Apple has announced that macOS 14 Sonoma will be released to the public on September 26th 2023. In this article, we will be sharing up-to-date information, as we get it from brands and the community, about which pro audio applications and plug-ins do and don't work with macOS Sonoma, as well as other related issues which affect pro audio users. This article and companion searchable database will be constantly updated as the information and compatibility status change. 

With the release of macOS Sonoma, Apple jumps up another full integer between two consecutive macOS updates. macOS 14 Sonoma continues to cement Apple’s transition to Apple Silicon as we continue to see more Apple Silicon only features.

Support Dropped For Some Older Macs

With macOS 14 Sonoma, Apple is dropping support for Macs from 2017. including the 2017 MacBook Pro, 2017 iMac and 2017 12-inch MacBook. This is the full compatibility list published by Apple…

• MacBook Pro: from 2018 and later

• MacBook Air: from 2018 and later

• Mac mini: from 2018 and later

• iMac: from 2019 and later

• iMac Pro: from 2017

• Mac Studio: from 2022 and later

• Mac Pro: 2019 and later

What won’t Work on Intel Macs

As Apple continues its transition to Apple Silicon, with macOS 14 Sonoma, there are a number of features that are limited to Apple silicon-based Macs, with Intel Macs unable to access these options. With the release of macOS Ventura, these features weren’t supported on Intel based Macs…

• Live Captions across audio content, including FaceTime.

• Reference Mode in Sidecar.

• Emoji support in Dictation mode.

Now with the release of macOS Sonoma, the following features only work on Apple silicon based Macs…

• Screen Sharing App (requires Apple Silicon advanced media engine

• Presenter Overlay in video conferencing

• Reacting with your hands in video conferencing

• Game Mode

• Siri now works when you just say “Siri” as well as “Hey Siri.”

Is It Too Early To Upgrade To macOS Sonoma?

Simply put - Yes.

Even though all of Apple’s software will be compatible with Sonoma from day 1, including Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro and able to run on Apple Silicon too, Logic and FCPX users will find that a lot of the plugins that you depend on will not be macOS 14 compatible from day 1. With this in mind, our advice, even for Apple Logic and FCP users, is NOT to upgrade until you are sure that all your plugins and ancillary software are supported on macOS Sonoma.

What About Apple Silicon?

This is the status of support for Apple Silicon computers and macOS Sonoma with the main DAWs as we understand it.

Check, Check And Check Again

We recommend that you search the database to see whether the software and hardware you use are compatible with macOS Sonoma. You should wait until all the DAW, plug-in and software brands that you use, as well as peripheral manufacturers, are also supporting macOS 14 Sonoma BEFORE you upgrade.

Not Here = Not Supported

Absence on this list should be taken as not compatible; initially, the information will be scarce. As soon as brands let us know about their macOS Sonoma compatibility, we will update this article and database as we have done with our macOS Mojave Compatibility, macOS Catalina, macOS Big Sur, macOS Monterey Compatibility and macOS Ventura articles.

Don't Update In The Middle Of A Job

We always recommend that you leave any upgrade until you have some downtime. Experience has told us that upgrades are rarely straightforward, especially OS upgrades, as they often have knock-on effects, so wait until you have time to fix the unforeseen problems.

Support For Firewire Connected Devices Dropped with macOS Ventura

Apple chose to discontinue the Firewire CoreAudio driver in macOS 13 Ventura and all subsequent iterations of the macOS.

This has come from a number of brands with Firewire related products…

Apogee Digital - Starting with macOS 13 Ventura, the Apple Firewire CoreAudio driver is discontinued, and Firewire audio devices will no longer work. Please note that our software development for Firewire devices has ended. The last version of OS X we tested with the Ensemble Firewire or Duet Firewire was 10.10 Yosemite. Apogee products affected include the following:

• X-Firewire option card for Rosetta 200/800 units, and AD-16x/DA-16x units

• Ensemble (original Firewire model from 2006)

• Duet (original Firewire model from 2007)

PreSonus - PreSonus has ended development support for FireWire products. This covers the following…

• StudioLive 16.0.2 Classic (Firewire)

• StudioLive 32.4.2AI

• StudioLive 24.4.2AI

• StudioLive 16.4.2AI

• StudioLive RM32AI

• StudioLive RML32AI

• StudioLive RM16AI

• StudioLive RML16AI

The last supported version of Universal Control for these products is v3.6.0. This version of Universal Control contains a specific firewire driver file which must be installed. It's a separate installation from the main software. Direct connection through 1394/FireWire on Mac and Windows systems for audio recording and playback and data support ended with this release. To utilize this feature, an older compatible computer with a supported operating system must be used.

Prism Sound - Do NOT update your OS to Ventura. Currently, OS Ventura does not support core audio over Firewire, so the Orpheus and multiple other devices will not work.

Our Advice

Although there are some workarounds they involve reducing the security settings on your Mac, which has risks. If you depend on a device, like an audio interface, that connects to your computer via Firewire, then we recommend that you do not upgrade to macOS Ventura or macOS Sonoma until you have found an alternative solution that does not require a Firewire connection to your computer.

Run Two Versions Of macOS On Your Studio Mac - Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma

You may be stuck between a rock and hard place, needing two versions of macOS on your studio Mac. Or you may just be curious and want to try and see if the newest version plays nice.

With Apple File System (APFS) formatted drives, Apple has done some magic. You can now create dynamic volumes on one drive. What this means is you simply add a second volume, and the APFS file system will assign drive space as needed, so you don’t even need to pre-allocate space when making the volume - it’s almost magic. From Apple’s support documentation;

“Apple File System (APFS) allocates disk space on demand. When a single APFS container (partition) has multiple volumes, the container’s free space is shared and can be allocated to any of the individual volumes as needed. Each volume uses only part of the overall container, so the available space is the total size of the container, minus the size of all volumes in the container.”

In this article, we show how to install two versions of macOS on one Mac, with no reformatting required and all thanks to a handy feature built into modern Macs. It’s easy to do and gives you the flexibility of running a dual-boot Mac in minutes.

macOS Sonoma Feature Summary

There is no doubt that Apple’s operating system has been going through some major changes over the last few iterations. With Big Sur, we got a redesigned interface and new features like Control Center and an overhauled Notification Center.

Monterey built on this with new features in FaceTime and Continuity tools like AirPlay to Mac, which allows other Apple devices to be displayed on a larger screen. However, macOS Monterey’s headline feature, Universal Control, didn’t make it onto our computers until March 2022, enabling you to be able to share a mouse and keyboard between Macs and iPads.

With the release of macOS Ventura, Apple added a raft of new features designed to refine and improve some features that we have enjoyed for years. A lot of what macOS 13 Ventura brought was better integration with iOS and iPadOS devices, but there are some new features that only Mac users will enjoy.

Moving onto the latest macOS iteration, ‌macOS Sonoma‌ adds new features, including interactive desktop widgets, Apple TV-like aerial screensavers, enhancements to apps like Messages and Safari, a new Game mode that prioritizes CPU and GPU performance for gaming, and more.

Get More Done with Interactive Widgets

Users can place widgets right on the desktop and conveniently access the widget gallery to find the ones they know and love. Apple has designed macOS 14 Widgets to blend seamlessly with the wallpaper while you work in apps so you can stay focused on the task at hand. Through the magic of Continuity, you can also enjoy the ecosystem of iPhone widgets on your Mac. With macOS Sonoma, widgets become interactive, allowing you to check off reminders, play or pause media, access home controls, and perform various tasks from your Mac, all directly from the desktop.

Although there are plenty of Desktop Widgets, you will be able to use in macOS Sonoma. It turns out that the Music widget isn’t available yet. It will allow users to control playback from the Music app, as well as show a dynamic list of the top charts and recommendations. Other Music features that will come at a later date:

• Playlist collaboration: Friends can put together a playlist and add, reorder, and remove songs. Emojis can be used to react to songs.

• Favourite Songs playlist: Just as it sounds like, a playlist of your favourite songs. You can ask Siri to play it, too.

• Favourites in the Library: Your favourite songs, artists, and playlists are automatically added to your Library.

Smarter Video Conferencing Experiences

macOS Sonoma brings enhanced video conferencing features that enable you to present and share your work more effectively within any video conferencing app. Presenter Overlay, a new video effect, elevates your presence by displaying you on top of the content you are sharing. Additionally, Reactions allow you to share how you feel by seamlessly adding balloons, confetti, hearts, and more into the video, which can also be triggered with a hand gesture. The improved Screen Sharing picker simplifies the process of sharing apps during video calls. You can simply click the green button in the top-left corner of an app and choose to share it in the call, allowing for easy content sharing from their currently open windows.

Major Updates to Safari

Safari introduces new features to enhance the browsing experience for Mac users. This release brings a significant update to Private Browsing, which provides even greater protection during browsing from trackers and people who might have access to your device. Advanced tracking and fingerprinting protections in Private Browsing go even further to help prevent websites from tracking or identifying the user. Private Browsing windows also lock when users are not using them, allowing them to keep tabs open even when they step away from their devices.

Additionally, profiles help users stay organised by offering a way to separate browsing between topics while also keeping cookies, history, extensions, Tab Groups, and Favourites separate. Users can sign in to the same site with both work and personal accounts — and quickly switch between them — ensuring a smooth browsing experience. Safari also enables the creation of web apps that behave like normal apps, putting users’ favourite sites at their fingertips and providing a simplified toolbar for an app-like experience.

New Screen Savers

macOS Sonoma brings new screen savers featuring slow-motion videos of various locations around the world, such as the sweeping skyline of Hong Kong, the sandstone buttes of Monument Valley in Arizona, and the rolling hills of Sonoma in Northern California. This graphical and photographic imagery has been designed to enhance the Mac experience by shuffling through Landscape, Earth, Underwater, or Cityscape themes. The login experience is now repositioned at the bottom of the screen, making space for the new screen savers, which seamlessly transition into the desktop.

Gaming On A Mac Improved

With the power of Apple silicon, users now experience improved graphics performance on every Mac with an SoC. With the release of macOS 14, Apple silicon Macs can run games with improved performance, longer battery life, and breathtaking visuals. Developers continue to take advantage of Metal 3, and to make it easier to port games from other platforms to Mac, Metal introduces a new game porting toolkit, eliminating months of upfront work and enabling developers to see how well their existing game could run on Mac in just a few days. It also dramatically simplifies the process of converting the game’s shaders and graphics code to take full advantage of Apple silicon performance, significantly reducing the total development time.

macOS Sonoma also introduces Game Mode, giving players an edge when performance is measured in precious milliseconds. Game Mode delivers an optimised gaming experience with smoother and more consistent frame rates by ensuring games get the highest priority on the CPU and GPU. Game Mode also makes gaming on Mac even more immersive — dramatically lowering audio latency with AirPods and significantly reducing input latency with popular game controllers like those for Xbox and PlayStation by doubling the Bluetooth sampling rate. Game Mode works with any game, including all of the recent and upcoming Mac games.

Enhancing Hybrid and Remote Pro Workflows

Harnessing the advanced media engine in Apple silicon, macOS Sonoma brings a new high-performance mode to the Screen Sharing app. Enabling incredibly responsive remote access to hybrid in-studio and remote pro workflows, it delivers low-latency audio, high frame rates and supports up to two virtual displays. This mode enables users to access their content creation workflows from anywhere securely — whether editing in Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve or animating complex 3D assets in Maya. With support for reference colour, it also enables remote colour workflows that traditionally could not be performed without dedicated hardware and specialised software.

Enhanced Accessibility Features

macOS Sonoma introduces a range of accessibility features that make Mac even more customisable for all users. For users with hearing disabilities, ‘Made for iPhone’ hearing devices can connect to their Mac for calls and media consumption, while users who are nonspeaking can use Live Speech to type and vocalise their thoughts during calls and conversations. For users with physical and motor disabilities, phonetic suggestions appear when dictating and editing text with Voice Control on Mac. To assist users with cognitive disabilities, animated images like GIFs can be automatically paused in Messages and Safari. Additionally, users who are blind or have low vision can easily customise text size across Mac apps and utilise Xcode with VoiceOver, Apple’s industry-leading screen reader.

Additional macOS Sonoma updates include:

• Streamlined PDFs: Enhanced PDF functionality allows for quick form-filling with AutoFill and smart recipient recommendations. When you open a PDF, the Intelligent form detection can automatically identify PDFs with a field that needs to be filled out. However, Enhanced AutoFill, which will be able to sense fields such as names and addresses and quickly populate, won’t be available until a future update.

• Inline PDFs in Notes: Notes now displays PDFs and document scans in full width, and with linked notes, users can quickly connect related notes like recipes or homework. When using English, Sonoma can provide single and multi-word predictions for text fields based on what you are typing. You can then accept the predictive text suggestion by pressing the space bar. Like iOS 17, the feature has been delayed until later this year.

• Siri: Users have the ability to simply say “Siri” to activate Siri.

• Passwords: Users can now create a group to share a set of passwords. Everyone in a group can add and edit passwords to keep them up to date, and since sharing is through iCloud Keychain, it’s end-to-end encrypted. Additionally, the one-time verification codes received in Mail will now autofill in Safari, making it easy to securely log in without leaving the browser.

• Messages: Users can connect with those closest to them with an all-new stickers experience, enhancements to features like search, reply, groups, and syncing with Messages in iCloud. However, these three features won’t be available until later:

  • Stickers: A Sticker drawer will have Live Stickers, Memoji, or Animoji that you can use to react to a message.

  • Catch-up Arrow: In a group conversation, an arrow appears in the top right corner. Tap it, and you’ll jump to the first unread message.

  • iCloud improvements: Messages in iCloud will be able to sync settings such as Text Message Forwarding, Send and Receive accounts, and SMS filters across devices.

• Reminders: Intelligent grocery lists in Reminders streamline weekly trips to the store. Additionally, users can organise lists into sections and arrange them horizontally using a new column view.

• Keyboard: An all-new autocorrect makes corrections more accurate and easier to fix. Inline completions help users finish sentences quickly, while Dictation improves accuracy through next-level speech recognition.

• Privacy and Safety: Communication Safety expands to AirDrop, the Photos picker, incoming calls, and FaceTime messages, further broadening protections for children. Additionally, Sensitive Content Warning prevents unexpected exposure to sensitive images and videos in AirDrop and Messages, incoming calls, and FaceTime messages while allowing the user to block the contact or seek further resources for help.

Option-Desktop Click No Longer Hides All Apps On macOS Sonoma

In previous versions of macOS, when you wanted to hide all the apps running on your Mac, you could use Option and Click anywhere on the Finder's Desktop, and all the visible applications would be hidden so that all you would see is the Desktop.

Starting with macOS Sonoma, when you use Option-click on the Finder's Desktop, only the frontmost running app is hidden. All other visible apps remain visible in the background.

If you want to hide all visible running apps except Finder in macOS Sonoma, you now click on the Finder's Desktop without holding down any keys on your keyboard.

Updates

As we said at the beginning, we will continue to update both this article and the searchable database as new information comes to light.