Apple's social media promo for WWDC may have given away the name of macOS 27, as it has before.
Each year, the WWDC keynote has Craig Federighi joking about the "crack marketing team" that comes up with the name for that year's macOS release. While the keynote is still a week away, it appears the punchline has already been discovered.
Posting to X, designer Andreas Storm explains that there's a very small clue in the small image appearing next to specific X-post hashtags, such as #WWDC26.
The hashmoji is the glowing Apple logo, but the real hint is the name of the file. As Storm determined, and also verified by AppleInsider, the filename for the hashmoji image is "Project_Big_Bear_2026_Hashmoji_only.png"
There's a subtle hint in the #WWDC26 image. Is Apple teasing the next macOS name: Big Bear? pic.twitter.com/I675LbIZpH
— Andreas Storm (@avstorm) June 2, 2026
Big Bear Lake is located in Southern California, in the San Bernardino mountains. Taking into account Apple's current naming scheme of using prominent locations in California, such as Tahoe after Lake Tahoe, Big Bear seems to be a very good guess.
This is, however, dependent on it being an honest mistake by Apple to include Big Bear in the filename. It's happened before.
Apple is well aware that there are many people rabidly mining for hints and tips about its future moves. You're reading a site that's staffed by some.
With that in mind, it's entirely plausible that it could be a red herring, and that somewhere else has also been chosen.
Other lake names Apple could go for include staff favorite Redwood, plus Mono, Shasta, Almanor, Donner, Oroville, and Tulare, among others.








