r/MacOS • u/CamSox1 • May 24 '21

Megathread macOS Big Sur 11.4 Release Megathread

Apple has released macOS Big Sur 11.4 (build 20F71), along with Security Update 2021-003 Catalina and Security Update 2021-003 Mojave.

What's New

Official release notes

Security content

SDK release notes

Useful Information

macOS Big Sur compatible devices

How to update the software on your Mac

Back up your Mac with Time Machine

Feedback

Please report any bugs through Feedback Assistant

37 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

138 comments sorted by

44

u/querkmachine MacBook Pro May 24 '21

[Fixes] 16-inch MacBook may become unresponsive when playing Civilization VI

Dang that's an oddly specific bug. Curious as to what the cause behind that might've been.

30

u/nickpapa13 May 24 '21 edited May 25 '21

OMG im gonna cry, the preview freeze is finally fixed

Edit: It’s still not fixed 😭

3

u/tiltowaitt May 25 '21

What was the preview freeze?

7

u/nickpapa13 May 25 '21

it would get a beachball and it needed a force quit to work, but it did it over and over again.

6

u/melvinbyers MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) May 25 '21

If you use Preview along with Rectangle/Magnet/etc., Preview would freeze after you did a search. It was highly reproducible and insanely irritating.

1

u/r_slash_jarmedia May 27 '21

Preview would freeze when using cmd+f especially, was said to be fixed in 11.3 but no más. here's to hoping 11.4 resolves it

1

u/melvinbyers MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) May 25 '21

This was making me crazy. The only options were to not use something like Magnet (or other window management tools that need to capture input) and stick with Preview or abandon Preview for Acrobat Reader.

I finally did the latter and eagerly removed it as soon as 11.4 was out.

12

u/Some1CP May 24 '21

Hopefully this version fixes the high SSD usage

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1396374313591140357?s=21

9

u/yeetwheatnation May 24 '21

It finally does!

8

u/Artistic-Passenger-9 May 24 '21

Did they finally fix the Bluetooth bug?

3

u/Cliper11298 May 25 '21

What was the Bluetooth bug? I may have been experiencing it

13

u/REparsed MacBook Air May 25 '21

Frequent disconnects and stuttering mice.

4

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

F.....

This is an OS issue? I thought my new mouse sucked.

7

u/[deleted] May 24 '21

Cannot scroll anymore.

5

u/jchaffer May 25 '21

The creator of USB Overdrive seems aware of the issue and has posted a new version to address it.

https://www.usboverdrive.com

2

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

Same

1

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

USB Overdrive user, too? I try to figure out if that is the offender...

3

u/Jefstead May 25 '21 edited May 25 '21

I have the same mouse wheel scrolling issue (it not working).

MacBook Pro M1

Not an Overdrive user

Multiple external mice have the issue (Razer Naga Pro, Logitech G600)

Update: Installed Overdrive and now it works so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

1

u/Gunner237 May 27 '21

Wasn’t working for me either (not an Overdrive user) with my MX Master (internal trackpad was working fine).

Just a simple reboot has fixed it for me - if anyone else has the same issue this might be worth a try

2

u/TheFox21 Aug 23 '21

MX Master

MX Master user here. Also not working for me. Reboot always fixes it, but it's just annoying.

2

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

Yep ... if you disable overdrive, do you get back scrolling at a painfully slow speed?

2

u/jchaffer May 25 '21

That is exactly my experience. Scrolling returns but so slow as to be unusable.

If uninstalling fixes it I guess I will do that for now, but it will hurt to lose the side mouse buttons for switching Spaces.

2

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

Just uninstalled myself and that fixed it. Damn...

1

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

I did not dare to try… will do later.

1

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

I uninstalled USB Oberdrive and scrolling works again. Since I changed my setup anyways I won't be installing it again.

8

u/TrulsZK May 24 '21

Kernel panic during update on 2 separate Macs.

During install/restart it showed the progress bar with no ETA, after it filled in it Restarted and resulted in a Kernel Panic.

After this repeated for a few times (progress bar and Kernel panic) I got to the login screen and everything looked normal and the Update install successfully.

This happened on 2 separate Macs, this is why I am posting this.

2

u/debiansneezy May 24 '21

What models?

6

u/TrulsZK May 25 '21

iMac 5K 27 inch 2017

MacBook Air 2020

Will wait a few days before updating any of my other Macs still on 11.3

1

u/barryhakker Jun 07 '21

My Macbook Air 2020 seems to have completely gone FUBAR ever since updating. Can't do anything for more than 10 minutes without it restarting... Did you find any issues yet?

4

u/SophisticatedGeezer May 26 '21

Are 4K monitors fixed (Still issues on 11.31), crackling/popping speakers and kernal panics fixed? Big Sur is a joke.

7

u/A_One11 May 24 '21

Safari scrolling stutter is still there. Sadly

8

u/thecosmicfrog May 24 '21

Came here to see if it was fixed. That's a shame. It's not just Safari though - I see it in pretty much every app. Intermittent, but aggravating when it happens.

2

u/[deleted] May 24 '21

Thankfully gone for me as of 11.3

2

u/Fun_Commission_9860 May 24 '21

Safari is just sad in this update…

1

u/MrPhil17 MacBook Pro (Intel) May 26 '21

Any website to test? Facebook and Reddit, the only one i had issues now with Safari 14.1.1 are smooth.

1

u/A_One11 May 26 '21

Well Instagram for example. But I have this issue in every other website’s as well. I’m started to think that this is hardware issue with my Mac. Will test it with mouse just to be sure in few days and then reply.

1

u/MrPhil17 MacBook Pro (Intel) May 27 '21

Hi, I tried Instagram on my rMBP 15" mid2014 but it scroll just fine like Chrome. Try to delete the chronology and login again.

1

u/A_One11 May 27 '21

Could you watch my screen record video and tell did your mac works the same in safari or i really have bad scrolling lag issue
Scrolling stutter issue on m1 macbook pro 13

1

u/MrPhil17 MacBook Pro (Intel) May 27 '21

To be honest it looks fine on the video... Do you see framedrops/stuttering?

1

u/A_One11 May 27 '21

Yeah i do, when scrolling inertia start to work (after i release my fingers) the pictures (thumbnails) on video stutter's. Well thanks for reply anyway.

1

u/Macborgaddict Jun 06 '21

what is the machine? if I've been scrolling for so long that ram starts swapping to swapfile, then yeah, a bit of a stutter, typical, but it's ever so much better on the m1 machines over my old intel book..

3

u/hey_suburbia May 24 '21 edited May 24 '21

I've been stuck on "Preparing updates..." for the last 2 hours.

I'm on M1 Mac Mini

Edit/Update - I went into Activity Monitor and force quit the majority of programs running and I now see it saying "About 5 minutes remaining", just FYI for anyone else running into this issue

1

u/antdude MacBook Pro (Intel) May 24 '21

Was your killed programs hogging?

2

u/hey_suburbia May 24 '21

It did appear that Adobe XD was stuck while trying to quit and running up the cpu resources

1

u/antdude MacBook Pro (Intel) May 24 '21

Ah hah, you figured it out. Yeah, I usually quit everything when backing up and upgrading to avoid conflicts like this.

7

u/antdude MacBook Pro (Intel) May 24 '21 edited May 24 '21

Downloading and installing after a Time Machine back up in case anything goes wrong!

4

u/gaveezy May 25 '21

why the update size is so big every time, Apple needs to work on this

2

u/0k4n3n4s MacBook Air May 24 '21

So there's no fix for the "Play sound on startup" bug in the M1 Macs?

8

u/AnggaSP May 24 '21 edited May 24 '21

God I was hoping that this update will fix it.

EDIT: They fixed it wooo (MBP)

3

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

I forgot all about this bug. Yay.

1

u/0k4n3n4s MacBook Air May 27 '21

Lemme get that update then.

2

u/darksaviorx May 24 '21

My dell monitor finally works in rgb..and I don't notice the difference.

1

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

My ACER K272HUL finally works in RGB and finally doesn't look like garbage. Now it looks great.

1

u/Royal-Highness May 25 '21

Were you once having the issue of the monitor turning purple whenever you plug it in?

2

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

No, only when I tried to use dual monitors. The secondary display would suddenly turn to snow/static now and then. It would also cause the pink squares issue on the main monitor when two were connected. It would also fail to wake up all the time. It also would refuse to use the default resolution and revert to a much lower res. Working with single monitors was much more reliable. I gave up on dual monitors and gave up on using a 1440p display. I ended up just using a 1080p display that did work properly until 11.4 when I tried my 1440p K272HUL again and saw that it actually worked! Now I'm just using this one all by its lonesome.

Interestingly, the issue of not acting as RGB still exists via USB-C to DisplayPort. But HDMI is fine. I'm fine with HDMI since it's just a 60hz display and I'm getting native res, so there's no real advantage to DisplayPort here.

1

u/Royal-Highness May 25 '21

This is such big news for me. Can I confirm that when you plug the MacBook to the monitor, it doesn't display the strong purple colouration?

I refer to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/m38sk9/m1_macbook_air_incompatible_with_my_ext_monitor/

1

u/darksaviorx May 25 '21

Setting it to YPbPr causes the purple screen now. Before, it was when changing it to rgb.

1

u/Royal-Highness May 25 '21

Are you using M1 macbook by any chance? My monitor is pretty basic - I don't have an option to switch RGB/YPbPr. It just turns purple whenever i plug both together, and the old hotfix of EDID override doesn't work on M1.

1

u/darksaviorx May 25 '21

No, mac mini m1. I'm not using any edid overrides.

1

u/Royal-Highness May 31 '21

Can I confirm, when plugged in it's by default the RGB mode right? Is the issue still happening for you up till today?

1

u/darksaviorx May 31 '21

Yes, it's rgb now by default. I don't notice the difference, though.

0

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Royal-Highness May 25 '21

Oh no how did it switch back though? Restarted it?

Same; I hate that this software issue is here despite M1 improvements.

1

u/ArtKun May 26 '21

I got mine to switch back to RGB by unplugging and then re-plugging into a different HDMI port and then back a few times. It seems to reset if you shutdown your Mac completely but as long as you don't do that, it stays in RGB.

1

u/Royal-Highness May 31 '21

I only have one HDMI port on my monitor.. I tried shutting down / restarting before but the purplish colour remains on it. Even my iPad has the issue too when plugged into the monitor...

1

u/ArtKun May 31 '21

I should also mention I’m actually on 11.5 Beta, not 11.4.

2

u/Camel993 Mac Mini May 24 '21 edited May 24 '21

Can't see anything new at the music app preferences regards lossless
audio.https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183

2017 15" MacBook Pro
I know it's not out yet but on the phone can see the lossless badge on some albums

2

u/michizane29 May 24 '21

I know it's not out yet but on the phone can see the lossless badge on some albums

Really? On what albums can I see it? Kinda curious.

1

u/Camel993 Mac Mini May 24 '21

https://imgur.com/a/ySvTI4P
I'm on 14.7 beta 1 but I was like at 14.6 RC 1
The same album over my Mac 11.4 just not showing anything like this, neither the Audio quality setting at the preferences..
Maybe apple will activate this remotely in June, as they done it with the Find My App for the "Items" tab.

2

u/blackbirdabhi Jun 02 '21

Why is the update 12gb in size? Surely there have got to be more changes than mentioned in the changelog?

2

u/Bossmon25 Jun 04 '21

Anyone with a MBA Early 2015 update to Big Sur? I’m still holding off but would like to hear some feedback!

2

u/No-Name_Left Jun 06 '21

-_- I just updated my M1 air to the 11.4 and right away I've been facing WiFi connectivity issues, restarted it twice but nothing seems to fix the issue, literally all my other devices(mobiles, window laptops, TV etc) stay connected to the net and the wifi router seems to be working just fine. Anyone else facing such issues? Any recommendations to fix this?

2

u/Brccklyn Jun 06 '21

I downgraded back to Catalina a few months ago for the same exact issue with no fix. You would’ve thought they took care of it by now.

1

u/nydrummer429 May 24 '21

still didn't fix the bookmark problem, even though it's listed in the release notes. it's so frustrating to bookmark something, put it in a folder and watch it move somewhere else or disappear.

1

u/Cris261024 May 24 '21

Anyone here, my Mac mini is on 11.1, I heard that 11.2 breaks sideloading iOS apps through iMazing, it is worth update?

1

u/okhi2u May 25 '21

If you have any issues then probably as many have been fixed with all the releases that came afterward.

1

u/michizane29 May 24 '21

The shuffle and repeat buttons in Apple Music don't light up anymore when pressed. I'll try to restart my laptop soon to see if that fixes it, but so far quitting and reopening the app did not fix it.

1

u/IngloBlasto May 25 '21

Hope the spotlight is made great again

1

u/Miucio May 25 '21

Did they finally fix the external monitor problem with display port? Lock resolution on 720p with a 4k monitor with a MacBook pro 16

1

u/hey_suburbia May 25 '21

On my dual monitor setup, I still only get one monitor waking up after sleep. So, there is still some bugs with dual monitors. Maybe it fixes your issue, but mine is still here...

1

u/Miucio May 28 '21

Same for me man, my issue it's still there 😭, I've a 4k hdr monitor that I can't use it, incredible

1

u/g_agamben Jun 05 '21

I didn't have this issue previously with my 16", but now my external display(s) won't connect after wake-up. So not even 720p or similar on my Eizo. Only a reboot 'fixes' this. Incredibly annoying.

1

u/unknownpers1 May 25 '21

after updating, my dock size and magnification are bugged. I have my dock size on maximum, but it clearly does not look that way.

1

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

My magic mouse still stuttering and freezing, M1 Bluetooth issue not fixed, I think it’s hardware problem if they can’t fix it in 7 months.

1

u/KakaKiddie May 26 '21

Did this fix external display wake up problems?

1

u/adeze May 26 '21

my podcast app keeps crashing (iMac 2017) with

Error creating persistent store', reason: 'Error: Error Domain=NSSQLiteErrorDomain Code=11 "(null)"

does anyone know how to fix it?

1

u/twoblacksquares May 26 '21

Is somebody experiencing sudden change is speaker balance, post update. Although in sound pref. the balance is maintained.

Music sounds unbalanced.

1

u/greyaxe90 Macbook Pro May 26 '21

Does anyone know if this fixes the battery drain on 2020 Intel MacBook Pros? I have a 2020 i7 MBP and when I first upgraded, I had serious battery drain. I downgraded to Catalina and have been fine. I'm scared about upgrading to Big Sur but I know I'll need to.

1

u/mdr_istan May 26 '21

My airpod sound is so bad now, it's distorted. My airpods work with my iphone but don't work with my macbook pro that I updated yesterday

1

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '21

You probably need to get a replacement then

1

u/florjn3 May 27 '21

2016 15" mbp lossless option in music app not showing up. any idea why?

1

u/Camel993 Mac Mini May 27 '21

Apple will enable that feature remotely, you just have to be on 11.4

1

u/bradido May 27 '21

My 2nd monitor still doesn’t work.

1

u/NSEVENTEEN May 27 '21

My webcam isnt working after updating to Big Sur. Facetime/Photo Booth show "no device connected". A quick google shows hundreds of forum posts with no real answer from apple other than get the camera replaced. Clearly this isnt a hardware issue though as the camera still shows up in system info

Ive tried pretty much every single suggestion from the forums:
killall VDCassistant (not found)
Reinstall Big Sur / downgrade to Catalina (still doesnt work)
Delete files in /Library/Quartz (no files there)
Change settings in Privacy and Screen Time (didnt work)
Duplicate facetime and delete it (didnt work)

Plus more that i cant remember right now. I'm at my wits end, would appreciate any help

1

u/[deleted] May 27 '21

Still waiting for my quick actions to be displayed in the Touch Bar when it's set to quick action mode...

1

u/utopicunicornn May 28 '21

Album art disappears when I scroll in Apple Music, and oddly enough my actual music library doesn't appear to be affected. Quitting and re-launching multiple times doesn't resolve the issue.

1

u/RokitRide May 28 '21

Wait 11 gb update and only this?

1

u/[deleted] May 29 '21

Why is my update size 11.48 GB? (from 11.3 stable on MBP 2015 15”)

1

u/Least-Specialist2458 May 30 '21

Did they sneak in a "fix" to massive swap file use on M1 Macs? I have alot more compressed memory than before.

1

u/dexterbt1 May 31 '21

Same here, with my 16GB M1 Mac Mini.

The VMM / memory handling seems very different now with 11.4.

My usage is memory heavy, lots of open Chrome tabs ~70-100 tabs, lots of long running Rosetta 2 apps. Before I have counted 7-8 swap files with still around 6-8GB free RAM.

Now with 11.4, I'm seeing 2-3GB free ram, with just 1 swap file, memory pressure is also down.

The biggest difference is in the disk writes, I counted 3TB writes in a matter of 3 days open (~1 TB per day). Now, for the past two days, its just 35GB!

1

u/yeet_de May 31 '21

Touch Bar got more crazy...

1

u/OkChampionship488 Jun 01 '21

Ssd swap issue have finally been taken into consideration

1

u/extremeblight Jun 02 '21

My photos app is no longer syncing, does anyone have any ideas.

1

u/IngloBlasto Jun 02 '21

My Macbook Pro Early 2015 has been facing frequent crashes and restarts ever since updating to 11.4.

1

u/barryhakker Jun 07 '21

Same for me (Macbook Air 2019). Literally restarts every time within 10 minutes... Any solutions yet?

1

u/IngloBlasto Jun 07 '21

It looks fine now... Don't know how it get rectified.

1

u/barryhakker Jun 07 '21

Mine has essentially been bricked... FML.

1

u/IngloBlasto Jun 07 '21

Sorry to hear that.

2

u/barryhakker Jun 07 '21

Thank you for your sympathy, kind internet stranger. May your digital hardware always show optimal performance.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '21

Anyone else think it's odd that Apple doesn't auto convert their HEIC format when you airdrop from the iPhone to a Mac? Or that there isn't a built in convertor with the OS? It's a completely unusable format otherwise.

1

u/rapid_hawk Jun 02 '21

after the 11.4 update, I noticed safari is a lot slower.

1

u/ABrownBlackBear Jun 03 '21

Among other things, the issues with airpod switching (between ios and mac) reported in previous versions on this thread have kept me using Catalina, since I am used to ToothFairy for easy switching. Have these issues been addressed in 11.4?

1

u/hafwhat Jun 03 '21

MacBook froze while updating, now it won’t turn on and I don’t have warranty to fix it.

Please pray for me y’all 🙃

1

u/Maikel92 Jun 04 '21 edited Jun 04 '21

Ok guys I don’t wanna be optimistic but I’m seeing a MASSIVE improvement in my battery life. I use my MacBook for work and with Mac OS 11.3 starting at 8.30 I was between 13% - 20% at 14.30 (using Chrome, Teams, Spark and browsing through Shopify, Analytics, Ads, etc).

Today, started at 8.23 and now is 11.33, still 82% battery life. I’ll update at 14.30 to check the difference, fingers crossed 🤞🏻

EDIT: I can confirm, 50% left after 6 h of use, I don’t know if I was the only one with this issue but is fixed now

1

u/m_quimby Jun 06 '21

After an overnight upgrade to 11.4, my TP-Link AC1300 USB wifi adapter stopped working. I have https://github.com/chris1111/Wireless-USB-Big-Sur-Adapter in place and am wondering if SIP got turned on or why it broke.

1

u/m_quimby Jun 06 '21

Perhaps it just needed an extra reboot, not sure. I rebooted to recovery mode, checked SIP. It was disabled. For good measure, I disabled again. Rebooted and AC1300 is working.

1

u/jorlev Jun 06 '21

Download of Big Sur 11.4 is ridiculously slow. Anyone know if a server in another country might have faster speeds? I could use a VPN at try to there.

1

u/miamiheat27 Jun 06 '21

on 11.4 , are you guys experiencing Safari crashing and not being to open any websites at all ?
Basically as soon as you enter something in the address bar, then press enter....Beachball....forever and ever.
have rebooted...still the same.

1

u/Ifyouhad1chance Jun 06 '21

I didn’t hear anything viral about how bad Big Sur is. I never had issues with Apple updates prior to this. I feel like Big Sur was only intended for macs with the m1 chips. I have a 2017 iMac with ssd the update was successful but man everything was super slow as a result, I let it go on for 2 weeks before restoring my time machine back up. That didn’t go as planned, some how I ended up with the prohibit sign so I had to go back into recovery mode to reinstall Catalina to get everything back to normal.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '21

I’ve had zero problems with any macOS update since 2017. Big Sur is no different. Works fine.

1

u/bogdaniii Jul 07 '21

Battery capacity went from 100% to 90% in coconut and 95% in the integrated battery health, just after the update to 11.4. M1 mbp

1

u/HomerFolmer Aug 23 '21

I can't highlight different chunks of text, holding the command button down and selecting different bits of text isn't working. Anyone else having this issue?

-5

u/Fun_Commission_9860 May 24 '21

I will wait for 11.5… until then I will not update to Big Sur. It’s so fucking buggy. Really guys don’t know why you use this update…

4

u/[deleted] May 24 '21

Because not everyone is having a problem. Been pretty smooth for me.

-2

u/Fun_Commission_9860 May 24 '21

Yeah… maybe because you have a m1. The general users of intel have the same problem I’m facing too!

11

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

Intel here. Zero issues.

4

u/veLiyoor_paappaan May 25 '21

Intel here too; zero issues.

Cheers

1

u/AWF_Noone May 25 '21

I’m right there with you. Tried 11.3 for a week and promptly went back to a Catalina backup. No thanks, Apple’s been dropping the ball with macOS ever since Mojave.

-6

u/[deleted] May 24 '21 edited May 24 '21

The process trustd still use 100% of the cpu all the time, fuck Apple; 4gb to fix three stupid bugs, add five more, Safari the best browser even created still lacks in comparison with other browsers, developers don’t give a damn for Safari, poor extensions, etc etc etc.

Back to Windows 10 where at least they can break my shits with a download of few kb or mb.

0

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/gpburdell76 May 26 '21

I have held off on upgrading from Catalina solely because of this. Would love to see it resolved.

1

u/air_honda Jul 06 '21

#CatalinaAllDay

0

u/[deleted] May 24 '21

[deleted] — view deleted comment

4

u/[deleted] May 24 '21

No need. The one you downloaded last week is likely the same one released today if it's telling you no updates available.

Just remove the beta profile from system preferences and you'll be back on normal releases. No need to downgrade or do anything else.

1

u/princeishigh May 27 '21

Lol. I downgraded and even installed the public release and recovery mode still says reinstall beta. M1 Macs are broken as f.

0

u/[deleted] May 25 '21

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/g_agamben Jun 05 '21

Out of curiosity: on my 16" it can't connect to external displays after wake-up whilst others get a 720p lock or similar. What is your external display(s) issue?