[OS X TeX] Pretesting of MacTeX2026/TeX Live-2026 has started

[Herbert Schulz]

Howdy,

This note is to inform you that pretesting of MacTeX2026/TeX Live-2026 has started. Full information is available at <https://tug.org/texlive/pretest.html>. Here are some highlights:

1)Pretest versions:

You can pick up the pretest version of MacTeX-2026 and BasicTeX-2026 at on of the pretest repositories noted at <https://tug.org/texlive/mirmon/>. The files for MacTeX pretesting all have names that start with `mactex-' and end with the creation date (that is 202602XX for the most recent versions as of this message with a pkg (and corresponding md5) extension.

mactex-20260212.pkg ---- pretest of MacTeX-2026
mactex-basictex-20260207.pkg ---- pretest of BasicTeX-2026

MacTeX includes a full (quite large) version of the TeX Live Distribution BasicTeX is a minimalist version that will satisfy basic needs.

While the MacTeX pkg includes the Ghostscript and GUI applications pkgs the BasicTeX distribution doesn't but they may be downloaded separately from the pretest site as

mactex-basictex-20260207.pkg ---- the present version of Ghostscript
mactex-guiapplications-20260210.pkg ---- the present versions of GUI applications (note: these might not be the most recent updates at this time)

Also there is a pkg that supplies a library for Ghostscript that is only used by a single, fairly obscure program that is supplied as

mactex-ghostscript-10.06.0-extras-20260210.pkg ---- Ghostscript Extras

and a special version of TeXShop for macOS 26 / Tahoe to fully use its Liquid-Glass experiance

mactex-texshoptahoe-20260212.pkg

which installs TeXShop558.app in /Applications/TeX and coexists with the standard TeXSjhop.app. Note: The TeXShop installed by the GUI applications pkg works perfectly fine with Tahoe but doesn't display all Tahoe features.

2)Updating packages, etc., during the pretest:

You can still update TeX Live-2025 using TeX Live Utility (TLU) or tlmgr during the pretest period!

To update the pretest version of TeX Live 2026 you must set TLU (or tlmgr at a lower level) to use one of the pretest repositories (e.g., if you downloaded the pretest from <https://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/tlpretest/> use that URL in TLU (or …) for updating TeX Live 2026. For convenience, in TLU you permanently add the URL to the list of available repositories in the Configure->Manage Repositories menu item. Once TeX Live 2026 is released you can return to your usual repository for updates.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
herbs2 at mac.com