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macOS High Sierra (version 10.13) is the fourteenth major release of
macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
,
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...
's desktop operating system for
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
computers. macOS High Sierra was announced at the WWDC 2017 on June 5, 2017 and was released on September 25, 2017. The name "High Sierra" refers to the High Sierra region in California. Its name signified its goal to be a refinement of the previous macOS version, macOS Sierra, focused on performance improvements and technical updates rather than features. This makes it similar to previous macOS releases
Snow Leopard The snow leopard (''Panthera uncia'') is a species of large cat in the genus ''Panthera'' of the family Felidae. The species is native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because ...
,
Mountain Lion The cougar (''Puma concolor'') (, ''Help:Pronunciation respelling key, KOO-gər''), also called puma, mountain lion, catamount and panther is a large small cat native to the Americas. It inhabits North America, North, Central America, Cent ...
and
El Capitan El Capitan (; ) is a vertical Rock formations in the United States, rock formation in Yosemite National Park, on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The El Capitan Granite, granite monolith is about from base to summit alo ...
. Among the apps with notable changes are Photos and
Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...
. macOS High Sierra is the final version of macOS to support the Unibody iMac and the Polycarbonate Unibody MacBook, as its successor,
macOS Mojave macOS Mojave ( ; version 10.14) is the fifteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. Mojave was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 4, 2018, and was released to the ...
, drops support for the late 2009 and final models.


System requirements

All Macs that supported macOS Sierra support macOS High Sierra. *
iMac The iMac is a series of all-in-one computers from Apple Inc., sold as part of the company's Mac (computer), Mac family of computers. First introduced in 1998, it has remained a primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since and evol ...
(Late 2009 or later) * MacBook (Late 2009 or later) *
MacBook Air The MacBook Air is a line of Mac (computer), Mac laptop computers developed and manufactured by Apple Inc., Apple since 2008. It features a thin, light structure in a machining, machined aluminum case and currently either a 13-inch or 15-inch ...
(Late 2010 or later) *
MacBook Pro The MacBook Pro is a line of Mac laptop computers developed and manufactured by Apple. Introduced in 2006, it is the high-end sibling of the MacBook family, sitting above the ultra-portable MacBook Air and previously the low-end MacBook li ...
(Mid 2010 or later) *
Mac Mini Mac Mini (stylized as Mac mini) is a small form factor (desktop and motherboard), small form factor desktop computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is one of the company's four current Mac (computer), Mac desktop computers, positioned ...
(Mid 2010 or later) * iMac Pro (2017) *
Mac Pro Mac Pro is a series of workstations and servers for professionals made by Apple Inc. since 2006. The Mac Pro, by some performance benchmarks, is the most powerful computer that Apple offers. It is one of four desktop computers in the current ...
(Mid 2010 or later) macOS High Sierra requires at least 2 GB of RAM and 20.12 GB of available disk space. It is possible to install High Sierra on many older Macintosh computers that are not officially supported by Apple. This requires using a patch to modify the install image.


Changes


Default wallpaper

The default desktop picture depicts North Lake in the High Sierra biome.


System


Apple File System

Apple File System Apple File System (APFS) is a Proprietary software, proprietary file system developed and deployed by Apple Inc. for macOS macOS Sierra, Sierra (10.12.4) and later, iOS iOS 10 , 10.3, tvOS 10.2, watchOS 3.2, and all versions of iPadOS. It aim ...
(APFS) replaces
HFS Plus HFS Plus or HFS+ (also known as Mac OS Extended or HFS Extended) is a journaling file system developed by Apple Inc. It replaced the Hierarchical File System (HFS) as the primary file system of Apple computers with the 1998 release of Mac OS 8. ...
as the default file system in macOS for the first time with High Sierra. It supports 64‑bit inode numbers, is designed for
flash memory Flash memory is an Integrated circuit, electronic Non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for t ...
, and is designed to speed up common tasks like duplicating a file and finding the size of a folder's contents. It also has built‑in encryption, crash‑safe protections, and simplified data backup on the go.


Metal 2

Metal A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...
, Apple's low-level graphics API, has been updated to Metal 2. It includes
virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...
and machine-learning features, as well as support for external GPUs. The system's windowing system, Quartz Compositor, supports Metal 2.


Media

macOS High Sierra adds support for
High Efficiency Video Coding High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In compa ...
(HEVC), with
hardware acceleration Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calcula ...
where available, as well as support for
High Efficiency Image File Format High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) is a digital container format for storing individual digital images and image sequences. The standard covers multimedia files that can also include other media streams, such as timed text, audio and vid ...
(HEIF). Macs with the Intel
Kaby Lake Kaby Lake is Intel's codename for its seventh generation Core microprocessor family announced on August 30, 2016. Like the preceding Skylake, Kaby Lake is produced using a 14 nanometer manufacturing process technology. Breaking with Intel's p ...
processor offer hardware support for Main 10 profile 10-bit hardware decoding, those with the Intel Skylake processor support Main profile 8-bit hardware decoding, and those with AMD Radeon 400 series graphics also support full HEVC decoding. However, whenever an Intel IGP is present, the frameworks will only direct requests to Intel IGP. In addition, audio codecs
FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...
and Opus are also supported, but not in iTunes. HEVC hardware acceleration requires a Mac with a sixth-generation Intel processor or newer (late 2015 27-inch
iMac The iMac is a series of all-in-one computers from Apple Inc., sold as part of the company's Mac (computer), Mac family of computers. First introduced in 1998, it has remained a primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since and evol ...
, mid 2017 21.5-inch iMac, early 2016 MacBook, late 2016
MacBook Pro The MacBook Pro is a line of Mac laptop computers developed and manufactured by Apple. Introduced in 2006, it is the high-end sibling of the MacBook family, sitting above the ultra-portable MacBook Air and previously the low-end MacBook li ...
or iMac Pro).


Other

In High Sierra, kernel extensions ("kexts") require explicit approval by the user before being able to run. Certain UI elements, such as the Low Battery notification and App Store icon, were redesigned to either be based on the iOS 11 equivalents or match with the overall less detailed design used in all releases since Yosemite. The time service ntpd was replaced with
timed timed (time daemon) is an operating system program that maintains the system time in synchronization with time servers using the Time Synchronization Protocol (TSP) developed by Riccardo Gusella and Stefano Zatti. Gusella and Zatti had done e ...
for the time synchronization. The
FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...
and
telnet Telnet (sometimes stylized TELNET) is a client-server application protocol that provides access to virtual terminals of remote systems on local area networks or the Internet. It is a protocol for bidirectional 8-bit communications. Its main ...
command line programs were removed. Caching Server, File Sharing Server, and Time Machine Server, features that were previously part of macOS Server, are now provided as part of the OS. A new “now playing” widget has been added to the Notification Center, based on the music Lock Screen toggle in iOS 11. The screen can now be locked using the shortcut Cmd+Ctrl+Q. The ability to lock screen using a menu bar shortcut activated in Keychain Access preferences has now been removed. The 10.13.4 update added support for external graphics processors for Macs equipped with Thunderbolt 3 ports. The update discontinued support for external graphics processors in 2015 or older Macs, equipped with Thunderbolt 1 and 2 ports. Starting with 10.13.4, when a 32-bit app is opened, users get a one-time warning about its future incompatibility with the macOS operating system.


Applications


Final Cut Pro 7

Apple announced the original Final Cut Studio suite of programs will not work on High Sierra. Media professionals that depend on any of those programs were advised to create a double boot drive to their computer.


Photos

macOS High Sierra gives Photos an updated sidebar and new editing tools. Photos synchronizes tagged People with
iOS 11 iOS 11 is the iOS version history, eleventh major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., Apple, being the successor to iOS 10. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5, 2017, and w ...
.


Mail

Mail has improved Spotlight search with Top Hits. Mail also uses 35% less storage space due to optimizations, and Mail's compose window can now be used in split-screen mode.


Safari

macOS High Sierra includes Safari 11. Safari 11 has a new "Intelligent Tracking Prevention" feature that uses
machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
to block third parties from tracking the user's actions. Safari can also block auto playing videos from playing. The "Reader Mode" can be set to always-on. Safari 11 also supports
WebAssembly WebAssembly (Wasm) defines a portable binary-code format and a corresponding text format for executable programs as well as software interfaces for facilitating communication between such programs and their host environment. The main goal of ...
. The last version of Safari that High Sierra supports is 13.1.2. This version has known security issues.


Notes

The
Notes Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened versi ...
app includes the ability to add tables to notes, and notes can be pinned to the top of the list. The version number was incremented to 4.5.


Siri

In High Sierra,
Siri Siri ( , backronym: Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) is a digital assistant purchased, developed, and popularized by Apple Inc., which is included in the iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, Apple TV, audioOS, and visionOS operating sys ...
uses a more natural and expressive voice. It also uses machine learning to understand the user better. Siri synchronizes information across iOS and Mac devices so the Siri experience is the same regardless of the product being used.


Messages

The release of macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 (and iOS 11.4) introduced support for Messages in iCloud. This feature allows messages to sync across all devices using the same iCloud account. When messages are deleted they are deleted on each device as well, and messages stored in the cloud do not take up local storage on the device anymore. In order to use the feature, the user has to enable
two-factor authentication Multi-factor authentication (MFA; two-factor authentication, or 2FA) is an electronic authentication method in which a user is granted access to a website or Application software, application only after successfully presenting two or more distin ...
for their
Apple ID Apple Account, formerly known as Apple ID, is a user account by Apple for their devices and software. Apple Accounts contain the user's personal data and settings, and when an Apple Account is used to log in to an Apple device, the device will ...
.


Reception

Roman Loyola, the senior editor of ''
Macworld ''Macworld'' is a digital magazine and website dedicated to products and software of Apple Inc., published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG. History ''Macworld'' was founded by David Bunnell and Cheryl Woodard (publishers) and Andrew Fl ...
'', gave High Sierra a provisionally positive review in September 2017, calling it an "incremental update worthy of your time, eventually." Loyola expressed that the product's most significant draw was its security features, and that beyond this, the most beneficial changes lay in its future potential, saying it "doesn't have a lot of new features that will widen your eyes in excitement. But a lot of the changes are in the background and under the hood, and they lay a foundation for better things to come."


Problems

macOS High Sierra 10.13.0 and 10.13.1 have a critical vulnerability that allowed an attacker to become a
root user In computing, the superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system (OS), the actual name of this account might be root, administrator, admin or supervisor. In some cases, the actual name of the ...
by entering "root" as a username, and not entering a password, when logging in. This was fixed in the Security Update 2017-001 for macOS High Sierra v10.13.1. When it was first launched, it was discovered that the WindowServer process had a memory leak, leading to much slower graphics performance and lagging animations, probably due to some last-minute changes in Metal 2. This was fixed in macOS 10.13.1. macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 had an error that caused DisplayLink to stop working for external monitors, allowing only one monitor to be extended. When using two external monitors, they could only be mirrored. Alban Rampon, the Senior Product Manager for DisplayLink, stated on December 24, 2018, that the company was working with Apple to resolve the issue.


Release history


Timeline of Mac operating systems


References


External links

* – official site
macOS 10.13 High Sierra
download page at
Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
{{Apple Inc. 13 X86-64 operating systems Products and services discontinued in 2020 2017 software