Apple Seeds Eighth Beta of macOS High Sierra to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]

Monday August 28, 2017 10:58 am PDT by Juli Clover

Apple today seeded the eighth beta of an upcoming macOS High Sierra update to developers for testing purposes, one week after seeding the seventh beta and more than two months after introducing the new software at the 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference.

The eighth beta of macOS High Sierra can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Center or over-the-air using the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store.

macOS High Sierra builds on features first introduced in macOS Sierra, focusing on new storage, video, and graphics technology. It brings a new Apple File System (APFS), High Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC), and an updated version of Metal with support for VR and external GPUs.

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Several apps are gaining new features in macOS High Sierra. The Photos app features a new sidebar to make it easier to access editing tools and albums, and there are new filters and editing options like Curves and Selective Color. Photos also supports external editing apps like Photoshop and Pixelmator, saving changes made in those apps back to Photos, and it interfaces with new third-party printing services.

Safari is gaining speed enhancements, an option to prevent autoplay videos, and a new feature that cuts down on cross-site data tracking. Siri in macOS High Sierra has expanded music capabilities and a new, more natural voice, and Spotlight supports flight status information. There are also improvements to iCloud, FaceTime, Messages, and Notes.

macOS High Sierra is available for both registered developers and public beta testers and will see a public release in the fall.

For a complete overview of changes coming in macOS High Sierra, make sure to check out our dedicated macOS High Sierra roundup.

Update: Apple has also seeded a new public beta (beta 7) of macOS High Sierra to public beta testers.

Related Forum: macOS High Sierra

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Top Rated Comments

lec0rsaire

108 months ago

The GM is getting closer and closer. I have stayed away from the beta since I need my machine to be stable and don't want to bother running it on a partition. I know it's just going to be a refined version of Sierra but always love a new version of MacOS.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

jzfgs

108 months ago

sudo softwareupdate -ia --verbose

Shows that there are no updates available.I'm in the US on a 2017 MBP 15" w/ 3.1GHz and Radeon 560.
[doublepost=1503942710][/doublepost]

High Sierra is getting a new file system. My questions relate to external drives. Does an external drive have to be upgraded to work with High Sierra? If an external drive is formatted with High Sierra, will that drive work on a Sierra computer?

No, external drives can still be on HFS+. If you manually change it to APFS, you can use it on High Sierra or Sierra, but the latter only works with APFS for non-boot and non-fusion drives.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

MacHiavelli

108 months ago

Look Up now does Dictionary, Knowledge (Wikipedia replacement), iTunes Store, Web Videos, App Store, Films, Twitter, Maps . . . according to whatever word is being looked up. Slick.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)