Apple Seeds First Beta of macOS High Sierra to Public Beta Testers

Thursday June 29, 2017 1:06 pm PDT by Juli Clover

Apple today seeded the first public beta of macOS High Sierra to public beta testers, allowing non-developers to download and test the update for the first time since it was introduced at the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5. The first public beta of macOS High Sierra corresponds to the second developer beta, which was updated this morning.

Beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program will be able to download the macOS High Sierra beta through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store.

macos hs beta
Those who want to be a part of Apple's beta testing program can sign up to participate through the beta testing website, which gives users access to iOS, macOS, and tvOS betas.

Potential beta testers should make a full Time Machine backup before installing macOS High Sierra, and it should not be installed on a primary machine because betas are unstable and often have many bugs. Caution should be used with macOS High Sierra in particular because when installing it, there's an option to switch to the new Apple Filesystem (APFS), an update that takes some time.

macOS High Sierra is designed to improve and refine macOS Sierra. Along with a new, more efficient file system designed for modern storage, the update introduces Metal 2, the next-generation version of Apple's Metal graphics API with support for machine learning, external GPUs, and VR content creation.

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High Efficiency Video Encoding (HEVC aka H.265) is coming in macOS High Sierra, and many of the existing apps are being updated. Photos features a new persistent side view and editing tools for Curves, Selective Color, and Live Photos, while Siri is gaining a more natural voice and support for more music-related commands.

Safari offers a new autoplay blocking feature for videos and Intelligent Tracking Prevention to protect your privacy, while Mail storage is being optimized to take up 35 percent less space. iMessages can now be stored in iCloud, and there are new iCloud Drive file sharing options and new iCloud storage family plans.

For a complete picture of all of the new features you can expect to see when macOS High Sierra is released in the fall, make sure to check out our full macOS High Sierra roundup.

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Top Rated Comments

Scott6666

77 months ago

boot your computer while holding down both the command key and the r key.

People who do not know what the recovery partition is should not be trying beta 1's

Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

DocoBob

...The top secret way that Apple makes a fortune along with other companies is "Planned obsolescence." They just make it not work on purpose to make more money on upgrades. An operating system that breaks half of your programs is not a good one in my opinion no matter what enhancements it offers. If more people made this known, they wouldn't do it...

After working in Silicon Valley for almost 40 years, with just about all the major players there (directly and indirectly) I can tell you that they really don't have secret meeting to enforce "planed obsolescence" to make money. Its the nature of technology to need to grow it, improve it and expand its capabilities. In all the meetings I attended, from the hardware/ software design engineers, marketing gurus legal department all the way up tp the CEOs, no one ever thinks of planned obsolescence as a strategy. They do talk about focusing on specific areas they believe that consumers will want in the future. Its that constant consumer demand that causes the changes to happen. Think about it, do you still want to use a computer with an 8086 processor? or floppies? or a huge CRT that can only display 13" of viewable area? or 20MB hard disk drives that spin as fast as my washing machine? I don't and there are millions of consumers that spend billions each year to upgrade to newer, better, faster features. Its all about voting with your wallet and consumers have voted for ongoing process.

Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

dogslobber

Downloading now. Also I live in California, so should I be high when I install High Sierra?

I'd recommend you download it, drive to the High Sierra mountain, climb it, then install High Sierra on top of High Sierra. I just hope when you're climbing you don't hit too many bugs and fall off!

imnotthewalrus

agreed, but no reason to not help out since the damage is done.

Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

sol33t