macOS 10.12 Developer Preview Seed 2 Release Notes

Introduction

macOS 10.12 Developer Preview Seed 1 is pre-release software. Do not use this pre-release software in a commercial operating environment or with important data. You should back up all of your data before installing this software and regularly back up data while using the software.

Recovery cannot be used to re-install macOS 10.12 Developer Preview Seed 1. If an installation of macOS 10.12 Developer Preview Seed 1 fails, you may recover from an earlier backup, or via Recovery Disk Assistant System. More information about creating a Recovery Disk Assistant System is available here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202294

Developer Preview System Requirements

The macOS 10.12 Developer Preview supports the following Macs:

• MacBook, iMac: Late 2009 or newer

• MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, Mac Pro: 2010 or newer

Auto Unlock Setup

The Auto Unlock feature is supported on 2013 and newer Macs.

The Auto Unlock feature requires that you enable your iCloud account to use Two-Factor Authentication (not Two-Step Verification), install the latest iOS 10 on your iPhone, and the latest watchOS 3 on your Apple Watch.

After enabling Two-Factor Authentication, please do the following:

• On your Mac, open System Preferences -> iCloud, and click on the Account Details button. Click on Security tab, and make sure Two-Factor Authentication is on.
• On your iPhone, open Settings -> iCloud and tap on your name to reveal account details. Tap on the Password and Security item, and make sure sure Two-Factor Authentication is on.
• On your iPhone, open Watch -> General -> Apple ID, and verify your Apple ID is showing.

If you have enabled Two-Step Verification you need to opt-out:

• Sign in to your Apple ID account page.
• In the Security section, Click Edit.
• Click Turn Off Two-Step Verification.
• Create new security questions and verify your date of birth.

You will receive an email confirming that Two-Step Verification for your Apple ID is off.
There is no upgrade path for Two-Step Verification to Two-Factor Authentication.
You must opt out of Two-Step Verification, then opt in to Two-Factor Authentication.
Frequently asked questions about Two-Step Verification: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204152.

Fixed in this release

About This Mac

• In the Storage Management window, QuickLook may bring up an empty preview.
• Size information for the System and iTunes categories in the sidebar of Storage Management window may be incorrect or show the progress indicator indefinitely.
• Sometimes the numbers in About This Mac storage meter add up to be greater than the volume size.

Aperture

• On systems with AMD graphics, when using the clone stamp Aperture quits unexpectedly.
• Slo-mo videos play at normal speed.
• Importing Live Photos into iPhoto and Aperture will cause the loss of the video portion of Live Photos.

Apple Pay

• Starting an Apple Pay for Web session on Mac will result in an empty payment sheet being presented if iPhone doesn’t have a payment card provisioned.
• When billing address is required, the handoff sheet on iPhone requires Touch ID even though Touch ID is not enabled on that iPhone.

App Store

• App updates and re-download of apps may not work.

CloudKit

• Saving a child record with its parent property set to nil can sometimes fail.
• Developer ID apps that are provisioned for CloudKit will quit unexpectedly when launched outside of Xcode.

Contacts

• Non-Apple applications will not be able to access AddressBook or Contacts data sourced from server based accounts. To workaround this issue, sign out of iCloud, and copy desired contacts into the On My Mac group.

Fonts

• Some document fonts will not download automatically for Simplified and Traditional Chinese users.

Find My Mac

• Users are unable to play a sound or locate their Mac after remotely locking or wiping it via Find My iPhone app or on www.iCloud.com. The Mac will show as “Offline” in both Find My iPhone app and www.iCloud.com.

Finder

• Users sharing their home directory between macOS 10.12 and OS X 10.11 may get an exception in the OS X 10.11 Finder when opening a window in List view, because their ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist has had unexpected data written to it by the macOS 10.12 Finder.

iPhoto

• Importing Live Photos into iPhoto and Aperture will cause the loss of the video portion of Live Photos.
• Slo-mo videos play at normal speed.

Keyboard Preferences

• Text replacements may disappear.

Messages

• Can’t enable/disable accounts from Messages preferences.

Notes

• Deleted folders may reappear after 30 minutes.

Photos

• Items in the Last import album, and user generated albums, are not removed following use of the delete command (command + delete as well).
• People are not displayed in the People Album until the app is restarted.
• Faces: A person can lose their name when quitting shortly after naming a person.
• Video portion of Live Photo not saved when imported from shared album.
• Albums and Shared Sidebar sections are not expanded in new Library.
• Upgrading Photos 1.1 library with named faces shows the People album text ‘No People Found Yet’.
• Faces and Scenes are not processed.

Safari

• The Web Content process may exit unexpectedly if shipping method is set to None and Shipping Address is required.
• Safari may quit unexpectedly when clicking into the address bar.
  Workaround: Type a URL into the address bar, or wait until browsing history has completed loading.

Siri

• Users who select South African English will see the Siri Language setting change back to British English.
• Users will be unable to set location-based reminders using Siri.
• Instead of seeing additional details when a user clicks on a list item after a Siri search for local businesses and points of interest, nothing will happen.

SmartCards

• New SmartCard support is not available in Mail and Safari.

Startup Disk Preference Pane

• On OS X 10.10, macOS 10.12 volumes are not visible in the Startup Disk section of System Preferences.

Notes and Known Issues

About This Mac

• The Storage tab in About This Mac may not load if a volume has been unmounted.
• The Purgeable and System sizes shown in the Storage tab of About This Mac may be incorrect.
• Watched iTunes movies, TV shows, and podcasts will not be automatically deleted even though Optimize Storage has been turned on.

AirDrop

• Enhancements have been made in usability to AirDrop, with faster and more reliable discovery and transmission between peer devices at distances of up to 20 feet.

Aperture

• On systems with AMD graphics, the system print dialog appears as a black box.

Apple File System (APFS)

• You can use the command-line tool ‘diskutil’ in macOS 10.12 to create an Apple File System (APFS) container on an external hard drive, partition or disk image. APFS volumes in macOS 10.12 are case sensitive, cannot be shared over the network via AFP, do not support Time Machine backups, and cannot be used in conjunction with a Fusion Drive or as a startup volume.

Auto Unlock

• Users may experience no internet connectivity after a successful Auto Unlock, followed by a reboot of their Mac.
  Workaround: Turning WiFi Off-On on Mac will resume internet connectivity.
• After an erase install, it can take minutes for the “Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac” checkbox to show up in Security and Privacy Preferences on your Mac (while your devices are iCloud pairing). This is normal, and does not happen on upgrade installs.

Back to my Mac

• Back to my Mac cannot be started for some users.

FileSync

• Support for portable home directories has been removed. Mobile home directories (network accounts which are cached locally) can still be created, but their home folder will no longer sync with their network home directory.

iBooks

• If your iCloud storage is full, and you have items that have not yet uploaded to the cloud, you need to force quit and relaunch iBooks in order to proceed with a storage upgrade.

Input Methods

• Using the Trackpad Handwriting feature for Chinese may not work reliably when using trackpads that do not support Force Touch.
• When using the Pinyin input method to type Chinese, uppercase typing incorrectly produces full-width Latin letters. Additionally, some of the keys may not produce the expected punctuation symbols.
  Workaround: To type uppercase Latin letters correctly, use the Caps Lock key to switch to a Latin input source.

Installer

• Systems with FileVault enabled may hang at the login screen after updating.
  Workaround: Hold down the power button for 5 seconds, until your Mac turns off. Use the power button to turn on your Mac.
• Users running Mac OS X 10.7 with FileVault are unable to install macOS 10.12.
  Workaround: Turn off FileVault before installation.
• In some cases upgrades from Mac OS X 10.7 to macOS 10.12 do not complete.
  Workaround: Run installation a second time.

iTunes

• No artwork is displayed for rented Movies.

Keychain Access

• Microsoft OneDrive cannot store credentials in Keychain.

Localization

• Some text may not be localized to the selected system language.
• Some languages may have clipped or misaligned layout.

Logitech Control Center

• Some functionality provided by Logitech Control Center may not behave as expected, contact the developer for a macOS Sierra compatible version.

Mail

• Files attached to a blank email from 3rd-party applications may not be attached.
  Workaround: Save file then attach to message manually.

Notes

• Adding an attachment, deleting, or moving notes may cause Notes to quit unexpectedly.

NFS

• AES is now a supported encryption type for Kerberized NFS.

Photos

• Live Photo does not playback after turning on Live Photo.
• Search results for people are incorrect.
• Comment badges may not appear in Shared Albums.

Safari

• Safari Technology Preview does not yet work on macOS 10.12. Please test website and Safari Extension compatibility using Safari included with macOS 10.12.
• Safari may quit unexpectedly if the Smart Search field is clicked with no History or while History is still loading.
  Workaround: Use Open Location (⌘-L) instead of clicking the Smart Search field or wait until History has completed loading.

Setup Assistant

• iCloud Preferences may appear during Setup Assistant.
  Workaround: Close / ignore iCloud Preferences.

Siri

• Using Siri to search for Photos taken in a specific location has limited support.
• The File Search and System features for Siri on the Mac are not yet supported for Arabic, Hebrew, Finnish, and Malaysian.
• Users will not be able to use Siri to play Podcasts, although they can use Siri to perform an iTunes Store Search for Podcasts.
• Users may hit errors while sending Messages with Siri using relationships or during contact disambiguation.
• When searching for photos with Siri, users may not see search results in the Photos app after it launches.
• Responses are not supported in Malaysian.

SmartCards

• New SmartCard support does not unlock iCloud keychain when unlocking screensaver.
  Workaround: User can follow prompts to unlock their keychain, or open Keychain Access to manually unlock.

SMB

• To improve security, SMB connections now require signing by default.

srm

• This command-line tool has been removed as it is no longer useful on SSD/Flash-based systems.

VPN

• VPN connections using PPTP are insecure and no longer supported in macOS 10.12. A list of secure VPN protocols and authentication methods are available at: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT206152.

Xcode

• Xcode 7.3.1 is not compatible with macOS Sierra.
  Workaround: Use Xcode 8.0 beta or later when running on macOS Sierra.

Xsan

• macOS 10.12 and Server 5.2 include support for the Xsan 5 file system. Xsan 5 is compatible with the Quantum StorNext 5.3 file system. Upgrade and migration to Xsan 5 is not supported in this release.