Earlier this week, Apple perpetuated its cycle of developer betas with a series of even more bug fixes, and iterative changes on the underpinnings of the OS. The last time there was a 9th developer beta in macOS was in 2022, with macOS 12.0 Ventura.
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3.37 GB download size for individuals upgrading to DB9 from DB8 on a 15-Inch M4 MacBook Air. Download sizes may vary, and will overwrite whichever portion of OS that’s been amended with DB9.
macOS Tahoe development timeline
- Up until June 9th WWDC: Internal Testing Only
. - June 9th, 2025: macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 1 – Build 25A5279m
. - June 23rd, 2025: macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 2 – Build 25A5295e
. - July 7th, 2025: macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 3 – Build 25A5306g
. - July 22nd, 2025: macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 4 – Build 25A5316i
. - August 6th, 2025: macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 5 – Build 25A5327h
. - August 11th, 2025: macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 6 – Build 25A5338b
. - August 18th, 2025: macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 7/Public Beta 4 – Build 25A5346a
. - August 25th 2025: macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 8 – Build 25A5349a
. - September 2nd 2025: macOS Tahoe Developer Beta 9 – Build 25A5351b
See more: How to read and interpret Apple OS Build Numbers
Other “beta 9” OS releases concurrently:
- iOS & iPadOS 26 (Build 23A5336a)
. - watchOS 26 (Build 23R5350b)
. - visionOS 26 (Build 23M5335b)
. - tvOS 26 (Build 23J5351a)
. - HomePod Software (Build 23J5351a)
Other OS updates:
Tracking Geekbench 6 Performance between builds
- See Links for: CPU / GPU – OpenCL / GPU – Metal (For the 9th Beta)
Disclaimer: While artificial benchmarks only tell part of the story when it comes to the performance of any device, they still offer some form of insight. Ever since I got my own M4 MacBook Air, I benched it on Geekbench 6 in the same environment.
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What some others are saying
- Spotlight issues persist. When you search recent files and videos, it may crash.
. - Stage manager may have stuttery animations
. - Background removal in FaceTime doesn’t work, except in OBS.
. - Many say external drive icons have not been updated. Despite this, however, when I plug USB drives into my own M4 MacBook Air, the new USB icon shows up.
- Location Services get “Cell Network search” as an option, sparking debate on whether or not there will be a Mac with mobile data in the future.
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My thoughts
There’s a good chance Apple is going to push all OSes all at once to get a unified ecosystem release. This will pose as problematic as some of the promised features we’re expecting will be buggy upon release. I’d expect nearly immediate updates after the initial public build, my gut is telling me they’ll push out more updates sooner rather than later. DB9 is sure smoother than DB8.
If you’re looking for a stress-free, frills-free experience, you’re going to want to wait until the Spring updates as they’ll roll in far more of the bug fixes and consistency expected of the UI.
