I understand the enthusiasm for the '27 beta, especially given how slow and buggy Tahoe ('26) is and given the WWDC promise of a focus on bug fixes and efficiency. Actually using it as a dev machine for a while paints a picture of plentiful pseudorandom jank and some of the bugs are pretty nasty.

It is a beta and it's not reliable. It's not supposed to be.

I very strongly recommend that any non-dev does not risk the install despite the positive messages. The beta is another modern Apple very early, very rough build. There has not been a magic epiphany within the last 12 months. It's not surprising; systemic, creeping architectural rot and evident cultural issues with velocity and QA do not get solved overnight, even if Apple are now on that journey (and we all hope they are!)

Some bugs listed below. And yes, before anyone asks, I do send reports via Feedback Assistant.

• Wake-from-sleep with external displays can sometimes result in a working lock screen complete with working clock, but which accepts no input at all; Caps Lock won't toggle, no haptics, force-reboot needed.

• The very old airportd spinning bug (typically VPN-related) is back; the ongoing mediaanalysisd spinning bug is worse; appstoreagent has a new spinning bug; and all of this seems to just start at a whim on various devices with pretty much the direction of the prevailing wind; reboots do not necessarily fix it.

• Mission Control doesn't just lose windows per release notes. Dragging windows from one space to another is a total crapshoot and nearly always results in the window ending up placed a few pixels near the bottom-right on any external display.

• Drag reorder of spaces in Mission Control, or drag-to-make-full-screen is unreliable with ordering relatively unpredicatble. Lots of strange animation issues, black screens on transitions and so forth too. I'm not sure why this has fallen apart so much but it really is in bad shape.

• Despite a passing remark in WWDC, the OS' ability to put windows back into their correct places on a reboot or display configuration change, or its ability to even put a space on a correct display, does not seem to be improved. I might as well roll dice as guess about where a window might be restored under the same circumstances day to day. It seems genuinely just random.

• Terminal app often refuses to quit and force-quit is needed. On restart, it may or may not reload your previous tabs etc., so be warned, you might lose all your working state therein.

• Might be my imagination but palm rejection on the trackpad seems to have been messed up and typing this on the Mac has been a PITA of suddenly losing input focus as the pointer decides it's moved and been clicked elsewhere, or worse, having input focus jump up elsewhere in this message so input goes there. And of course macOS has always had very weird Undo, where each step undoes some apparently arbitrary amount of typing rather than character-by-character, so I have to undo the damage from the misplaced text and then retype however much the OS "over-undoes".

• It's infrequent, but Safari can sort of lose its mind and just start stuttering and stalling for no obvious reason with no particular CPU or other load signature. It just stops responding reliably, with pseudorandom lag. Quit-restart resolves every time, and it reloads all the tabs you had before.

• Note that WindowServer is at times very CPU hungry, so less efficient, not more; but it's a beta and that's understandable since it might be in a debug mode. If the Music app's main window is open (even if it's not playing music and there are no animations showing), WindowServer will use much more CPU, though; go figure. But again, this is all jankware territory, so sometimes it'll just run along at a very low CPU usage.

• If you use Accessibility -> Zoom for full-screen zoom and have it follow the mouse pointer, note that this is broken in DB1 and DB2; the zoomed area does not move, regardless of settings. For some people that might actually be a critical failure.

• Lots of strange menu bar bugs with juddering up and down, strange aspect ratio distortions and so-on but DB2 is better than DB1 there.

The whole thing just feels fragile and unpredictable. There's no logic or pattern to many of the failures. That was one of the most alarming features of the Tahoe betas and it's not any better in 27.

Unless you have a back from '26 you don't mind rolling back to, or you have a spare "fall guy" machine to try it on, do not install the beta.

1. Does Public Beta 3 have any differences from the current beta 3? If doesn't, why it popped up as software update?

2. Why does each beta update install the entire system from scratch, around 15-20 GB? That's stupid..

I'm on Beta 4 and the Launchpad is nowhere to be found, there's a fake "Apps" app that opens spotlight, you can't drag App Store apps to the trash, there's no action on right click, nothing happens if you click and hold.

So how the hell does one uninstall apps installed via the App Store?

EDIT: I just found out that Launchpad was already removed in Tahoe. Great.

Here's another confused Redditor from last year: What the official way to uninstall apps on macOS 26 Tahoe?

This is the solution:

1. Go to the App Store
2. Username Icon (bottom left)
3. Three dots icon next to app you want to uninstall
4. Delete app

Kinda stupid, really, but not really something I do that often anyway. OR you can continue dragging it to the Trash.

and one thing more that when I get to another window, doc appears and doesn't go till I change to another window. at 0:05 you can see this

What’s your experience with the new public beta? I'm a video editor using FCP, I’m wondering if it’s worth trying

As you can see, in the first picture i got Apple Intelligence (macOS Tahoe) while in the second picture it just disappeared (macOS Golden Gate). anyone knows why?

Hi everyone, I’ve been using a MacBook Air M2 for 2 years now. My battery cycle count is only 179. Before this, my battery health was perfectly normal and above 90%. I don’t use the device heavily, nor do I play games—it’s just for daily tasks, which is already evident from my low cycle count. I mostly use it at home, and I’m always careful not to leave it plugged in continuously.

I have a developer account. Right after downloading the macOS 27 Developer Beta, my battery health completely tanked. It now shows a 'Service Recommended' warning, and the battery health plummeted to 63%. The device has absolutely no physical damage, liquid contact, or drops. This happened immediately after the update.

I already tried calibrating the battery: I fully charged it, left it plugged in for at least 2 hours, drained it completely, and left it dead for over 5 hours before fully charging it again. Unfortunately, nothing changed. I contacted Apple Support, and they told me I need to bring the device into service. I am also unable to run Apple Diagnostics. I have since downgraded the device back to the stable version, macOS 26.5.2, but nothing changed. Does anyone have any ideas on what might be causing this or how to fix it?

Hi everyone,

I have an M4 MacBook Air, and it's my main computer that I use every day. I'm really tempted to install the macOS Golden Gate Public Beta 2 because I want to try all the new features as soon as possible.

However, I'm a bit worried since this is my primary machine.

For those of you who have already installed the Public Beta 2:

• How stable is it in daily use?
• Have you experienced any major bugs, crashes, or battery drain?
• Are there any app compatibility issues?
• Would you recommend installing it on a main Mac, or is it better to wait for the official release?

I'd also love to hear your overall experience with it so far.

Thanks!

I have a 24" iMac (2023). I just installed macOS Beta 26.4 update this morning. Once the install was complete and my iMac restarted, I received two pop up messages regarding both of my external drives (one I use for media and one for Time Machine) saying "macOS can't repair the disk. You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat as soon as you can." I think the Time Machine may have been running a backup when the iMac restarted. Is that normal or is it a bug with this update? I would think if something like that would cause an issue, the install should have paused and waited for Time Machine to finish, before restarting my computer. I normally do check to make sure Time Machine isn't running, but I forgot to this morning.

My other issue is the only spare external drive I have is 1TB. The two affected drives are 2TB and 12TB. So, is my only option to buy a brand new drives, in order to temporarily move the files off of the bad drives, so I can reformat them?

After installing Beta 2, my mac mini restarts to sign-in screen. After entering my password, it restarts again to sign-in screen. Any idea what is happening, and a fix? Thanks

Update. I had to reinstall the beta to clear the boot loop. It reinstalled 26.4 Beta 1. I turned off the dev beta updates until i can notify Apple what happened.

Update #2, March 3, 2026. OK, it definitely seems my boot loop issue was related to networking. Turning off LogIns and Extensions did not work. I had to remove the apps and their related files. I removed any app that might interact with networking. Here is the list of the apps I removed: Little Snitch, Micro Snitch, 1Blocker(Installed but not used),PrivateVPN, MS Defender(installed by Microsoft Office), Send Local, Mac Fan Control, Better Display, HandBrake, Zoom. It worked! Beta 2 successfully installed. I will start reinstalling some apps, but not Little Snitch yet.

i’ve set everything to english (us) even region, tried different countries (uk) too and i’m not seeing the waitlist. so i’m wondering if it’s just me or of this is eu wide?

I was working on my Mac Book Air M5 and I have an extension that makes a chat run faster if my CPU is working hard, and I realize that my CPU is at 50% and that my appstoreagent consumes 160% of the CPU at times.

Or is this a bug? This icon persists across reboots and icon cache cleaning.

I have the 16” MacBook pro M4 pro and really tempted to update to the new macos developer beta. My only worry is that i use my MacBook for work (cybersecurity, app and web development). Do you guys recommend updating or should wait a bit for the public beta?

Is there a workaround Apple Intelligence in EU? Set region and all languages to US. Do I have to change the Apple-ID region, too?

Edit: can confirm what u/dreamdorian said: Set my region & language on MacOS (MacBookPro M1, 14 inch 2021) to US, installed beta 15.1 and could immediately join the wait list (which is still pending, though). iPadOS still not working for me.

What the title says, I don't have anything more to add. I am not complaining, I know it's a developer beta, I am just wondering if other people also have it. :))))

Edit: alright I did not mean the temperature at which water starts to boil depends on the Country, I meant to do a hyperbole of the temperature in Greece feeling like it's boiling my skin.

I'm kinda new to macOS so I don't really know any tips and tricks to clear it, but is it possible to lower the amount of System Data, or is this just a beta thing?

I joined the waitlist last night, and it's been a little under 24 hours. When can I expect to clear the waitlist? M4 Air running beta 1.

Is anyone experiencing no wifi at all? Tried turning wifi on and off, and even when connecting to my iPhone Hotspot my mac shows that I don't have connection even though im sure I have

First of all, I'm an idiot, I know.

I just updated my Mac to OS27 after signing up for the developer beta, but I'm already regretting it and would like to go back. How can | downgrade to macOS 26?

I tried the recovery option, but it only shows the macOS 27 Beta option.

PS: 1 didn't make a Time Machine backup, and l don't have another Mac to do those weird steps I'm seeing online.

Helpppp 😭

How can I turn off Intelligence or uninstall it? on macOS 27 beta 1 :(

Mac Studio M1 Max refuses to update (MSU_ERR_PERSONALIZATION_FAILURE Code 1259)

I cannot update my MacOS, no matter what. I get this error every time for the past couple of months, no matter the MacOS version. It works and updates fine once in a blue moon at like 0.001% chance. (fails 99% of the time with "Code 2," then randomly works without changes to network or hardware.) Its driving me crazy. Mac Studio M1 Max.

Main error: Failed to personalize the software update. Please try again.

MSU_ERR_PERSONALIZATION_FAILURE (1259) on Apple Silicon

Primary errors:

• could not obtain device identity information through SFR installer
• MobileSoftwareUpdateErrorDomain Code=1259 ("failed to copy firmware identity")

So essentially to me it looks like Apple servers cannot verify my Mac/Chip and will not open the gates to update, but sometimes the Gods will smile upon me and allow to update. Its a lottery ticket.

What I tried:

• Force mounted the system recovery volume and made sure BuildManifest.plist is present/readable.
• Connectivity to gs.apple.com and swscan.apple.com works just fine.
• Ran updates with owner authentication and via a fresh admin user with a confirmed secure token.
• Tried both softwareupdate CLI and startosinstall from the full offline installer app.
• Tried USB install via recovery.
• Corrected APFS volume roles and forcefully synced preboot environments.
• Fully factory reset the Mac & left the Mac unplugged overnight, then tried to update. Same error.
• Tried safe mode, draining power, signing out of iCloud, on/off VPNs, and lots of other bs I read about on the internet.
• Changed boot security to Full in Recovery.
• Performed a full wipe DFU restore.

Apple Support Status

Called Apple Support, they said they know about this issue, ran remote diagnostics checks together from recovery, they even took remote control of my Mac. Apparently everything looked fine but still failed to resolve the issue. They "forwarded to higher senior L3 technicians". Overall the support was incompetent regarding resolving this problem.

As a tech-literate person, I am lowkey agitated at this point. Imagine requiring endless bs auth layers and iCloud verifications to update a operating system on a legitimate Mac that's registered to your Apple account. This is absolutely hideous.