macOS Sonoma (version 14) is the twentieth 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 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 ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

for

Mac Mac or MAC may refer to: Common meanings * Mac (computer), a line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. * Mackintosh, a raincoat made of rubberized cloth * Mac, a prefix to surnames derived from Gaelic languages * McIntosh (apple), a Canadi ...

computers. The successor to

macOS Ventura macOS Ventura (version 13) is the nineteenth major release of macOS, Apple's operating system for Macintosh computers. The successor to macOS Monterey, it was announced at WWDC 2022 on June 6, 2022, and launched on October 24, 2022. macOS V ...

, it was announced at WWDC 2023 on June 5, 2023, and released on September 26, 2023. It is named after the wine region located in California's

Sonoma County Sonoma County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, its population was 488,863. Its seat of government and largest city is Santa Rosa. Sonoma County comprises the Santa Rosa-Petaluma ...

. macOS Sonoma was succeeded by

macOS Sequoia macOS Sequoia (version 15) is the twenty-first and current major release of Apple Inc., Apple's macOS operating system, the successor to macOS Sonoma. It was announced at Worldwide Developers Conference#2024, WWDC 2024 on June 10, 2024. In li ...

, which was released on September 16, 2024. The first developer beta was released on June 5, 2023, and macOS Sonoma entered public beta on July 11, 2023. macOS Sonoma is the final version of macOS that supports the 2018–2019 MacBook Air, as its successor, macOS Sequoia, drops support for those models.

New features

macOS Sonoma includes a number of new features and improvements, mainly focused on productivity and creativity: * Widgets have been revamped. They are no longer constrained to the

Notification Center Notification Center is a feature in iOS, iPadOS, macOS and watchOS that provides an overview of alerts from applications. It displays notifications until the user completes an associated action, rather than requiring instant resolution. User ...

—instead they can be placed anywhere on the desktop, and the widget picker has been redesigned to resemble the

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and

iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple for its iPad line of tablet computers. It was given a name distinct from iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones to reflect the diverging features of the two product lines, suc ...

versions of it. * The lock screen has been redesigned to include a date and time similar to iOS and iPadOS. The power buttons have become a context menu. *

Video-conferencing Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

apps can overlay the presenter's

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in Videotelephony, video telephony, live streaming and social media, and Closed-circuit television, security. Webcams can b ...

video on top of screen sharing. * App icons have been made more rounded. * The Spotlight search bar has been made more rounded, and its width has been decreased. *

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 ...

changes: ** Browsing profiles enable separate sets of

bookmark A bookmark is a thin marking tool, commonly made of card, leather, or fabric, used to keep track of a reader's progress in a book and allow the reader to easily return to where the previous reading session ended. Alternate materials for book ...

extensions Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (proof theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values t ...

, and

cookies A cookie is a sweet biscuit with high sugar and fat content. Cookie dough is softer than that used for other types of biscuit, and they are cooked longer at lower temperatures. The dough typically contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of ...

, which can be used to separate, for example, a personal setup from a work one. ** Password sharing lets multiple people have access to the same collection of website passwords, and update them as needed, with changes syncing across all enrolled devices. ** Safari web apps let the user add any website to the

Dock The word dock () in American English refers to one or a group of human-made structures that are involved in the handling of boats or ships (usually on or near a shore). In British English, the term is not used the same way as in American Engl ...

and open it in a simplified Safari interface, in a way that is similar to both web apps introduced in iPhone OS 1.1.3 and Google Chrome. This feature is slightly different from

progressive web app A progressive web application (PWA), or progressive web app, is a type of web app that can be installed on a device as a standalone application software, application. PWAs are installed using the offline cache of the device's web browser. PWAs w ...

s since it does not require additional work from website developers. * Messages changes: ** More precise search filters: for example, the contact name can be combined with a search term to look for the term within a specific conversation. ** Catch-up lets the user quickly jump to the first unread message in a conversation. ** Tapback now appears as multiple icons instead of being a context menu. **

iMessage iMessage is an instant messaging service developed by Apple Inc. and launched in 2011. iMessage functions exclusively on Apple platforms – including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS – as part of Apple ecosystem, Apple's approach t ...

sticker A sticker is a type of label: a piece of printed paper, plastic, vinyl, or other material with temporary or permanent pressure sensitive adhesive on one side. It can be used for decoration or for functional purposes, depending on the situation. ...

s have a new selection interface. *

Apple TV Apple TV is a digital media player and a microconsole developed and marketed by Apple. It is a small piece of networking hardware that sends received media data such as video and audio to a TV or external display. Its media services include ...

now has a sidebar instead of a top bar. * Game mode optimizes gaming performance by prioritizing gaming tasks and allocating more

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

and

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

capacity to the game. It provides smoother frame rates for game play and reduced latency for

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

peripherals, such as wireless game controllers and

AirPods AirPods are wireless Bluetooth earbuds designed by Apple. They were first announced on September 7, 2016, alongside the iPhone 7. Within two years, they became Apple's most popular accessory. AirPods are Apple's entry-level wireless headpho ...

. * New slow-motion

screensaver A screensaver (or screen saver) is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the computer has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose of screensavers was to prevent phosphor s ...

s of different locations worldwide. When logged in, they gradually slow down and become the desktop wallpaper. * Smoother animations for several areas such as the notification panel, the lock screen, and the show desktop gesture. The notifications now slide in with an ease-out motion, the lock screen now zooms in and out when unlocking and locking, the show desktop gesture has a new spring back animation. * Users can react with their hands and animations will pop up based on the

hand gesture A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "han ...

. *

AV1 AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 tha ...

hardware decoding has been introduced on devices with AV1 hardware decoding support, such as Macs with SoCs from the

Apple M3 Apple M3 is a series of ARM architecture family, ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series, as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac (computer), Mac deskto ...

family. * Print Center, a utility application returning from

Mac OS X Tiger Mac OS X Tiger (version 10.4) is the 5th major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. Tiger was released to the public on April 29, 2005, for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Inc ...

, was reintroduced for managing print jobs, viewing different printer queues, and pausing or deleting print jobs. * The text cursor now looks more like its iOS counterpart. It is bolder, has a smooth blinking motion, and its color follows the current app's accent color. It also briefly displays an indicator that shows the current input language when the user switches keyboard languages. This indicator can also signal helpful input details like when Caps Lock is on. * Videos now encode faster in

Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro (often abbreviated FCP or FCPX) is a professional non-linear video-editing application initially developed by Macromedia, and, since 1998, by Apple as part of its pro apps collection. Final Cut Pro allows users to import, edit, a ...

, Compressor, and third-party video applications on Mac computers using M1 Ultra or M2 Ultra. * The startup screen is now slightly different, with the loading bar at the bottom being lowered to the bottom of the screen instead of immediately under the Apple logo.

Gaming

Alongside macOS Sonoma, Apple announced developer tools for porting

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

games to macOS. The Game Porting Toolkit (GPTK), derived from

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

and Crossover and released in beta, translates Windows

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...

(API) calls to equivalent macOS APIs, allowing developers to run unmodified versions of their

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

Windows

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

games on macOS. Mac users have been able to use the Game Porting Toolkit to run a number of DirectX 12 games; tech news outlets have compared the tool to

Valve Corporation Valve Corporation, also known as Valve Software, is an American video game developer, video game publisher, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution pl ...

Proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , Hydron (chemistry), H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' (elementary charge). Its mass is slightly less than the mass of a neutron and approximately times the mass of an e ...

compatibility layer In software engineering, a compatibility layer is an interface that allows binaries for a legacy or foreign system to run on a host system. This translates system calls for the foreign system into native system calls for the host system. With s ...

for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. Apple also released a Metal Shader Converter that converts shaders to Apple's

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 ...

graphics

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

. A DigitalFoundry review of the first beta of Game Porting Toolkit found it "impressive", with few graphical glitches and full support for console controllers instead of the keyboard, though they found that frame rates were around half of what they would be on Windows, and that many games were not supported. During the Sonoma beta, updates to the Game Porting Toolkit brought support for

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

games and around 20% better performance. Writing for AppleInsider and iMore, reporter Peter Cohen said that Game Mode and the Game Porting Toolkit are improvements but do not indicate the kind of "sea change" in Apple's priorities and culture that are needed to build a true Mac gaming ecosystem. Cohen says that the problem with Mac gaming is not in the ability to port games, but in a lack of a "business case" for game publishers to do so, due to the Mac's low

market share Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a Market (economics), market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those ...

, the cost of supporting a port, and uncertain demand for Mac games when many Mac users also own consoles or gaming PCs.

YouTuber A YouTuber is a content creator and social media influencer who uploads or creates videos on the online video-sharing website YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006 ...

Snazzy Labs issued similar criticisms, which journalist John Siracusa agreed with.

Removed features

* Support for legacy

Mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

plug-ins has been removed. * System API support for converting

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

and

Encapsulated PostScript Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) is a Document Structuring Convention (DSC) conforming PostScript document format usable as a graphics file format. The format was developed as early as 1987 by John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, the founders of Adobe, ...

files to PDF format has been removed, following previous changes in macOS Ventura that removed support for viewing and converting PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript files within Preview.

Supported hardware

macOS Sonoma supports Macs with

Apple silicon Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture family, ARM architecture. They are used in nearly all of the company's devices including Mac ...

and Intel's Xeon-W and 8th-generation

Coffee Lake Coffee Lake is Intel's codename for its eighth-generation Core microprocessor family, announced on September 25, 2017. It is manufactured using Intel's second 14 nm process node refinement. Desktop Coffee Lake processors introduced i5 and i7 CP ...

/ Amber Lake chips or later, and drops support for various models released in 2017, officially marking the end of support for Macs without Retina display and the 12-inch MacBook. The 2019 iMac is the only Sonoma-supported

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Mac that lacks a T2 chip. Mac models that support macOS Sonoma are as follows. *

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 ...

(2019 and later) *

iMac Pro The iMac Pro is an all-in-one personal computer and workstation sold by Apple Inc. from 2017 to 2022. At its release, it was one of four desktop computers in the Macintosh lineup, sitting above the consumer range Mac Mini and iMac, and serv ...

(2017) *

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 ...

(2018 and 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 ...

(2018 and 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 ...

(2018 and later) *

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 ...

(2019 and later) *

Mac Studio The Mac Studio is a small form factor (desktop and motherboard), small-form-factor workstation computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is one of four desktop computers in the Mac (computer), Mac lineup, sitting above the consumer-range M ...

(all models)

Unofficial support

By using patch tools such a
OpenCore Legacy Patcher
macOS Sonoma can be unofficially installed on earlier models that are officially unsupported. Such models date back to the 2008 MacBook Pro and 2007 iMac. According to an ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'' analysis, 2016 and 2017 Macs received on average six years of updates, lower than the seven to eight years of updates received by Intel Macs released from 2009 to 2015.

Release history

The first developer beta of macOS Sonoma was released on Monday, June 5, 2023. The Sonoma developer beta was the first to be available to anyone with a free Apple Developer account, without needing a developer subscription. The full release was released on September 26, 2023. ''See Apple's officia
release notes
and officia
security update contents.
'

References

External links

* {{Apple software 2023 software ARM operating systems MacOS versions X86-64 operating systems

New features

Gaming

Removed features

Supported hardware

Unofficial support

Release history

See also

References

External links