macOS Tahoe 26.4 Beta 1 - Bug fixes, changes, and more

[WilliApple]

I've been reading this for too long without making a comment on it.

No, memory management is NOT an issue on all O/Ss. And no, restarting your computer is not the fix when it does occur.

I'm aware this is a wiki and anyone can edit it but I'd rather not make a change unilaterally.

Yes, memory management is hard and is also typically app-dependent, but to say it's a universal issue is just plain wrong.

If people are blindly restarting and not reporting memory management issues to Apple then it's really unhelpful all the way around and not in the spirit of either public or developer betas.

It was added because I was tired of people adding "Memory Leak" without reproduction steps in almost every release back in the Ventura days.
It is probably a very outdated message and was made before I became an app developer and understood how memory management works.
Feel free to adjust the message if you want and if the message is good, I will carry it over to future betas.

 

[benwiggy]

who likes popups about some feature years away from being deprecated?

Apple learnt with the first Rosetta that if they just warn developers for years that they need to rewrite their code, they don't always do it, and so when Apple removes the old code, the users complain that Apple "suddenly broke my app". So with the 32-bit libraries, they gave advanced warning to the users, pointing the finger at developers.

Also: it's already deprecated (discouraged, advised against). Apple does sometimes write "we deprecated this", meaning "removed", but in the words of Inigo Montoya... 😀

 

[Adora]

Full Installer:

https://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/06/63/047-01208-A_J3XEK7LLH9/sr0z5l26rpsvur2gim4d5z1ry8kmd4r2cc/InstallAssistant.pkg

 

[PotentPeas]

No, memory management is NOT an issue on all O/Ss. And no, restarting your computer is not the fix when it does occur.

This kind of comment sort of bothers me too. I think memory management is actually quite good in macOS. Long uptime should be possible. Admittedly I am not on Tahoe yet. I just finished a stint running macOS Sequoia 15.7.3 with 60 days uptime (no sleep, no reboot), running many different apps and games during that time, and only rebooted because 15.7.4 was out. If there is a memory management problem that is causing periodic reboots to be required, it should be dealt with.

 

[Wolf1701]

This kind of comment sort of bothers me too. I think memory management is actually quite good in macOS. Long uptime should be possible. Admittedly I am not on Tahoe yet. I just finished a stint running macOS Sequoia 15.7.3 with 60 days uptime (no sleep, no reboot), running many different apps and games during that time, and only rebooted because 15.7.4 was out. If there is a memory management problem that is causing periodic reboots to be required, it should be dealt with.

Which, it seems to me, was what he was saying.

 

[Adora]

I don't understand anything about memory management. But when in the first and maybe also second beta of 26.3 between between 85 and 95% gets filled with whatever while doing almost nothing and normally it's less than 50%, something seemed to be wrong.

The app that showed the high values is now showing 45%.

Also reboots didn't help in that time. It always got filled again to over 80% within a few minutes.

I also don't know how much the high GPU usage of up to over 40% just for displaying the UI has to do with it.


At the moment I only look at temperatures and at least nothing is making my Mac that hot anymore as in earlier versions while just writing here. It rarely feels even warm when I lay a hand on my Mac mini.

 

[Broken Hope]

Nice that Music lyric support is the same as on iOS and TV OS now, that the highlight matches the singing, including when words are extended etc.

 

[XMI]

I don't understand anything about memory management.

@Adora

Sometimes, it's a single App (or background process) which is taking up all of your RAM.

Try this:
1. In Activity Monitor, go to the Memory Tab (it looks like you already know how to do this based on your screenshot)
2. Sort by the Memory column

You should see something like this:

Look for the highest numbers, and see if it makes sense to you.

In this example, my WindowServer is using 3GB (but I have dual 5K monitors so that's not necessarily bad).

However, I also see that a single website (radar.weather.gov) in Safari is taking almost 1GB.

What are your biggest memory consumers?

 

[johnsawyercjs]

Available for M5 Pro/Max or later 😅

Charge Limit works for me on my ancient 16 Inch Macbook Pro M1 (which I admit is a Max), though that model was made in the last literal stone age. At least the slider is there.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

I don't understand anything about memory management.

Richard Feynman said "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

 

[johnsawyercjs]

Compact tab layout is back!

I just tried the 26.4 beta Safari's Compact Tabs option. I didn’t try it the last time it was available. But it seems pointless: it just moves all the horizontally-aligned tabs into the URL field, which of course obscures the URL field, and arranges them horizontally in essentially the same manner as with the "Separate Tabs" option. It essentially turns the tabs into a URL field that has siblings.

The only advantage I see is that it frees up about 25-30 vertical pixels. That’s not minor on a 13-inch Macbook, but at the cost of destroying the URL field’s utility.

Why can’t Apple swallow their pride and show tabs similar to how it’s done in Chrome, which has a “Tabs” entry in the menu bar that lists the frontmost window’s tabs? Easy peasy. Safari's sidebar shows tabs in a similar list fashion, but it's a little clumsier approach.

 

[diego.caraballo]

Charge Limit works for me on my ancient 16 Inch Macbook Pro M1 (which I admit is a Max), though that model was made in the last literal stone age. At least the slider is there.

Amazing. Thanks for sharing this! I would like to believe that my Air M2 is covered too 🤞

 

[johnsawyercjs]

Amazing. Thanks for sharing this! I would like to believe that my Air M2 is covered too 🤞

Probably! I'm curious if it also works on any Intel-based Macbooks.

 

[sc4]

• DMG disk images are not mounting for me. Had to use workaround. Wondering how I can report it on "feedback". Under which tab/category?

Thank you so much!

 

[Wolf1701]

• DMG disk images are not mounting for me. Had to use workaround. Wondering how I can report it on "feedback". Under which tab/category?

Thank you so much!

Just for reference, they work correctly here.

(If you want to proceed with the feedback, I would opt for archiving or not included it in the list.)

 

[benwiggy]

I don't understand anything about memory management. But when in the first and maybe also second beta of 26.3 between between 85 and 95% gets filled with whatever while doing almost nothing and normally it's less than 50%, something seemed to be wrong.

MacOS will try to use as much RAM as it can. Memory usage is only a problem if it affects performance, which will only happen when memory compression is high and swap needs to be retrieved often.

It's also a well-known fact that regularly looking at apps like iStat or Activity Monitor causes problems. 😀 Or rather, it gives you numbers to worry about, which are usually just 'normal' operation.

 

[Adora]

@Adora

Sometimes, it's a single App (or background process) which is taking up all of your RAM.

Try this:
1. In Activity Monitor, go to the Memory Tab (it looks like you already know how to do this based on your screenshot)
2. Sort by the Memory column

You should see something like this:

View attachment 2605977

Look for the highest numbers, and see if it makes sense to you.

In this example, my WindowServer is using 3GB (but I have dual 5K monitors so that's not necessarily bad).

However, I also see that a single website (radar.weather.gov) in Safari is taking almost 1GB.

What are your biggest memory consumers?

Thanks for trying to help but the problem was only in the first betas of 26.3 I think. I checked those numbers and they didn't add up.

Sometimes an app like Finder was on top with over 1 GB when I didn't even use it, despite letting it display the Desktop. Also kernel_task sometimes went to the top what is now using less than 17 MB. WindowServer sometimes also used a few GB more than normal.

At the moment with 20 GB used memory, what is about 30% this is everything above 100 MB. Most of it belongs to my browser and seems normal:

MacOS will try to use as much RAM as it can. Memory usage is only a problem if it affects performance, which will only happen when memory compression is high and swap needs to be retrieved often.

It's also a well-known fact that regularly looking at apps like iStat or Activity Monitor causes problems. 😀 Or rather, it gives you numbers to worry about, which are usually just 'normal' operation.

I know. The most important thing is memory pressure and if there is swapping. I was talking about a bug in one or two older beta versions that is gone now where suddenly the memory usage everywhere including Activity Monitor more than doubled. I think it was 23.1 Beta 1 and 2 and stopped with Beta 3.

I also used System Monitor what was showing a GPU utilization getting higher with every new (beta) version of Tahoe. The worst was jumping every second between from about 25 to about 45% in those specific betas. Before it mostly jumped from 0 to 20-35% depending on the version. Now I was wondering how much of the memory the GPU took while only displaying my desktop with a utilization that never went beneath 25%.
And you are right. I uninstalled it to not permanently look at it again. So I don't know what the memory utilization is now with this beta and if those number are even correct.

The pressure was always fine but also higher than normal. At least swapping never happened.

Everything of this is not the case anymore now. It was just an example because the talk about "memory leaks" (whatever that means) in this thread.

It is not standard macOS memory management filling 64 GB up to 95% while almost nothing is running. It didn't happen before and isn't happening now. At the moment it's exactly 33% and the highest I have seen in 26.4 until now was less than 50%.

 

[Adora]

It seems 26.4 fixed the connection problem of my six permanently attached external drives.

In 26.3 Beta/RC/final there was always one or two drives randomly missing after a reboot or relogin.

No matter if USB, Thunderbolt, direct connection or dock. It wasn't even listed as unmounted.

I had to reconnect the cable although it still got power as the LED was showing or the temperature when touching it, depending on the drive. Some have an always on LED and some only a blinking one while in use.

 

[Ethan.Albano]

Nice that Music lyric support is the same as on iOS and TV OS now, that the highlight matches the singing, including when words are extended etc.

You’re the first person I’ve seen say this, which is shocking to me because this was one of the biggest breaks in continuity about the Music app on Mac. If my Roku and Samsung TV could show the karaoke-esque beat-by-beat lyrics, why the heck couldn’t my Mac?

Out of curiosity, is this only in full screen? Does it show in the mini player? How about just on the right-side bar in the main window when you show lyrics?

 

[mikecwest]

times between 12:00PM - 12:59PM show as 00:00PM - 00:59PM are still not fixed

 

[Lukeit]

Huge problems with external disks: they mount regularly, I can access the files, but can't move them, copy on them and update any of them. Wonderful beta 1!!! Even Photos Library that I keep on external drive cannot be accessed!

 

[Adora]

Huge problems with external disks: they mount regularly, I can access the files, but can't move them, copy on them and update any of them. Wonderful beta 1!!! Even Photos Library that I keep on external drive cannot be accessed!

It's a known problem with HFS+ drives. Please have a look at older messages in this thread maybe beginning with mine what came up first.

macOS Tahoe 26.4 Beta 1 - Bug fixes, changes, and more

At least it didn't appear again after a reboot. Maybe after every update now once. The update damaged two of my internal partitions. Just old macOS installers but still not a good sign. My Mac doesn't support anything older than Sequoia and I wanted to delete the other ones anyway. I get...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Adora]

I really can't believe they released the same build as a public beta when the JHFS+ issues are even mentioned in the release notes after they recognized it. 😡

If I remember correctly they were not mentioned directly after the developer beta had been released.

Has anyone tried to delete internal JHFS+ patitions and merge them with APFS. I want to delete mine because I don't need them anymore. But I am not sure if this is a good idea at the moment.

 

[mcarvin]

I really can't believe they released the same build as a public beta when the JHFS+ issues are even mentioned in the release notes after they recognized it. 😡

If I remember correctly they were not mentioned directly after the developer beta had been released.

Has anyone tried to delete internal JHFS+ patitions and merge them with APFS. I want to delete mine because I don't need them anymore. But I am not sure if this is a good idea at the moment.

I tried and it didn't work. Tried `mount -u -w` as earlier in this thread, DiskArbitrator, even went into Recovery mode and tried there too. Also tried using Disk Utility to convert my HFS+ partition to APFS and that failed in both normal and Recovery mode.

The thing I noticed is that the HFS+ partition reads as 0 bytes free. So even if I had read/write access, Tahoe thinking that partition is full means it wouldn't be able to convert the partition to APFS.

 

[Adora]

I just got this after pasting a YouTube link into Downie (video downloader). I only have APFS drives mounted. The damaged (J)HFS+ drives only include macOS installers and are ejected. Where is the connection to the mentioned app updater?

I saved the full report. This is only the translated part. Any idea what happened?

-------------------------------------

Translated Report (Full Report Below)

-------------------------------------

Process:             fsck_hfs [36373]

Path:                /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/fsck_hfs

Identifier:          fsck_hfs

Version:             ???

Code Type:           ARM-64 (Native)

Role:                Unspecified

Parent Process:      diskimages-helper [36366]

Coalition:           com.charliemonroe.Downie-4-sparkle-updater [43551]

Responsible Process: Autoupdate [36360]

User ID:             501


Date/Time:           (censored by me)

Launch Time:        (censored by me)

Hardware Model:      Mac16,11

OS Version:          macOS 26.4 (25E5207k)

Release Type:        User


Crash Reporter Key:  (censored by me)

Incident Identifier: (censored by me)


Sleep/Wake UUID:      (censored by me)


Time Awake Since Boot: 170000 seconds

Time Since Wake:       117931 seconds


System Integrity Protection: disabled


Triggered by Thread: 0


Exception Type:    EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)

Exception Codes:   0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000


Termination Reason:  Namespace DYLD, Code 1, Library missing

Library not loaded: @rpath/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib

Referenced from: <915F7812-C148-3B7D-8CE9-1A77E6123971> /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/fsck_hfs

Reason: tried: '/System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file, not in dyld cache), '/AppleInternal/Library/BuildRoots/4~CInqugCr-EX0f6D2IRo_C2u-onGfk3sBXON95uA/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/OSX26.4.xctoolchain/usr/lib/clang/21/lib/darwin/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/AppleInternal/Library/BuildRoots/4~CInqugCr-EX0f6D2IRo_C2u-onGfk3sBXON95uA/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/OSX26.4.xctoolchain/usr/lib/clang/21/lib/darwin/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/appleinternal/lib/sanitizers/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/usr/appleinternal/lib/sanitizers/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (

(terminated at launch; ignore backtrace)


Dyld Error Message:

  1



Thread 0 Crashed:

0   dyld                                     0x189705b84 __abort_with_payload + 8

1   dyld                                     0x189792a8c abort_with_payload_wrapper_internal + 104

2   dyld                                     0x189792ac0 abort_with_payload + 16

3   dyld                                     0x1897250bc dyld4::halt(char const*, dyld4::StructuredError const*) + 312

4   dyld                                     0x1897212d0 dyld4::prepare(dyld4::APIs&, mach_o::UnsafeHeader const*) + 4784

5   dyld                                     0x189720004 dyld4::start(dyld4::KernelArgs*, void*, void*, unsigned long long)::$_1::operator()() const + 320

6   dyld                                     0x18971f8b4 start + 6732



Thread 0 crashed with ARM Thread State (64-bit):

    x0: 0x0000000000000006   x1: 0x0000000000000001   x2: 0x000000016fafa430   x3: 0x000000000000007e

    x4: 0x000000016fafa030   x5: 0x0000000000000000   x6: 0x0000000000000000   x7: 0x0000000000000000

    x8: 0x0000000000000020   x9: 0x73d3e90329c60005  x10: 0x0000000000001000  x11: 0x00000001f6024130

   x12: 0x0000000000020000  x13: 0x00000001897049c0  x14: 0x0000000000000001  x15: 0x0000000000000000

   x16: 0x0000000000000209  x17: 0x000000016faf9e60  x18: 0x0000000000000000  x19: 0x0000000000000000

   x20: 0x000000016fafa030  x21: 0x000000000000007e  x22: 0x000000016fafa430  x23: 0x0000000000000001

   x24: 0x0000000000000006  x25: 0x0000000000000000  x26: 0x000000001f070004  x27: 0x0000000000000001

   x28: 0x0000000189700000   fp: 0x000000016fafa000   lr: 0x0000000189792a8c

    sp: 0x000000016faf9fc0   pc: 0x0000000189705b84 cpsr: 0x80000000

   far: 0x0000000000000000  esr: 0x56000080 (Syscall)


Binary Images:

       0x100304000 -        0x100353fff fsck_hfs (*) <915f7812-c148-3b7d-8ce9-1a77e6123971> /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/fsck_hfs

       0x189700000 -        0x1897a5a5b dyld (*) <2ea2b865-787a-35da-ac17-1136ef68abb1> /usr/lib/dyld

               0x0 - 0xffffffffffffffff ??? (*) <00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000> ???


External Modification Summary:

  Calls made by other processes targeting this process:

    task_for_pid: 0

    thread_create: 0

    thread_set_state: 0

  Calls made by this process:

    task_for_pid: 0

    thread_create: 0

    thread_set_state: 0

  Calls made by all processes on this machine:

    task_for_pid: 0

    thread_create: 0

    thread_set_state: 0


VM Region Summary:

ReadOnly portion of Libraries: Total=573.1M resident=0K(0%) swapped_out_or_unallocated=573.1M(100%)

Writable regions: Total=8320K written=112K(1%) resident=112K(1%) swapped_out=0K(0%) unallocated=8208K(99%)


                                VIRTUAL   REGION

REGION TYPE                        SIZE    COUNT (non-coalesced)

===========                     =======  =======

STACK GUARD                       56.0M        1

Stack                             8176K        1

VM_ALLOCATE                        528K        2

__AUTH_CONST                        22K        1

__DATA                             100K        3

__DATA_CONST                        25K        2

__DATA_DIRTY                        14K        1

__LINKEDIT                       572.2M        2

__TEXT                             984K        2

__TPRO_CONST                       128K        1

dyld private memory                192K        5

page table in kernel               112K        1

shared memory                       32K        1

===========                     =======  =======

TOTAL                            638.2M       23

Edit: I can't reproduce it. Maybe when I reboot and the process is running again.

I tried to restart the process in Terminal:

~ % fsck_hfs
dyld[36593]: Library not loaded: @rpath/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib
Referenced from: <915F7812-C148-3B7D-8CE9-1A77E6123971> /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/fsck_hfs
Reason: tried: '/System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file, not in dyld cache), '/AppleInternal/Library/BuildRoots/4~CInqugCr-EX0f6D2IRo_C2u-onGfk3sBXON95uA/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/OSX26.4.xctoolchain/usr/lib/clang/21/lib/darwin/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/AppleInternal/Library/BuildRoots/4~CInqugCr-EX0f6D2IRo_C2u-onGfk3sBXON95uA/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/OSX26.4.xctoolchain/usr/lib/clang/21/lib/darwin/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/appleinternal/lib/sanitizers/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/usr/appleinternal/lib/sanitizers/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file, not in dyld cache), '/AppleInternal/Library/BuildRoots/4~CInqugCr-EX0f6D2IRo_C2u-onGfk3sBXON95uA/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/OSX26.4.xctoolchain/usr/lib/clang/21/lib/darwin/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/AppleInternal/Library/BuildRoots/4~CInqugCr-EX0f6D2IRo_C2u-onGfk3sBXON95uA/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/OSX26.4.xctoolchain/usr/lib/clang/21/lib/darwin/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/appleinternal/lib/sanitizers/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/usr/appleinternal/lib/sanitizers/libclang_rt.ubsan_osx_dynamic.dylib' (no such file)
zsh: abort fsck_hfs

Edit: Because Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/OSX26.4 is involved I deleted Xcode 26.3 and renamed Xcode_beta.app to Xcode.app.

Same result.