Apple Seeds macOS Sonoma 14.4 Beta 5 to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming macOS Sonoma 14.4 update to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a week after the release of the fourth beta.

sonoma desktop wwdc
Registered developers can opt-in to the beta through the Software Update section of the System Settings app. Note that an Apple ID associated with an Apple Developer account is required to get the beta.

macOS Sonoma 14.4 introduces some of the features in the iOS 17.4 beta, such as new emoji characters. We don't know what Mac-specific features are included, and little else was found in the betas so far.

Related Forum: macOS Sonoma

Popular Stories

cook trump

Trump Responds to Apple Keeping Diversity Policies

Wednesday February 26, 2025 6:32 am PST by
In an all-caps post on Truth Social today, U.S. President Donald Trump said Apple should fully end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. Tim Cook meeting with President Trump in 2017 "APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM," he wrote. Trump's post comes one day after Apple held its annual shareholders meeting, during which a majority of...
iOS 18

Apple Says iOS 18.4 Will Be Released in April With These New Features

Wednesday February 26, 2025 7:15 am PST by
In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 18.4 will be released in April. From the Apple News+ Food announcement:Coming with iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, Apple News+ subscribers will have access to Apple News+ Food, a new section that will feature tens of thousands of recipes — as well as stories about restaurants, healthy eating, kitchen essentials, and more — from the...
apple watch ultra snow

6 Features Coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3

Tuesday February 25, 2025 9:00 am PST by
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements. While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way. By the time the ...
iPhone Fold Vertical Feature

Apple's 2026 Foldable iPhone Has No Visible Display Crease – Report

Tuesday February 25, 2025 2:58 am PST by
Apple is making significant headway on its long-rumored foldable iPhone, with a new report suggesting the company has achieved a major breakthrough by effectively eliminating the screen crease that plagues current foldable devices. According to Korean publication ETNews, Apple is finalizing its component suppliers for the foldable iPhone, with the selection process expected to be completed...
trump iphone dictation issue

Apple Fixing 'Trump' Dictation Processing Bug

Tuesday February 25, 2025 1:18 pm PST by
Multiple iPhone owners today noticed a pronunciation processing issue that causes the word "Trump" to momentarily show up when using dictation to send a message with the word "racist." In some cases, when speaking the word racist through the iPhone's built-in dictation feature, the iPhone briefly interprets the spoken word as "Trump" and "Trump" text shows up in the Messages app before being ...
airpods pro purple

Here's When AirPods Pro 3 Are Rumored to Launch

Monday February 24, 2025 9:14 am PST by
According to a post on X today from a leaker known as Kosutami, Apple plans to launch AirPods Pro 3 in May or June this year. The leaker also claimed that an AirTag 2 will launch around the same time. Kosutami is best known as a collector of prototype Apple hardware, but they have occasionally shared accurate information about Apple's future product plans. For example, they accurately...
airtag orange

AirTag 2 Rumored to Launch in May or June With These New Features

Monday February 24, 2025 6:11 am PST by
Apple plans to launch a second-generation AirTag in May or June this year, according to a post today from a leaker known as Kosutami. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously reported that a new AirTag would be released in mid-2025. May or June would align with that timeframe. Below, we recap three new features rumored for the AirTag 2: With a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip, the...
ios 18 4 carplay

iOS 18.4 Includes a Small But Useful Change for CarPlay

Sunday February 23, 2025 2:23 pm PST by
The first beta of iOS 18.4 is now available, and it includes a small but useful change for CarPlay. As we noted in our list of iOS 18.4 features, CarPlay now shows a third row of icons, up from two rows previously. However, this change is only visible in vehicles with a larger center display. For example, a MacRumors Forums member noticed the change in a Toyota Tundra, which can be equipped...

Top Rated Comments

srbNYC Avatar
13 months ago

Yay! More emoji. Truly some stellar developers working at Apple.
How many times do folks have to note that emoji don't come from Apple? They're part of Unicode, and Apple just enables them for their devices.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
acader Avatar
13 months ago
Yay! More emoji. Truly some stellar developers working at Apple.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RumorChaser Avatar
13 months ago

Not to mention that late patch releases for an update are most likely to only contain spot bug fixes, not new features, or functionality, or major refactors/pieces of work/etc. Looking at the release notes posted ('https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-seeds-macos-sonoma-14-4-beta-5-to-developers.2420566/post-32968076') above we can see this beta 5 follows that expectation.
Well, this release (14.4) drops a few drivers that were used by Macs unsupported by Sonoma. I like to call that Apple's spring cleaning. They tend to do driver removals around this time. This year is the keyboard driver used by Macbooks 2015-2017. So folks using OCLP to install Sonoma will need to get a new version OCLP or their keyboard stops working. Last year's 13.3 broke legacy Metal support, also requiring some patching. Of course the release notes won't include them, because Apple likes to keep things a secret unless they have to disclose something, and because those Macs are unsupported to begin.

In addition, if you pay attention to the release notes of Xcode, Apple likes to do internal API refactoring with this release. Some system dylib adds/removes a few functions here and there. So if you copied a system application from 14.4 to 14.3, they may refuse to run, because they expected a new API, whereas if you copied from 14.3 to 14.2 they should run fine.


Apple still have to make them for their devices though (I understand and agree with what you’re saying, you’re just implying that Unicode has already made the emojis for Apple, and Apple has to just ‘enable’ them...)
Apple graphics designers have to make the icons that gets put into the font library. Unicode only defines the codepoint and what the icon should be in text, but actual graphics design is up to the vendor to design. That's why you have different water pistol icons in Android/Windows/MacOS. And people can't just rip the Mac icons out and put it in their app on another platform because it is actually copyrighted by Apple. It is completely incorrect to say Unicode makes the icons for Apple because Unicode does not make them.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Realityck Avatar
13 months ago

Still waiting for a Music widget....
If we say not in MacOS 14.4, will you at least try eating something again? :D
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ajkoeltz Avatar
13 months ago
Still waiting for a Music widget....

Attachment Image
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ajkoeltz Avatar
13 months ago

If we say not in MacOS 14.4, will you at least try eating something again? :D
I make no guarantees. ?
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)