Apple Releases First Beta of macOS 14 Sonoma to Developers

Apple today seeded the first beta of the newly announced macOS 14 Sonoma update to developers for testing purposes. While the beta is limited to developers at this time, Apple plans to provide a public beta later this summer.

macos sonoma
Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and after the appropriate profile is installed, with the betas available through the Software Update mechanism in System Settings.

macOS Sonoma introduces new Apple TV-like screen savers that also serve as wallpapers after you log in, plus it moves widgets to the desktop. You can use the new widget gallery to choose from a range of widgets, and then drag them to your Mac's desktop.

Widgets can be arranged in any way that's useful, and when you're using an app, they are designed to fade into the background so they're less distracting. ‌Widgets‌ are more interactive than before, so you can use them to do things like play music, turn off the lights in your home, and more. Through Continuity, your iPhone's widgets can also show up on your Mac's desktop.

Video conferencing has improved with a new Presenter Overlay view that shows your desktop or project in new ways, plus Safari now supports web apps for the Dock and the option to create Profiles so you can separate personal browsing from work browsing.

Other new features include improved search that's faster and more responsive, password and passkey sharing, a revamped stickers interface for the Messages app, PDF integration in notes that makes it easier than ever to manage PDFs, and more.

‌macOS Sonoma‌ will be in beta testing for several months, with a public release set to come in September or October.

Related Roundup: macOS Sonoma
Related Forum: macOS Sonoma

Top Rated Comments

hoodafoo Avatar
11 months ago
When are they gonna concentrate on optimizing performance and realize users dont care about all this fluff they are adding?
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
JPJones Avatar
11 months ago
I knew we were in for disappointment when the lead-off new feature was the screensavers.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mazz0 Avatar
11 months ago
Shout out to the people who made the third party Aerial app ('https://aerialscreensaver.github.io/') that brought Apple TV wallpapers to Mac already. Guess their app’s useless for most people now (though it did do third party videos too so some people will prefer to stick with it).
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AltecX Avatar
11 months ago

Let's just go over and realize Apple has this love/hate with widgets in macOS: macOS 10.5 Leopard first debuted (or was it in Puma?)!

Like this was here with Mac OS X Puma for a long while. Then to get rid of it only to bring it back again seems ridiculous. Also this constant re-iteration of Exposé, then Mission Control, into ?? This really needs to stop.

Where are the updates to the open-standard UNIX-based foundation on the kernel?!
We used to get huge advancements a while back yet this stopped. Why?!
I'm sure I'll get a lot of hate for saying this, but other than Dark mode, there is not ONE feature added to macOS that I use that's been added since 10.5/6. I honestly cannot think of a single one.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ghostface147 Avatar
11 months ago
I'm actually more excited for the screensavers.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nortonandreev Avatar
11 months ago
So I turned mine OFF, then I got nothing, then restarted my MacBook and then got the options.



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Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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