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macOS 26 (Tahoe) is now available as a public beta in GitHub Actions #13008
Description
Breaking changes
macOS-26 Tahoe is now available for all GitHub Actions.
You can use the macos-26 image label in your YAML to select this image.
macOS-26 Apple Silicon
jobs:
job:
runs-on: macos-26
jobs:
job:
runs-on: macos-26-xlarge
The image is marked as beta for now. It means some software can be unstable on the new platform. Also, there could be queueing issues as the capacity will be balanced only throughout the next weeks.
Target date
Thursday, September 11, 2025
The motivation for the changes
The purpose of a Beta is to collect feedback on an image before it is released to GA. The goal of a Beta is to identify and fix any potential issues that exist on that image.
Possible impact
N/A
Software difference between macOS-15 and macOS-26
| Tool name | macOS 15 (Apple Silicon) | macOS 26 (Apple Silicon) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xcode |
|
|
Base Xcode major release for macOS-26 is Xcode 26 |
| Xcode CLT | 16.* | 26.* | Default Xcode changed to 26.0 |
| Clang/LLVM (Xcode) | 16.* | 17.* | Default Xcode changed to 26.0 |
| Clang/LLVM (Homebrew) | 18.* | 20.* | The most recent version is installed |
| GCC |
|
|
Out of software support policy version was removed |
| Go (toolcache) |
|
|
The most recent versions are installed |
| Node.js (default) | 22.* | 24.* | The most recent version is installed |
| Node.js (toolcache) |
|
|
The most recent versions are installed |
| NPM | 10.* | 11.* | Version associated with Node.js 24 is installed |
| OpenSSL | 1.1.* | 3.* | The most recent version is installed |
| Ruby (default) | 3.3.* | 3.4.* | The most recent version is installed |
| Ruby (toolcache) |
|
|
EOL version removed |
| Az PowerShell | 12.5.* | 14.3.* | The most recent version is installed |
| Android NDK |
|
|
EOL version removed |
Platforms affected
- Azure DevOps
- GitHub Actions
Runner images affected
- Ubuntu 22.04
- Ubuntu 24.04
- macOS 13
- macOS 13 Arm64
- macOS 14
- macOS 14 Arm64
- macOS 15
- macOS 15 Arm64
- macOS 26 Arm64
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Server 2022
- Windows Server 2025
Mitigation ways
Please report any problems with the new image to this repository.
Activity
smarkars commentedon Sep 13, 2025
Hi When will this be available in Azure DevOps?
erik-bershel commentedon Sep 13, 2025
We don't have a specific date for the Azure DevOps release at the moment. As soon as we have some confirmed information, we will announce it separately. Related issue: #8971
waterskier2007 commentedon Sep 15, 2025
Will these instances have Apple Intelligence enabled and the required language model data downloaded?
workflows/display-github-context: support macos-26
jared-ca commentedon Sep 17, 2025
In Azure DevOps
macos-latestis now two major OS versions behind.macos-15is still technically in preview and there are no Apple Silicon image available despite the architecture change happening almost 5 years ago.It would be better if Microsoft just dropped MacOS from DevOps rather than pretend it's supported, that would at least allow us to cut our losses and move over to GitHub.
erik-bershel commentedon Sep 17, 2025
This is purely a documentation issue. ADO uses
macos-15asmacos-latest, and as far as I know, it was released to GA some time ago. I'll report this to the ADO developers so they can check their documentation.erik-bershel commentedon Sep 17, 2025
We haven't tested it. Neither the fact nor the technical feasibility of this. It would be great if you could verify this and submit a request to have it enabled if it's not. While the image is in beta, making these kinds of changes will be easiest.
ArielBarsheshetIS commentedon Sep 21, 2025
Hey, this version contains Xcode 26 beta 7. Is there a plan for when to release a runner with the stable Xcode 26 version (released on 15.9)?
27 remaining items
DrBeak1 commentedon Jan 7, 2026
@erik-bershel any idea when we can expect the
macos-26-largerunner to be added? Similar to @duaneking , the default system isn't big enough andxlargeis overkill (size and pricing).duaneking commentedon Jan 7, 2026
I just wish I could get a big enough system for our needs to actually work; What I'm seeing isn't meeting our needs. Not a SINGLE SYSTEM listed at https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/runners/larger-runners for Mac currently meets the build requirements for chromium.
erik-bershel commentedon Jan 8, 2026
We're working on it. We'll have it ready before Xcode 26.3 releases.
We weren't originally planning to add an Intel-based image, but it's already on our to-do list. I think the image will be ready closer to GA. I can't give any exact deadlines - we need to resolve several technical issues and synchronize between platforms.
erik-bershel commentedon Jan 8, 2026
Provide exact figures, please. 🥺
duaneking commentedon Jan 8, 2026
I need a Mac runner with:
a 1tb hd so I have space for the gsync fetch/sync/siso bs being used by Google to artificially limit who is allowed to build chromium via the absolutely terrible Gclient/GN/siso build wrapper bs. If I was forced to, I might be able to do with a 500 GB one, but I would feel more hesitant about that. I know I'm going to use at least 400 GB for my build, and I want some slack for the dependencies and operating system so I don't fill up the hard drive.
It needs to have all the utilities required to sign binaries installed from places like digicert, etc. Or at least support the actions.
At least 128 GB of RAM so I can actually reliably link the final binary. I've had builds fail with only 64gb.
The correct version of the supported build chain for Xcode etc installed and activated. This is also a big deal. You can't build on Mac without it.
A modern ARM64 CPU with as many cores as possible that the build itself doesn't take 17 hours like it did on my very first build.
A fast network connection that doesn't write every outgoing git pull request to Google through the same GitHub ip because GitHub is consistently blocked at random times because all usage for all of the chrome system are being seen as from one IP and one person when it's run from GitHub infrastructure because of their bad network set up; this is a regression in GitHub because it didn't used to happen last year, and that is harming my ability to get builds done because it doesn't allow me to fetch or sync the source code using Gsync when it happens. All pipelines just fail because they can't get the source code from Google. I have open tickets on this and GitHub doesn't care about this regression, even though they have been explicitly informed that it's harming operations.
erik-bershel commentedon Jan 8, 2026
Wow! That's a lot. 😅
Unfortunately, I'm not sure we'll be able to provide something like this right now. But I'll pass the information on to the product managers about the need.
Jon889 commentedon Feb 4, 2026
Is there a timeline for adding this to Azure Devops, as general availability rather than preview? With the announcement yesterday that the deadline for using the iOS 26 SDK being April 28th, we are looking to plan our upgrade, currently we are stuck on macOS 14 with Xcode 16.1 due to performance problems with the Intel macOS 15 runners, so we need Apple Silicon to be able to do this.
erik-bershel commentedon Feb 4, 2026
Good question. I'll ask my colleagues from ADO.
theblixguy commentedon Feb 18, 2026
Xcode 26.4 beta now requires Tahoe - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-26_4-release-notes
@erik-bershel Do you know when macOS 26 will become generally available?
Jon889 commentedon Feb 18, 2026
@erik-bershel Did you manage to find this out? We are really struggling on the Intel Macs
erik-bershel commentedon Feb 18, 2026
Nothing to share unfortunately. 😞 ADO is working on incorporating.
Almost the same here. Our target is late February / early March, but depends on Xcode 26.4 behavior in general, so no promises.
erik-bershel commentedon Feb 26, 2026
Closing due to release: #13739