Apple releases macOS 14.4 beta release candidate

Apple on Monday released the macOS Sonoma 14.4 beta release candidate. This beta release is for developers only, with a public beta coming in the next few days. The release candidate comes after Apple announced the new M3 MacBook Air earlier in the day. It’s expected that macOS 14.4 will be on the new laptops, which also means a release tot he general public in the next week.

macOS Sonoma 14.4: New features

macOS Sonoma 14.4 is expected to bring many features that are also in iOS 17.4. Those features include:

• New emoji
• Enhanced functionality with episode text in the Podcasts app
• Business Updates in Messages for Business
• An “icons only” option for the Safari Favorites Bar
• Security and bug fixes

macOS Sonoma 14.4: Beta release notes

Below are the developer release notes. This is different from the release notes that accompany the official release to the general public. These notes contain details that developers need to be aware of.

AppKit

Resolved Issues

• Fixed an issue where center or right aligned NSTextField appears blurry. (120819010)
• Fixed: Resolves an issue where pointer style does not update when browsing in Safari. (121131986)

Core ML

New Features

• ML Program models that are loaded with MLComputeUnits.cpuOnly will use a new high performance CPU backend that takes advantage of Accelerate framework’s BNNS library. (114037934)

CreateML

Resolved Issues

• Fixed: When using the transfer learning algorithm option, the CreateML app and framework object detection template might fail to converge and cause poor model quality and produce more than expected false positives. (114480994)

Finder

Resolved Issues

• Fixed: Resolves an issue where tiling a window causes the desktop picture to turn black. (118044617)

Messages

Resolved Issues

• Fixed: Stickers (Memoji and 3rd party) might appear blank. (120994483)

Passkeys

Resolved Issues

• Fixed: Registering passkeys might not work on certain websites. (122217903)

Software Updates

Resolved Issues

• Fixed: Updates to macOS 14.4 starting from macOS 11.0–12.3.1 will not work. (120548971)

StoreKit

New Features

• productDescriptionHidden(_:) API can be used to configure the visibility of product descriptions in ProductView, StoreView and SubscriptionStoreView instances within a view hierarchy. When building with Xcode 15.3, the view modifier can be used even if your app is running on iOS 17.0, iPadOS 17.0, macOS 14.0, tvOS 17.0, watchOS 10.0, visionOS 1.0, or later.When implementing a product view style, it can support this new view modifier by checking the descriptionVisibility property on the configuration value. (110414819) (FB12261973)
• You can use SubscriptionStoreView to present promotional offers by adding the subscriptionPromotionalOffer(offer:signature:) modifier.If you’re already using inAppPurchaseOptions(_:) modifier to support promotional offers for StoreKit views, you should adopt the new API instead when your app is running on iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, macOS 14.4, tvOS 17.4, watchOS 10.4, visionOS 1.1 or later. Do not use both APIs to apply a promotional offer for the same view. (115358806)

Resolved Issues

• Fixed: The isEligibleForIntroOffer property and isEligibleForIntroOffer(for:)method now reflect ineligibility in cases where a customer would otherwise be eligible for the offer if they weren’t actively subscribed. This means a customer which is not currently eligible for an introductory offer may become eligible in the future.Customers who redeem an introductory offer for a given subscription group will continue to never be eligible for another introductory offer in that subscription group. You can detect this case this by checking if any one transaction with a matching subscriptionGroupID has the type property on offer set to introductory. (103604770) (FB11889732)

SwiftUI

New Features

• Table now supports dynamic numbers of columns with the new TableColumnForEach. (79492167) (FB9189673)

Resolved Issues

• Fixed: DatePicker in macOS reset focus to the first date component when its bound date changes and timeZone is overriden in the environment. (97376561)

Synchronization

New Features

• New os_sync_wait_on_address APIs have been added. They are expected to be used for implementing synchronization primitives that do not have a sense of ownership. Please file feedback if you need Synchronization functionality not covered by existing API. (94759935) (FB10141068)

macOS Sonoma 14.4: How to install the beta

Developer betas are available to anyone who has enrolled in Apple’s Developer Program. Apple usually issues a public beta a day or two after the developer beta has been released. We have a complete guide to downloading and installing the Sonoma betas if you are interested.

To access the public beta, go to System Settings > General > Software Update, then in the Beta Updates section, click the Info button (the “I” icon), click the pop-up menu for Beta Updates, and select macOS Sonoma Public Beta. You may need to restart the Mac.

While betas give early access to fixes and features to the operating system, they are issued with the idea that users will test the software and check for bugs. This means that the betas have some instability to them and may cause issues with your Mac. If you can’t afford to take the risk of a possible crash or a disruption of usability, you should not run the beta and wait for the release to the general public.