Apple Announces macOS Sonoma

Apple has announced the release of the latest version of macOS Sonoma at its annual WWDC in California.

The new macOS won’t be released to the public until the Fall (most likely October like previous versions of macOS) but members of the Apple Developer Program can already download and use the beta version with a public beta version available next month.

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macOS Sonoma Drops Most Intel Macs

macOS Sonoma succeeds macOS Ventura and will mainly only work on Apple Silicon Macs with the M1 or M2 chips although a few Intel Macs will still be supported.

macOS Sonoma will not work on the following Macs:

• 2017 MacBook Pro
• 2017 MacBook Air
• 2017 MacBook (12-Inch)
• 2107 iMac

There is however a way to install Sonoma on unsupported Macs using the OpenCore Legacy Patcher although this is an unofficial method not endorsed by Apple.

macOS Sonoma works on all of the following Macs:

• MacBook Pro: 2018 and later
• MacBook Air: 2018 and later
• Mac mini: 2018 and later
• iMac: 2019 and later
• iMac Pro: 2017
• Mac Studio: 2022 and later
• Mac Pro: 2019 and later

macOS Sonoma Features

The highlights of new features in macOS Sonoma are:

• New interactive Desktop widgets that blend into your wallpaper and also work on iOS devices thanks to Continuity

• Presenter overlay so you can place yourself in front of any content they are sharing
• New “Reactions” feature allow people to express feelings during presentations and video sessions
• Improved screen sharing to make it easier to share screens on a Mac
• Safari updates with greater tracking protection in Private Mode and profiles for Work, Personal and other use

• Apple TV style screensavers which show spectacular moving aerial images of worldwide locations
• Improvements to Messages and Safari
• New Game Mode that optimizes CPU and GPU for gaming that provides faster and smoother frame rates although this will only benefit games that work natively on a Mac not for playing Windows only games on a Mac.

Game Mode also lowers audio latency when using Air Pods with a Mac and reduces latency when connecting gaming controllers to a Mac.

Along with the Game Mode feature, Apple also announced a new Game Porting Toolkit to enable developers to port Windows games to Mac more easily including those that rely on DirectX 12.

Some developers have already managed to port games such as Diablo 4 and Hogwarts Legacy to work on the beta versions of macOS Sonoma and if more developers take advantage of this feature, it could mean a lot more big games come to Mac in 2024.