Apple Releases macOS Sierra 10.12.4 With New Night Shift Mode

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Apple today released macOS Sierra 10.12.4, the fourth major update to the macOS Sierra operating system that launched on September 20. macOS Sierra 10.12.4 has been in testing since January 24, with Apple having seeded eight betas ahead of its public release.

macOS Sierra 10.12.4 is a free update for all customers who are running macOS Sierra. The update can be downloaded using the Software Update function in the Mac App Store.

sierra 10
macOS Sierra 10.12.4 brings iOS's Night Shift mode to the Mac for the first time. Night Shift, first introduced on iOS devices in iOS 9.3, is designed to gradually shift the display of a device from blue to a subtle yellow, cutting down on exposure to blue light. Blue light is believed to interrupt the circadian rhythm, disrupting sleep patterns.

Night Shift is 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. It can also be set to turn on and off at custom times. Night Shift can also be toggled on manually using the Notification Center or Siri.


The 10.12.4 update focuses primarily on Night Shift, but the update also includes dictation support for Shanghainese, cricket score integration for Siri, improved PDFKit APIs, and new iCloud Analytics options.

Update: Apple has also released a new 2017-001 security update for OS X Yosemite and OS X El Capitan.

Top Rated Comments

keysofanxiety Avatar
keysofanxiety
54 months ago
No APFS? Beyond that, a welcome update. :)
They're being really, really careful with the APFS on macOS! So much can go wrong compared to iOS, which is completely locked down. You can have lots of different partitions on a Mac, different boot drives, different structures, Time Machine backups... honestly they can't be too careful with testing it. There's an awful lot that can go wrong!

That said, I too am eagerly awaiting APFS on Sierra. :oops: :D
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Gudi Avatar
Gudi
54 months ago
Woo, LaTeX notation in Pages. :cool:
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ashdelacroix Avatar
ashdelacroix
54 months ago
The Combo Update is now available:

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1910?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
blaichch Avatar
blaichch
54 months ago
iWork update as well. I couldn't be happier!

Attachment Image
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
newdeal Avatar
newdeal
54 months ago
Don't care at all about night shift. Do care about bug fixes especially in safari and custom keyboard shortcuts hopefully those are packed in there
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nutmac Avatar
nutmac
54 months ago
No APFS? Beyond that, a welcome update. :)
To be fair, APFS has been. in macOS 10.12 from the beginning, albeit in "developer" quality implementation (e.g., command line commands to reformat disk into APFS, no in-place migration, external volumes only, backward compatibility issues between volumes formatted with 10.12.0 and 10.12.1).

I would love to see Disk Utility get APFS support, but other than that, macOS won't get full APFS until 10.13.
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Don't care at all about night shift. Do care about bug fixes especially in safari and custom keyboard shortcuts hopefully those are packed in there
Night Shift works considerably smoother than f.lux so I welcome it.

Having said that, macOS is still prone to random freezes with 2016 MacBook Pros.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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