What’s your favourite version of macOS?
What macOS version are you using on your Mac?
Best Mac OS X version
Are you guys using the latest version of MacOS ?
How to get old versions of macOS?
What are macOS versions named after?
How does Apple choose Mac OS X and macOS names?
As you can see from the list above, with the exception of the first OS X beta, all versions of the Mac operating system from 2001 to 2012 were named after big cats, from Cheetah to Panther to the final release, Mountain Lion. But while the public-facing builds were named after big cats, internally, they were named after wines (aside from OS X 10.6 which had no codename).
Even after Apple switched public-facing code names to places in California back in 2013, it carried on naming them after wines internally until 2014. In 2015, Apple decided to change the theme of internal code names from wines to types of apples.
In 2016, Apple took the plunge to unify the branding of its operating systems by rebranding Mac OS X to macOS, which sits nicely alongside iOS, tvOS, and watchOS and paved the way for macOS 11, the successor to Mac OS X, which arrived twenty years after the first beta of Mac OS X.
In 2025, Apple decided to sync up the numbering system between all its operating systems, moving from macOS 14 to macOS 26 to better reflect the year. macOS 26 Tahoe lived most its lifetime as the most recent version in the year 2026 before being replaced with macOS 27 in September 2026.