TeXShop

Running Current TeXShop on macOS 26, Tahoe

The current version of TeXShop, version 5.56, runs fine on Tahoe. It does not use Liquid Glass. The only change when this version runs on Tahoe is its icon, which now lives in the "rectangular jail" provided by Tahoe for old icons that were not originally rectangular. The MacTeX install package and programs like TeX Live Utility, LaTeXiT, and BibDesk also work fine and reside in a similar jail. Below are their original icons as seen in Sequoia

and below are these icons in the Tahoe jail.

Originally Tahoe provided a much darker background that was quite unpleasant, so we created a new icon for TeXShop using a program named Icon Composer for Tahoe. Below is that icon.

But as you can see, the new version of icons in "Tahoe jail" is almost exactly the icon we created. Therefore we no longer provide a new icon in TeXShop 5.56. Instead TeXShop uses the old round icon on Sequoia and below, and it uses the new "jailed icon" on Tahoe.

Upgrading TeXShop for Liquid Glass on Tahoe

It is easy to upgrade TeXShop so it uses Liquid Glass, and we provide an upgraded version of 5.56 at the bottom of this page. Apple created a new version of XCode for Tahoe, XCode 26. When the source code for TeXShop is compiled with XCode 26, Liquid Glass features are automatically added. The changes do not modify the TeXShop source code.

Previous versions of TeXShop were compiled on the latest version of macOS but ran on earlier systems as well. That could also have been done with TeXShop 5.56 because the Tahoe version with Liquid Glass also runs on earlier systems. When the code is run on an earlier system, Liquid Glass is missing and the program reverts to its older behavior.

But we did not compile version 5.56 on Tahoe because there is a bug in the release version of Liquid Glass. This bug has been reported to Apple and we hope that a new release later this year will fix it. The bug only occurs in "Single Window mode", so if you always use multiple windows with TeXShop, you can relax. The bug is visible in the display shown below in single window mode. Notice that there is a blank area at the top of both sides, white on the left and gray on the right. Both areas are slightly transparent, and scrolling the source on the left or output on the right shows that both scroll underneath the blank areas. If this single window is split back into separate windows, both inherit the blank areas. The blank areas do not corrupt the source, and we suspect that the program can still be used with this flaw, but it is painful. We recommend that if you use single window mode, you skip the Liquid Glass version of TeXShop for now.

TeXShop Settings and Liquid Glass

There is one additional Tahoe problem. The TeXShop Preferences dialog, called TeXShop Settings in recent times, is localized for 12 different languages and has a large number of connections from items in the dialog to pieces of source code. When Liquid Glass is applied to this dialog, several items move slightly, particularly in the Themes section with its large selection of color boxes. In the version of TeXShop for Liquid Glass available below, these settings items were moved back into place before compiling so they were aligned correctly; this was tedious because it had to be done for each localization. But eventually Settings looks fine in Liquid Glass.

But when the Tahoe version of TeXShop is opened in Sequoia and Liquid Glass is not available, the locations of items in Settings are no longer modified by Liquid Glass and look misaligned. The items still work in this case. Note that in the release version of TeXShop compiled on Sequoia, all items are correctly aligned on all systems including Tahoe.

The ultimate cause of the problem is that I incorrectly placed several items in Preferences years ago. To permanently fix this problem, I need to completely rewrite the Interface File for Preferences. But doing this could lead to connection errors which I might not notice, particularly in foreign languages. So the rewrite will be postponed for several months or more.

Until the Settings dialog is fixed, we recommend using the Liquid Glass version of TeXShop on Tahoe and the current older version on Sequoia and below.

Obtaining TeXShop with Liquid Glass

Here are links to the software on Tahoe:

TeXShop Version 5.56 for Tahoe. Supports Liquid Glass for Intel and Arm.
Source code. For Tahoe version.

We will maintain both a Sequoia version and a Tahoe version of TeXShop for the immediate future. When new features are added, we'll make them available in both versions simultaneously.