again, no idea why but the incoming message is received without causing a crash on iOS26.2 and looks OK with no unusual content or characters. Sent FBA to Apple each time this new crash happens.

this is on your iphone... but the problem when you paste is on your mac? just confused here...

 

[nekton1]

To clarify, there are no problems with iMessages receiving and sending on my iPhone running iOS 26.3. The problems (sending text pasted directly from Claude AI, and receiving message from one specific person) with iMessages are (were and still are) all on a Mac running MacOS26.2. In the hope that MacOS26.3 beta 2 might solve the problem, I just updated but both issues persist (cannot paste text direct from Claude AI response without causing iMessages crash and cannot receive message from one specific person without a crash).

 

[Wolf1701]

To clarify, there are no problems with iMessages receiving and sending on my iPhone running iOS 26.3. The problems (sending text pasted directly from Claude AI, and receiving message from one specific person) with iMessages are (were and still are) all on a Mac running MacOS26.2. In the hope that MacOS26.3 beta 2 might solve the problem, I just updated but both issues persist (cannot paste text direct from Claude AI response without causing iMessages crash and cannot receive message from one specific person without a crash).

There don't seem to be any hidden characters in the text that would justify the error with this specific input.

Maybe cleaning it with the amazing Onyx could help?

Titanium Software | Operating System Utilities for Mac - OnyX

OnyX is a multifunction utility that you can use to verify the startup disk and the structure of its system files, perform cleaning and computer maintenance tasks, configure some hidden parameters of many Apple applications, and more.

www.titanium-software.fr

I would test it in Tahoe, but for now I trust it so much that... I haven't linked it to iCloud yet

 

[PotentPeas]

(sending text pasted directly from Claude AI)

There don't seem to be any hidden characters in the text that would justify the error with this specific input.

It might not be characters causing the crash, it might be formatting information that got copied up as well. Apple supports formatting in iMessages now. Obviously it "shouldn't" be a problem to the point where it causes a crash, but you can bypass this by just pasting without formatting (Cmd+Shift+V).

 

[wswail]

I am having significant peripheral issues with 26.3. (1) Time Machine will not find the backup disk saying that it is not available (it is); (2) MS Word will not print to printer or create a PDF. Very frustrating. Thinking of installing the DEveloper beta just to see if it works there. But, then there is no going back, is there?

 

[flowrider]

^^^^What version of Word? I have no issues with MSWord.

Lou

 

[mikecwest]

Looks like an Apple coder needs to learn more about time conventions. What does it display when you set to 24-hour clock with PDT? It should be 11:58, 11:59, 12:00, 12:01 ... which is much less confusing and is correct too!

if I set to 24 Hour time, them 12:00 PM will be displayed at 12:00, 12:01, 12:02, etc...

I just don't really want to set it to 24-hour time...even if I did, it will still bother me, knowing it isnt really fixed.

Does yours show 12:00 PM in 12-hour, or does it show 00:00 PM like mine? Is something just messed up on my machine?

 

[SDAVE]

Where the heck is Beta 3

 

[Wolf1701]

Where the heck is Beta 3

Calm down, they have a lot to think about... let's hope for a decent release, given that there are rumors that they want to introduce new ‘features’ (bugs) in .4. 😂

 

[JoeSilver]

I would be happy if just Contacts synced between iOS and Mac OS. At the moment, at least for me, it doesn't.

EDIT: on 26.2. I'm not testing the betas