Apple Leaks Hint at macOS Big Bear Launching at Next Week’s WWDC

It appears Apple may have leaked its next naming scheme for macOS ahead of its annual developer conference, set for next week.

According to developer and code sleuth Aaron, the WWDC26 hashmoji has mention of “Project_Big_Bear_2026” in its filename. If you open the hashmoji image in a new tab the URL is:

https://abs.twimg.com/hashflags/Project_Big_Bear_2026_Hashmoji_only/Project_Big_Bear_2026_Hashmoji_only.png

We know Apple likes to name macOS after locations in California as of 2013. Big Bear is a mountain resort in Southern California and is around Big Bear Lake, up in the San Bernardino Mountains, about 160km northeast of Los Angeles.

After ending the big cat era of naming in 2012, Apple moved to naming after locations in its home state. Here’s a history of OS X and macOS versions:

• OS X 10.9 Mavericks (2013): Big-wave surf spot, Northern California.
• OS X 10.10 Yosemite (2014): National park, Sierra Nevada mountains.
• OS X 10.11 El Capitan (2015): Iconic rock formation inside Yosemite.
• macOS 10.12 Sierra (2016): Eastern California mountain range.
• macOS 10.13 High Sierra (2017): Deep alpine region of the Sierra mountains.
• macOS 10.14 Mojave (2018): Desert in southeastern California.
• macOS 10.15 Catalina (2019): Channel island off the Southern California coast.
• macOS 11 Big Sur (2020): Rugged central coastline.
• macOS 12 Monterey (2021): Historic Central Coast bay town.
• macOS 13 Ventura (2022): Southern California beach city.
• macOS 14 Sonoma (2023): Northern California wine country.
• macOS 15 Sequoia (2024): Giant tree national park, Sierra Nevada.
• macOS 16 Tahoe (2025): Alpine lake on the California-Nevada border.

Will the next version of macOS be designated as Big Bear? We’ll find out in less than a week.