macOS 15 Sequoia
Apple (feature list, release notes, security, enterprise, developer, full installer, IPSW):
macOS Sequoia brings exciting new features, including iPhone Mirroring, which expands Continuity by enabling access to and control of iPhone directly from macOS; big updates to Safari; a new Passwords app; and more. Starting next month, macOS Sequoia will introduce Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that combines the power of generative models with personal context to deliver intelligence that is incredibly useful and relevant while protecting users’ privacy and security.
See also:
So far (knock on wood), it seems like Sequoia breaks less stuff than other recent major releases. However, I can’t upgrade yet because Xcode 15.4 doesn’t work on Sequoia, and Xcode 16 can’t compile for Big Sur.
As part of the release of macOS Sequoia, Apple has added new user functionality for managing system extensions, as well as management profile options for Mac admins.
TIL that in macOS Sequoia
SecPKCS12Import()fails with errorerrSecAuthFailed(“Authorization/Authentication failed”) when trying to import PKCS12 data that’s “protected” with an empty password (“”).Written out as a file, the same data will also fail to import into the Keychain Access app with the same error.
Apple has already announced that this first ‘minor’ update will bring its AI features, including most significantly Writing Tools. Although those have been in beta-testing for almost as long as 15.0, in terms of changes, the step from 15.0 will in many ways be greater than that from 14.6 to 15.0. However, that only applies to Apple silicon Macs that support AI.
Previously:
- Group Container Names in Sequoia
- Apple Maps in Sequoia and iOS 18
- Managing the Home Screen Using iPhone Mirroring
- Sequoia Screen Recording Prompts and the Persistent Content Capture Entitlement
- Safari Distraction Control
- Apple Intelligence Privacy Dark Patterns
- Apple Passwords App in Sequoia and iOS 18
- Safari 18 Announced
- macOS 15 Sequoia Public Beta
- Sequoia Finally Addresses Notification Center Privacy
- Sequoia Removes Gatekeeper Contextual Menu Override
- Keyboard Shortcut for Contextual Menus in Sequoia
- Using Apple Accounts With macOS Virtual Machines
- Window Tiling and Snapping in Sequoia
- macOS 15 Sequoia Announced
- macOS 14 Sonoma
Update (2024-09-17): See also: Hacker News.
Wait so another year of improvements coming to photos for my cellular phone and none of these improvements are on the computer I edit, proof and organize the photos?
As of macOS Sequoia, Keychain Access.app is in the following location:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Keychain Access.app
One of the unannounced features in macOS Sequoia is, for many who use iCloud Drive, one of its most important, as this upgrade introduces the ability to pin files and folders to ensure they remain downloaded and don’t get evicted.
With iPhone Mirroring on macOS Sequoia, you can use your iPhone from your Mac. Combine it with remote inspection from Safari, and now it’s easier than ever to test and debug websites on iOS using Web Inspector.
[…]
macOS Sequoia adds support for opening links directly in web apps. Now, when a user clicks a link, if it matches the
scopeof a web app, that link will open in the web app instead of their default web browser.[…]
Now users can personalize web apps on Mac with Safari Web Extensions and Content Blockers.
For some reason, Apple chose not to support app extensions in Safari 18 web apps.
With macOS Sequoia now released, there are again new features that aren’t available to Intel Mac owners.
Does macOS Sequoia no longer accept global keyboard shortcuts with an option shift modifier, like (⌥ ⇧ 2) ? I can’t seem to get it to work anymore using RegisterEventHotkey…
The iPhone Mirroring window defaults to “Actual Size”, but it really isn’t (at least for me). I’d estimate it is about 80% of my actual iPhone’s screen size, and is simply too small. The “Larger” view option is usable.
Update (2024-09-19): Shottr (Reddit):
Starting with macOS Sequoia, Apple does not allow global hotkeys where Option or Shift+Option are the only modifiers.
If you have an Opt+Letter hotkey, it'll stop working after you update macOS. Changing hotkey to Ctrl+Letter will help.
This was an intentional change in macOS Sequoia to limit the ability of key-logging malware to observe keys in other applications. The issue of concern was that shift+option can be used to generate alternate characters in passwords, such as Ø (shift-option-O).
This doesn’t make sense to me since most of the password characters would not use those modifiers, anyway.
Tyler Hall has screenshots of Sequoia’s notifications of extensions being added. Oddly, the spacing and use of smart quotes are inconsistent. [Update (2024-09-21): It’s a parody that gets increasingly ridiculous.]
Our experiences with macOS 15 so far are not very good. Networking is flaky, many apps crash a lot, Apples developer tools (Xcode 16) are still highly unstable.
MacOS 15 total fail in networking. VPNs not working anymore or something they disconnect without any reason, VMs are not working anymore using Shared Networking (@UTMapp). Sometimes DHCP is simply refusing to provide IP
My M1 MacBook Pro - logged out and sleeping - drained its battery completely over night, not connected to any other devices. Sequoia bug?
In this article, we’ve selected 50 new features and lesser-known changes that are worth checking out if you’re upgrading.
See also: John Voorhees’s review and the comments at Mac Power Users Talk.
Previously:
Update (2024-09-20): Matt Ronge:
I’m so sick of Apple treating us like children. Look at this nonsense that pops when you launch one of our apps on MacOS Sequoia.
Macs are power tools, let us use them as such!
Would you mind to tell me what updated? Including a file path?
I did not update anything, who did it? What did you update … “Apple Inc.”?!? Even if this is legitimate, it’s not like that’s a single product company.
Now if users turn on the option in the Mac App Store, larger apps will automatically download to a nominated location instead of straight into the regular Applications folder. Specifically, if an app is larger than 1GB, it will download to that external drive.
Update (2024-09-23): Gabriel Zachmann:
I have received reports that my screensaver is not working under macOS 15. In particular, it seems like it can't access its settings, using ScreenSaverDefaults[…]
You should definitely submit a bug to Apple. You can reference FB13444225, which is my report of the bug that causes
ScreenSaverViewsto not be removed after the screensaver stops, and they keep running after the screensaver starts up again, so they keep multiplying.
After updating to Sequoia my file downloading process in safari is broken.
it will initiate the process but it will not download any further. When you click on open finder message will say cannot move file
Matthias Gansrigler also doesn’t understand how the keyboard shortcut restrictions really protect users:
That’s sadly something that’s becoming more and more routine at Apple: punish developers that adhere to the sandbox and Mac App Store rules, for no good reason.
[…]
Apple’s own software is exempt from this restriction, as you can see in this screenshot of System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, where I could set it up just fine. Why this matters? Consistency. Users expect that if it works in Apple’s software, it should also work in other apps they use.
Update (2024-09-25): Panic:
Nova users, if you’re getting “This file cannot be opened” errors after updating to macOS Sequoia, please reboot your Mac. There is an issue with the update process to macOS Sequoia which prevents Nova from generating file bookmarks until after a reboot.
Really don’t like the change in Messages on Sequoia/iOS 18 to turn links in the text field into previews and masking their URLs, leaving all the tracking identifiers and YouTube timecodes. On macOS you get a menu item to turn it back into text, but then the receiver doesn’t get a link preview either.
macOS 15 upgrade managed to delete my local Photos library. Since I don't have iCloud Photos enabled on that mac, all local photos are gone now. well.
Photos now allows one to go from a specific photo to that photo as seen in an album, which also shows what albums it’s in.
This is something I’ve wanted for years.
Update (2024-10-07): Norbert Doerner:
And another very serious bug in macOS 15 “sequoia”.
The Apple NTFS driver is unable to traverse a volume using
opendir(); The very first call toreaddir()will often returnNULL, and thus failing to read the contents of that folder, even if the folder is NOT empty. Also, thechild->d_typevalue is often0for files, which is so wrong.
Update (2024-10-10): Alliumcepa:
Following the upgrade from Sonoma to Sequoia, my external mouse is drifting. This only happens with the cursor over the external monitors, which are connected through a docking station. […] I have tried with a trackpad and 3 other mice. The issue appears to be consistent across the bluetooth connection for pointers.
Update (2024-10-15): Darren Allan (via Ric Ford):
If you’ve run into issues with macOS Sequoia, you’ve come to the right place: in this article, we’ve outlined the most common problems Mac users are coming up against, as well as potential cures for these ailments.
Update (2024-10-22): Howard Oakley:
This article guides you around the volumes and directories that compose the boot volume group in macOS 15 Sequoia.
18 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
> So far (knock on wood), it seems like Sequoia breaks less stuff than other recent major releases.
I went straight from 14.something to the 18.1 beta. I got a few glitches, and a concerning amount of “this app wants to see network devices” dialogs (unclear what that means, whether there’s a policy change, etc.).
But mostly smooth sailing so far, with one surprising exception: attaching files in Outlook is broken. It just silently fails.
Firewall seems broken a bit for me: in network > Firewall > options, there are some entries that cannot be removed or edited (no ↕️ next to allow/block)
@aomame Maybe Apple is not aware of the changes made to the configuration settings of the Firewall that other Apple documented in the macOS Sequoia release notes.
>Sören, that message seems to be triggered when an app uses Bonjour to detect things on the LAN.
Yeah, I know.
I dug a little further, and it seems they've only ported this from iOS to macOS this year? https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/663858 That would explain why I'm getting the messages _now_.
I had incorrectly thought macOS already had this (and was either resetting it, or further restricting it).
I don't generally object to restricting app access to potentially privacy-relevant information, but leaving aside the tricky alert fatigue aspect (and Apple having previously made an ad that poked fun at this with Vista), , having apps suddenly show alerts without much explanation is a poor on-boarding experience. Sequoia should've instead shipped with a "Welcome to macOS Sequoia! Your Mac is now making using apps even safer by preventing apps from finding and communicating with devices on your local network. The following apps would like to…" yadda yadda window.
TCC first shipped in OS X Mountain Lion, twelve years ago. They should have figured out a better UX by now instead of one that just trains you to react "sigh… allow, I guess".
Personally I am looking forward to hearing about any "under the hood" and "command line" changes to Sequoia. Those are the areas that are most interesting to me.
On the GUI side, everything is working fine for me with Sequoia, although it annoys me that I still can't set a wallpaper specifically for the login screen (as I sometimes have wallpapers set under my user account that I don't want to appear on the login screen).
Little Snitch folks report a DNS proxy bypass bug since at least 14.5 Sonoma.
People who have upgraded: how effective is iPhone Mirroring at deduplicating notifications? I have this concern that I'll get two notifications for every app that's available on both platforms — one from the native Mac app, and then a second later a mirrored iPhone one.
I'm 100% sure Apple must have addressed this for iMessage, and 90% confident they should have something for email. Not so sure about other apps, though, especially when their IDs don't match, or when the notification content is slightly different across platforms, as is the case with OmniFocus.
The “funniest” aspect of the Sequoia mess is that half the Mac-enthusiast blogs and websites bemoaned — this year as every year — the small scope of the upgrade and the lack of changes.
Every year, half the sites of record, including serious publications, point out that the updates are unimpressive and lack new features. And every year, it transpires after release that Apple has been doing major restructuring work in the foundation layers, resulting in breakage that somehow nobody noticed over the summer and did not qualify for the reviews.
Apple is working hard — possibly on chasing its own tail — and every macOS update for the past few years has been massive in some way or other. Also, Apple is working poorly, failing to communicate important changes and to give interested developers an opportunity to notice or test them.
Apple is overdue for a process upgrade (and a change in attitude), but the “Mac press” seems to be equally guilty of negligence. A little less “this is the most personal release of [OS name], ever”, please, and a little more technical work…
>having apps suddenly show alerts without much explanation is a poor on-boarding experience
Agreed, the default message could be so much better. But apps can improve the message by setting NSLocalNetworkUsageDescription in their Info.plist.
iPhone Mirroring is *completely* inaccessible with VoiceOver. This is your regular reminder that when Apple is working on accessibility, they absolutely do care about the bloody ROI, on Mac.
@Michael Tsai It's particularly indefensible because audio comes over the stream, so it's really just a matter of special-casing keyboard input while the app has focus so the keyboard commands for VoiceOver go through to the remote iPhone. I'll leave it on though because at least notifications are accessible, even though I can't action them. But still a real disappointment for an initial release (I've not yet tested the .1 beta 4 version myself yet).
> Tyler Hall has screenshots of Sequoia’s notifications of extensions being added. Oddly, the spacing and use of smart quotes are inconsistent.
The first couple fooled me, but by the end it's clear these are all jokes (for now...)
More stupid 'features': in the open/save dialogue, if you have some less common suffix, sequoia will add a different suffix, with no option to turn off.
https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/16969
https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/sublime-text-started-adding-a-s-to-new-files-very-annoying/73628
to name a few reports
Am I missing a way to disable the new Move & Resize shortcuts? They're useful, sure, but they kill my muscle memory, and I already have Moom, _and_ they seem to override app shortcuts.
I can't seem to find them in System Settings.
@Sören You can add custom keyboard shortcuts in System Settings to override the commands, and then the original shortcuts will be free for third-party apps. It’s awkward, though, because you have to come up with key combinations that don’t conflict with anything else.
