Apple Seeds Second macOS Sonoma 14.2 Release Candidate to Developers
Apple today seeded a second release candidate (RC) version of an upcoming macOS Sonoma 14.2 update to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming few days after Apple seeded the first RC. The second RC has a build number of 23C64, up from 23C63 for the first RC.
Registered developers can opt-in to the beta through the Software Update section of the System Settings app. Under Beta updates, toggle on the Sonoma Developer Beta. Note that an Apple ID associated with an Apple Developer account is required to get the beta.
The release candidate version of macOS Sonoma 14.2 represents the finalized version of the softwae that will be released to the public should no major issues be found.
macOS Sonoma 14.2 adds support for enhanced AutoFill for PDFs, along with Contact Key Verification for Messages, a sticker tapback option, new Weather widgets, and more. Apple's release notes for the update are below.
This update introduces enhanced Autofill for PDFs and improvements to Messages and Weather. This release also includes other features, bug fixes, and security updates for your Mac.
PDFs
- Enhanced AutoFill identifies fields in PDFs and other forms enabling you to populate them with information such as names and addresses from your contacts
Messages
- Catch-up arrow lets you easily jump to your first unread message in a conversation by clicking the arrow visible in the top-right corner
- Add sticker option in the context menu lets you add a sticker directly to a bubble
- Contact Key Verification provides automatic alerts and Contact Verification Codes to help verify people facing extraordinary digital threats are messaging only with the people they intend
Weather
- Precipitation amounts help you stay on top of rain and snow conditions for a given day over the next 10 days
- New widgets let you choose from next-hour precipitation, daily forecast, sunrise and sunset times, and current conditions such as Air Quality, Feels Like, and wind speed
- Wind map snapshot helps you quickly assess wind patterns and access the animated wind map overlay to prepare for forecasted wind conditions for the next 24 hours
Clock
- Multiple timers let you run several timers simultaneously and create a name for each timer
- Timer presets help you quickly start a timer with a range of preset options
- Recents makes it easy to restart your recently used timers
This update also includes the following new features:
- Favorite Songs Playlist in Apple Music lets you quickly get back to the songs you mark as favorites
- Use Listening History in Apple Music can be disabled in a Focus so music you listen to does not appear in Recently Played or influence your recommendations
- Shazam Music Recognition allows you to quickly identify songs playing online or around you, even when wearing AirPods
- New keyboard layouts provide support for 7 additional Sámi languages
- Some features may not be available for all regions or on all Apple devices.
For detailed information about the security content of this update, please visit: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222
Apple is expected to release macOS Sonoma 14.2 next week.
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Top Rated Comments
Honestly, these "works for me" posts are so tedious and pointless. There is a huge number of forum threads across Mac sites, the Apple forums and the likes of Reddit from people discussing bugs. LOTS of bugs. Including the infamous very serious f-up where they've got the recovery partition and firmware out of sync, leading to a chance of brick-on-update. You haven't seen any issues? Then you're either very unobservant, mistake buggy behaviour for works-as-intended, and/or incredibly lucky to be using some tiny subset of the OS that doesn't have noticeable faults.
For the rest of us, devs included, we've been through the betas or releases and seen plenty. Given that Apple's own release notes list some of the things they fixed in their own OS then clearly even Apple know they have bugs and yet, "Not a single problem", you confidently state. I guess Apple are wrong about their own bugs too, then.
I've seen plenty myself and, TL;DR, Sonoma has been an utter dumpster fire - a new low for Apple's ever-declining software quality. I've got it on my work machine but it's not going anywhere near my Mac at home.