'macOS Tahoe 26' will redesign the Mac storage icon 'Macintosh HD,' which has been around for 26 years
At
RIP to the Macintosh HD hard drive icon, 2000–2025 - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/rip-to-the-macintosh-hd-hard-drive-icon-2000-20
macOS Tahoe 26 beta 5 retires the old Macintosh HD icon - 9to5Mac
https://9to5mac.com/2025/08/05/macos-tahoe-26-beta-5-retires-the-old-macintosh-hd-icon/
On August 6, 2025, Apple released macOS Tahoe 26 beta 5, the latest developer beta for macOS Tahoe 26. For many years, Apple has used the 'Macintosh HD' icon to display the internal storage of a Mac. The following icon design has been used for 26 years since 2000:
The old Macintosh HD icon clearly looks like a hard drive, but the new Macintosh HD icon clearly looks like an SSD.
A few years ago, the Macintosh HD icon was no longer displayed on the desktop by default when you installed macOS, making it less noticeable.
The current Macintosh HD icon design was introduced with the release of the public beta version of Mac OS X in 2000.
It remained largely untouched for over a decade after its release, but was upgraded to Retina resolution with an OS upgrade in 2012. In 2014, it received a small update in Mac OS X Yosemite, which gave it a slightly softer, less metallic look while still retaining the basic design.
The Macintosh HD icon design continued even after the release of Apple Silicon. In macOS Tahoe 26 beta 5, the icons for external storage, network storage, and removable disk images were also changed.
The first Mac that Apple equipped with an SSD was the original MacBook Air, released in 2008. Since then, most MacBooks that have evolved to Retina resolution have had SSD built-in storage. After the transition to Apple Silicon, Apple stopped shipping iMac models with HDDs.
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