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Apple Seeds Seventh Beta of macOS Sierra 10.12.4 to Developers and Public Beta Testers

Thursday March 16, 2017 11:01 am PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today seeded the seventh beta of an upcoming macOS Sierra 10.12.4 update to developers, just three days after seeding the sixth macOS Sierra 10.12.4 beta and over a month after releasing macOS Sierra 10.12.3.

The seventh macOS Sierra 10.12.4 beta is available for download through the Apple Developer Center or the software update mechanism in the Mac App Store for those who have previously installed a beta.

macos-10-12-4-beta
macOS Sierra 10.12.4 brings iOS's Night Shift mode to the Mac for the first time. First introduced on iOS devices with iOS 9.3, Night Shift is designed to gradually shift the display of a device from blue to yellow, cutting down on exposure to blue light. Blue light is said to disrupt the circadian rhythm and is believed to interrupt sleeping patterns.

Night Shift can be activated through the Displays section of System Preferences, where a setting to have it come on at sunset and turn off at sunrise is available. Night Shift can also be toggled on manually through the Notification Center or via Siri.

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The 10.12.4 update focuses mainly on Night Shift, but also includes dictation support for Shanghainese, cricket scores for Siri, improved PDFKit APIs, and iCloud Analytics options.

Few outward-facing changes have been discovered in macOS Sierra 10.12.4 outside of the first beta, as Apple has been working on bug fixes and improvements ahead of a public release. With the seventh beta out and the short interval since the last seed, we are getting closer to the end of the beta testing period and are likely to see a public release soon.

Update: The seventh beta is also available for members of Apple's public beta testing program.

[ 82 comments ]


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keysofanxiety
24 months ago

Another beta?:(

Jeez. another beta


I imagine you'd be the same people complaining had Apple released it early without rock-solid testing? ;)
Rating: 12 Votes
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Jayderek
24 months ago

I imagine you'd be the same people complaining had Apple released it early without rock-solid testing? ;)


this times a million. These are the people that shouldn't be beta testing if "OMG another Beta :(" is somehow that difficult
Rating: 9 Votes
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Larry The L
24 months ago

Another beta?:(


Jeez. another beta


So many betas, so little time...


But come-on 7 Betas?



And if there is a bug in the release, you people will be the first to complain and complain the loudest that there weren't enough betas. Very sad.
[doublepost=1489697053][/doublepost]

Why did not they fix it in first,second,third......


Certainly the most absurd statement I've heard in a long time. Based upon your logic, there shouldn't be any betas as everything should work in the first iteration.
Rating: 8 Votes
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faded_glory
24 months ago
Haha, I get it now. Macrumours - where bitter people come to vent their bile. Can't be doing with hacking my way through so many utterly miserable "the latest update bricked every device I own/this version of OSX/macOS/iOS is the worst ever software released in the history of the earth, ever" posts.
Apparently this site is moderated.
Get the f**k out of town.
Rating: 8 Votes
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Jayderek
24 months ago

But come-on 7 Betas?


how is this a bad thing? would you rather have less with more issues?
Rating: 6 Votes
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C DM
24 months ago

Why did not they fix it in first,second,third......

Because not everything is found, investigated, reproduced, worked on, and fixed right away?
Rating: 5 Votes
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justperry
24 months ago

Wow, iOS 10 had 8 betas and it still ended up bricking everyone's phone.


Bricked= Not recoverable by a (normal) User, only possible to upload new firmware into the device by mostly another hardware connector which is almost always inside the device, or special software which is not in the hands of consumers.

The iPhone was NOT bricked by installing iOS 10, you could recover by connecting it to a computer running iTunes.
Rating: 4 Votes
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C DM
24 months ago

Wow, iOS 10 had 8 betas and it still ended up bricking everyone's phone.

iOS 10 bricked everyone's phone? o_O
Rating: 4 Votes
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ThisBougieLife
24 months ago
I think they're waiting until the April event because they're going to release the Kaby Lake MBPs then :)
Rating: 4 Votes
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iMac-Do-You?
24 months ago

Not sure how it's decided what makes the cut for the front page of MacRumors but when I see the almost bi-weekly beta updates for MacOS, iOS, WatchOS, tvOS, ThisOS, ThatOS, etc. I don't even bother to scroll down three pages anymore to see if there is any news of actual interest. Released golden master updates? OK, that's maybe half-interesting (half) but the OS beta incremental update spam on the front page? /yawn


What you personally want, or do not want to see, will be totally different from what another person does. There's more than just you who uses this website.
When you search for something on Google, do you look at the first few results and, if they do not meet your criteria, close the website and say "Google sucks /yawn?"
I mean really, how hard is it to move your finger a few centimetres to quickly scroll through and sort the wheat from the chaff, to find something you're actually interested in?
Rating: 3 Votes

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