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

iOS 18

Apple Expected to Release iOS 18.3 Next Week With These New Features

Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones. Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3. Notification Summary Changes Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries Apple Intelligence...
iOS 18

5 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.3

Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes. While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Generic iOS 18

iOS 18.4 Beta Coming Soon With These New Features for Your iPhone

Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner. Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages. Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far. Apple Intelligence for Siri Siri ...
Apple Pay Walmart Feature

Walmart Stands Firm on Why It Doesn't Accept Apple Pay in the U.S.

Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today. A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
apple tv 4k new orange

New Apple TV Launching This Year With These New Features

Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device. The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
iOS 18

Here Are Apple's Full Release Notes for iOS 18.3

Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes. The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
iPhone 17 Pro Dual Tone Horizontal Single Feature

Kuo: iPhone 17 Models Won't Have Smaller Dynamic Island

Friday January 24, 2025 9:09 am PST by
The upcoming iPhone 17 models that Apple plans to release this year will not feature a smaller Dynamic Island, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today. On social media, he said that he is expecting the size of the Dynamic Island to remain "largely unchanged" across the iPhone 17 lineup. His statement is contrary to prior rumors that we've heard about planned changes for the iPhone 17 models. ...
iPhone 16 Apple Store Levels

Gurman: Apple Stores Receiving 'Merchandise' Updates Next Week

Saturday January 25, 2025 5:07 pm PST by
Apple's retail stores will be rolling out "merchandise/floor marketing updates" next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman did not explicitly say if the store updates are related to any upcoming product announcements, but he did mention that next week is around the time that Apple rolls out its annual Black Unity watch band for the Apple Watch. In each of the past four years, ...
apple power beats pro 2

Apple's First Product Announcement of 2025 is Imminent

Thursday January 23, 2025 2:48 pm PST by
It's also time for Apple's first product announcement of the year. Last year, Apple said it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and the wireless earbuds are expected to launch very soon. Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code In his Power On newsletter last weekend, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the...

Top Rated Comments

srbNYC Avatar
12 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
12 months ago
Yay! More emoji. Truly some stellar developers working at Apple.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RumorChaser Avatar
12 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
12 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
12 months ago
Still waiting for a Music widget....

Attachment Image
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ajkoeltz Avatar
12 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)