Apple Seeds Sixth Beta of macOS Mojave to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]

[MacRumors]

Apple today seeded the sixth beta of an upcoming macOS Mojave update to developers for testing purposes, one week after releasing the fifth beta and two months after introducing the software at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

macOS Mojave introduces a new method of installing software updates, so after you've installed the first beta using the appropriate profile from the Developer Center, additional betas can be downloaded through opening up System Preferences and choosing the "Software Update" icon.

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Apple's macOS Mojave update introduces a systemwide Dark Mode, with Mojave users able to choose between a light theme or the new dark theme, which changes the color of the dock, menu bar, apps, and other elements. Dark Mode is accompanied by Dynamic Desktops, aka wallpapers that subtly change throughout the day. Additional wallpapers were introduced in the fourth and fifth betas.

Stacks, a new desktop organization system, keeps all of your desktop files neat and organized, while Finder has been enhanced with a Gallery View, a Sidebar, a revamped Quick Look option and Quick Actions, so you can do more in the Finder window than ever before.

Screenshots can now be edited using Markup tools and a new management options that also allow for easy screen recording, while Continuity camera, a new feature, allows you to import photos and document scans directly from an iPhone or iPad to the Mac.

The Apple News, Stocks, Home, and Voice Memos apps have been ported from iOS to macOS as part of a multiyear project Apple is working on to make it easier to bring iOS apps to Macs, and Apple has introduced several new privacy protections to keep your data safer than ever.

Apple is also making it harder for websites to track you with a range of new Safari tools, and it's also easier to make and store secure, hard-to-guess passwords for each and every website.

Apple has added an entirely revamped Mac App Store to macOS Mojave that makes it easier to discover apps with a featured section and specific categories for games, creative apps, productivity apps, apps for developers, and more.

macOS Mojave is available to developers and public beta testers to work out bugs and other issues ahead of an upcoming fall public release.

Update: As noted on Twitter, an updated version of Windows Migration Assistant released today for macOS Mojave allows more data to be transferred to a Mac from a PC running Windows when using the Migration Assistant functionality.

You can transfer account data that includes documents, email, contacts, and calendar data from apps like Microsoft Outlook. Prior to this update, the Windows Migration Assistant was not able to import data from third-party apps. The Home app also introduces new solid-colored background options while removing previously available Home wallpapers.

Update 2: There is also a new version of macOS Mojave available for Apple's public beta testers.

Article Link: Apple Seeds Sixth Beta of macOS Mojave to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]

 

[benthewraith]

Update weighs in at 3.5GB.

 

[kissmo]

I didn’t expect this week any update.
I hope PB comes out tomorrow.

PB 4 was OK but each beta ends up slow and sluggish after 3 weeks - at least for me.

 

[giebe]

Still didn’t fix my freezing system settings.

 

[ipedro]

High Sierra is so buggy on my iMac because I’ve been living with a Fusion Drive converted to APFS for a year that I don’t think it can get any worse if I install a beta of Mojave. Waiting for the next Public Beta and I’ll jump in.

Any impressions from people using Mojave with Adobe Lightroom and Final Cut Pro X? That’s essentially all I use my iMac for these days.

 

[Fangio]

Build no. 18A353d

 

[MauiPa]

High Sierra is so buggy on my iMac because I’ve been living with a Fusion Drive converted to APFS for a year that I don’t think it can get any worse if I install a beta of Mojave. Waiting for the next Public Beta and I’ll jump in.

Any impressions from people using Mojave with Adobe Lightroom and Final Cut Pro X? That’s essentially all I use my iMac for these days.

please define "so buggy".

 

[jhfenton]

High Sierra is so buggy on my iMac because I’ve been living with a Fusion Drive converted to APFS for a year that I don’t think it can get any worse if I install a beta of Mojave. Waiting for the next Public Beta and I’ll jump in.

Any impressions from people using Mojave with Adobe Lightroom and Final Cut Pro X? That’s essentially all I use my iMac for these days.

Adobe Lightroom Classic CC has been working fine for me under the last two Mojave betas. (I did not try earlier versions.) Importing. Viewing. Editing. Exporting. Dual monitors. 2.6 GHz i7 Mac mini (late 2012).

I do not own Final Cut Pro X.

 

[MauiPa]

Still didn’t fix my freezing system settings.

The trouble when you make a whiney comment like this, you just sound like a troll who doesn't even own a Mac. It would be informative if you could highlight the problem in a non-pejorative way. I don't have any freezing system settings so I cannot empathize with what you are trying to say. In fact, I have not detected any bugs in my public beta downloads, which is impressive, I do still remember Windows, where you wouldn't install until at least the .1 release.
[doublepost=1533576523][/doublepost]

I didn’t expect this week any update.
I hope PB comes out tomorrow.

PB 4 was OK but each beta ends up slow and sluggish after 3 weeks - at least for me.

?

 

[jhfenton]

I may skip DB 6. It took me a few days to get my computer back in order after my Fusion drive was corrupted during last week's DB 5 update. It took 3 separate restoration methods before one resulted in a stable OS. Restore from Time Machine backup resulted in an unstable system. Restore from a CCC backup resulted in a corrupted APFS drive. Finally a fresh installation of the Mojave DB 4 with a Migration Assistant pull from the CCC backup resulted in a stable system that I upgraded to DB 5. (It really did pull in virtually everything. That is probably going to be my go-to restoration method going forward.)

 

[ersan191]

Whoa, this build runs significantly and noticeably faster for me on my 2013 MBP. Like new computer crazy fast.

Wi-Fi calling still doesn't work, however.

 

[Mimiron]

Mojave has probably been the least stable macOS Beta for me. If anyone's wondering, fans on the MBP 13" 2017 are going like crazy and the battery life is downright horrendous. Tried to reset PRAM/NVRAM to no avail.

TL;DR: Absolutely don't install Mojave on your daily drivers.

 

[ersan191]

Mojave has probably been the least stable macOS Beta for me. If anyone's wondering, fans on the MBP 13" 2017 are going like crazy and the battery life is downright horrendous. Tried to reset PRAM/NVRAM to no avail.

TL;DR: Absolutely don't install Mojave on your daily drivers.

Are you sure that isn't just Spotlight re-indexing after the update?

 

[olives9]

Can anyone confirm they're able to run VM's in Oracle's Virtualbox on this beta version? Thank you.

 

[ipedro]

please define "so buggy".

Constantly runs “out of space” even though I have over 100GB of free space, files offloaded to iCloud radonmly don’t open or download when clicked but load fine on other machines, Time Machine has stopped working, High Sierra updates no longer work because it’s on an APFS Fusion Drive and apps no longer update because they require a newer version of High Sierra. So I’m in limbo.

It’s a mess. I had been planning to just wipe the machine and start over but I thought I’d wait for a version of High Sierra that supports APFS Fusion Drives as it was supposed to be but eventually I waited so long that it was announced that Mojave would support it.

 

[Mimiron]

Are you sure that isn't just Spotlight re-indexing after the update?

I don't think so, it's been like that since Dev Beta #1 and I've run all updates up to now. The Mac would need to be stuck in an endless re-indexing loop to account for all the mess .

 

[Peter_M]

Mojave has probably been the least stable macOS Beta for me. If anyone's wondering, fans on the MBP 13" 2017 are going like crazy and the battery life is downright horrendous. Tried to reset PRAM/NVRAM to no avail.

TL;DR: Absolutely don't install Mojave on your daily drivers.

I've been disappointed of Apple's software QC this last year, so I'm very interested in seeing how Mojave (and iOS 12) turns out. I'm definitely gonna wait a couple of months first to see the feedback, as I've learned my lesson now on adopting new OS versions too early.

 

[kissmo]

I hope the update brings more stability to WebEX since I use it quite Often.
In previous betas my mac would get super hot when using the app.

 

[Marx55]

Apple should release Time Machine 2 for APFS drives and disclose APFS specifications for developers to make utilities like DiskWarrior 6 to rebuild APFS directory. Until then, it is a deal breaker. Waiting stuck in macOS 10.12 Sierra just because of that. Hope for 2018, 2019, 2020, ever?

 

[Combi06]

High Sierra is so buggy on my iMac because I’ve been living with a Fusion Drive converted to APFS for a year that I don’t think it can get any worse if I install a beta of Mojave. Waiting for the next Public Beta and I’ll jump in.

Any impressions from people using Mojave with Adobe Lightroom and Final Cut Pro X? That’s essentially all I use my iMac for these days.

Is good actually. I hadn't used it since Beta 2 cause it was unusable but whatever issues were there seem like have been fixed on Beta 6 (maybe even earlier but again I hadn't use Lightroom for a while)

 

[chuckm1020]

Constantly runs “out of space” even though I have over 100GB of free space, files offloaded to iCloud radonmly don’t open or download when clicked but load fine on other machines, Time Machine has stopped working, High Sierra updates no longer work because it’s on an APFS Fusion Drive and apps no longer update because they require a newer version of High Sierra. So I’m in limbo.

It’s a mess. I had been planning to just wipe the machine and start over but I thought I’d wait for a version of High Sierra that supports APFS Fusion Drives as it was supposed to be but eventually I waited so long that it was announced that Mojave would support it.

Interesting. I only updated to APFS a few weeks ago when I updated to Mojave public beta. I also have a fusion drive. Around 100GB I get the same issue where it states it is running out space and runs like complete crap until I clear up some space. Even though there is a good 100GB left. My fusion drive is the 1TB model with the 128GB SSD.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

I didn’t expect this week any update.
I hope PB comes out tomorrow.

PB 4 was OK but each beta ends up slow and sluggish after 3 weeks - at least for me.

High Sierra was so unreliable I went back to Sierra. Second guessed it, tried upgrading it 3 more times and went back to Sierra each time. HS consumed memory the entire time it was running and never gave it back, bogged down, crashed, to the point that I never once successfully shut the machine down. Every session, it always ended with a hang and a hard reset. Mojave so far, has been great as a clean install on my personal current top-spec iMac, until update 4, which introduced some weird behavior in finder and beachballs here & there. Existing Win7 & Win10 VM's both broke, Wacom drivers are kaput as usual, but build a new VM, and FCP X, Logic have all been running smoothly, so no real complaints.

 

[nortonandreev]

Mojave has probably been the least stable macOS Beta for me. If anyone's wondering, fans on the MBP 13" 2017 are going like crazy and the battery life is downright horrendous. Tried to reset PRAM/NVRAM to no avail.

TL;DR: Absolutely don't install Mojave on your daily drivers.

It's been almost perfect for me on my MBP 15" 2017.

 

[liberte1776]

Did they finally and grouped notifications in Mojave yet?!
[doublepost=1533582568][/doublepost]

I hope the update brings more stability to WebEX since I use it quite Often.
In previous betas my mac would get super hot when using the app.

Last I checked, Cisco STILL did not update WebEx to 64-bit!

 

[ipedro]

Interesting. I only updated to APFS a few weeks ago when I updated to Mojave public beta. I also have a fusion drive. Around 100GB I get the same issue where it states it is running out space and runs like complete crap until I clear up some space. Even though there is a good 100GB left. My fusion drive is the 1TB model with the 128GB SSD.

So Mojave Public Beta doesn’t seem to support APFS on Fusion Drives yet. That’s the issue I have on High Sierra and if you’re having that problem on the Mojave Public Beta, then it’s still not supported.

Did Mojave offer to convert your Fusion Drive to APFS or did you do it manually?