Apple today seeded the fourth public beta of an upcoming macOS High Sierra update to public beta testers, two weeks after releasing the third public beta. The fourth public beta of macOS High Sierra is likely identical to the fifth developer beta, which was provided to developers earlier this week.
Beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program are able to download the fourth macOS High Sierra beta through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store after the proper profile has been installed.
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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. For instructions on how to install the public beta, check out our how to, and make sure to make a backup before giving the software a try. Don't install the beta on a main machine, because betas are notoriously unstable.
The macOS High Sierra update is designed to improve and refine the existing macOS Sierra operating system. Along with a new, more efficient file system (APFS) 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.
High Efficiency Video Encoding (HEVC aka H.265) is coming in High Sierra, and many existing apps are being updated. Photos features a new persistent side view and editing tools for Curves, Selective Color, and Live Photos, for example, while Siri gains 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, and Mail storage is being optimized to take up 35 percent less space. iMessages can now be stored in iCloud, plus there are new iCloud Drive file sharing options and new iCloud storage family plans.
For a full overview of the new features you can expect to see when macOS High Sierra is released in the fall, make sure to check out our macOS High Sierra roundup.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)I gave up on this Beta unfortunately. My MacBook (mid 2015 Retina Pro) basically got bricked by the 3rd beta. My MacBook refused to download or run anything, Box/Dropbox/Cloud sync service applications stopped working, and I wound up calling Apple. They couldn't even get my MacBook to properly screen share so I could show them anything. Tried restoring from Time Machine Backups and when it formatted my Hard Drive it formatted it into 4 strange partitions instead of 1 Mac OS journaled. Took me about a week to get everything back up. :(
I don't understand this. Why do people constantly install BETAS on their primary machines? If you NEED the machine to work, BETAS are not for you.Orrrrrrr, do what I do. Install the BETA in a virtualized environment. I run High Sierra as a VM via VMWare Fusion on my 2017 MBP just fine. I test what I need/want without borking up my production system.
I'm not seeing it under updates on the App Store for some reason?
Me neither
Try to reload the page in Appstore menu.Updating to PB4 is a disaster, with fatal black screen of death with about 5% remaining. Rebooted and it seemingly recovered and finished updating.
I rebooted into single user mode to run fsck, which didn't find any issue.
Rebooted again and it tries to resume update, with "Completing Installation: About 2 minutes remaining." The update is seemingly complete 2 minutes later, but every subsequent update triggers this "completing installation" process.
Can someone post the build number?
17A330h