MacOS Sonoma

macOS Sonoma (version 14) is the twentieth major release of macOS, Apple's operating system for Mac computers. The successor to macOS Ventura, it was announced at WWDC 2023 on June 5, 2023, and released on September 26, 2023. It is named after the wine region located in California's Sonoma County.
macOS Sonoma was succeeded by macOS Sequoia, which was released on September 16, 2024.
The first developer beta was released on June 5, 2023, and macOS Sonoma entered public beta on July 11, 2023.
macOS Sonoma is the final version of macOS that supports the 2018–2019 MacBook Air, as its successor, macOS Sequoia, drops support for those models.
macOS Sonoma includes a number of new features and improvements, mainly focused on productivity and creativity:
Alongside macOS Sonoma, Apple announced developer tools for porting Windows games to macOS. The Game Porting Toolkit (GPTK), derived from Wine and Crossover and released in beta, translates Windows application programming interface (API) calls to equivalent macOS APIs, allowing developers to run unmodified versions of their x86 Windows DirectX games on macOS. Mac users have been able to use the Game Porting Toolkit to run a number of DirectX 12 games; tech news outlets have compared the tool to Valve Corporation's Proton compatibility layer for Linux. Apple also released a Metal Shader Converter that converts shaders to Apple's Metal graphics API.
A DigitalFoundry review of the first beta of Game Porting Toolkit found it "impressive", with few graphical glitches and full support for console controllers instead of the keyboard, though they found that frame rates were around half of what they would be on Windows, and that many games were not supported. During the Sonoma beta, updates to the Game Porting Toolkit brought support for 32-bit games and around 20% better performance.
Writing for AppleInsider and iMore, reporter Peter Cohen said that Game Mode and the Game Porting Toolkit are improvements but do not indicate the kind of "sea change" in Apple's priorities and culture that are needed to build a true Mac gaming ecosystem. Cohen says that the problem with Mac gaming is not in the ability to port games, but in a lack of a "business case" for game publishers to do so, due to the Mac's low market share, the cost of supporting a port, and uncertain demand for Mac games when many Mac users also own consoles or gaming PCs. YouTuber Snazzy Labs issued similar criticisms, which journalist John Siracusa agreed with.
macOS Sonoma supports Macs with Apple silicon and Intel's Xeon-W and 8th-generation Coffee Lake/Amber Lake chips or later, and drops support for various models released in 2017, officially marking the end of support for Macs without Retina display and the 12-inch MacBook. The 2019 iMac is the only Sonoma-supported Intel Mac that lacks a T2 chip.
Mac models that support macOS Sonoma are as follows.
By using patch tools such as OpenCore Legacy Patcher, macOS Sonoma can be unofficially installed on earlier models that are officially unsupported. Such models date back to the 2008 MacBook Pro and 2007 iMac.
According to an Ars Technica analysis, 2016 and 2017 Macs received on average six years of updates, lower than the seven to eight years of updates received by Intel Macs released from 2009 to 2015.
The first developer beta of macOS Sonoma was released on Monday, June 5, 2023. The Sonoma developer beta was the first to be available to anyone with a free Apple Developer account, without needing a developer subscription. The full release was released on September 26, 2023.
See Apple's official release notes, and official security update contents.