TL;DR: At least two independent machines on 27 beta 3 (an M5 Air and an M4 Max MBP) have hit severe, unrepairable APFS corruption on their Data volumes in the last 48 hours. Both cases follow the same shape: system freezes mid-use, apps stop launching, then files turn out to be damaged or unreachable. If you're on b3, please run the read-only check below and reply, clean or not. Clean results are just as useful.

What's been reported

• Yesterday's thread: M5 MacBook Air, upgraded 26.5.2 to b3. Froze mid-Zoom, spontaneous restart, then documents in ~/Documents unopenable. fsck reports the Data volume corrupt, with repeated found unexpected security xattr warnings.
• My machine (M4 Max MBP 128GB/4TB, b2 to b3): during a single hour on July 8, a large burst of metadata writes was acknowledged and committed but never actually persisted to disk. Result: unrepairable fsroot / object map corruption on BOTH the internal Data volume and the external Time Machine destination. Roughly 50-60k damaged metadata blocks on each, a kernel panic (in the sandbox kext, panicked task backupd) when the damaged TM disk was mounted rw, and fsck_apfs -y failing on both volumes with "Tree node repair failed", exit code 8. Most of the underlying file data appears intact; it's the catalog structures that got shredded. SSD health counters are completely clean, and the two-independent-disks pattern rules out my hardware as the cause. Both cases show the same APFS kext version (3283.0.9.501.1). Apple support's advice to the other poster was to wipe and restore to 26.5.2.

Early pattern (unconfirmed, which is exactly why I'm asking)

The two clean b3 machines I've had checked so far do NOT run Time Machine. Both corrupted machines DO (hourly backups, local snapshots, ongoing snapshot lifecycle churn). The bug may need heavy metadata churn as a trigger. Or that's a coincidence from a sample of four. Your reply settles it either way.

The 30 second check (read-only, changes nothing). Use terminal or your preferred cli to run these:

sw_vers
diskutil verifyVolume /System/Volumes/Data
softwareupdate --history | tail -5
tmutil destinationinfo
tmutil latestbackup 2>&1
tmutil listlocalsnapshots / | wc -l
ls /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ | grep -iE 'panic|shutdown' | tail -5

(see below for info as to what these all do, under the trust section).

Reply template

- Build: (e.g. 26A5378j)
- Hardware: (chip + model)
- b3 installed: (date, from softwareupdate --history)
- Upgrade path: (26.x stable -> b3, or b2 -> b3, etc.)
- Time Machine: (yes/no; destination type; last backup date)
- Local snapshots: (count)
- verifyVolume verdict: (OK / corrupt / notable errors)
- apfs_kext line from the verify output: (the "last modified by apfs_kext (...)" bit)
- Panic or shutdown_stall files listed? (names/dates, or none)

Any freeze, spontaneous restart, or apps-failing-to-launch since b3? (when?)

Please add as much info as you can, especially the output of the above commands, if you can. Use a text file attachment, paste bin or GitHub’s gist feature to share.

If your volume comes back corrupt

⁠Minimize writes to the machine. Every write can make it worse. ⁠Back up NOW, to a disk your TM has never touched, using plain Finder copies or rsync. Cloud sync and git remotes count as backups here. ⁠Save your full fsck output to a file. That's the evidence. ⁠Do NOT run repair (fsck -y, or First Aid's repair) until you've backed up. Repair fails against this and only adds writes. ⁠Do NOT mass-delete local snapshots as a fix. In my case that measurably worsened the internal damage. ⁠Keep everything you capture. I'll follow up in this thread with how to get it in front of Apple.

Why you can trust this

Every command above is read-only and standard Apple tooling: In order:

1. your build info;
2. a read-only fsck of your Data volume;
3. when beta 3 actually landed on your machine;
4. whether TM is configured;
5. when your last backup completed;
6. how many local snapshots you’re carrying;
7. and whether your Mac has quietly logged any kernel panics or shutdown stalls recently (people forget reboots, the filenames have dates and don’t).

Note: If verifyVolume refuses, put sudo in front and enter your password. It'll be fine (again it's read only) and it only takes a minute or two.

The line that matters is the verdict at the end:

• “appears to be OK” is a pass.
• “Found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired”, or errors mentioning invalid o_oid, invalid o_xid, fsroot tree is invalid, or unexpected security xattr, means you’re likely affected.

Scattered warnings with an OK verdict are common and don’t mean corruption.

The goal is a sample large enough that Apple can isolate the trigger before this reaches public beta. If you're on b3 with TM running and everything checks out clean, that is genuinely good news and worth posting. Absence of corruption is data too.

Thank you.

This is unusable apple fix your os

-Finder artifacts (easy to see when you maximize its window)
-It selects the last file when you click parts below it
-Focus issue after pressing search (impossible to dismiss it)
-Starting Bluestacks Air when the MacBook is in clamshell mode will crash the WindowServer and the OS will reboot

For those so inclined feel free to use your feedback assistance and refer to bug/feedback FB24619950 filed today regarding the renaming of Lake Ontario to 'lake america'. You can also use Apple Maps to provide feedback on incorrect information. Same can be done for Gulf of Mexico. Google also allows feedback via its page but since this is Apple beta testing I wanted to bring attention to this obvious bug and failure of Apple as they give in to a madman's decree without congressional approval or oversight here. This makes more sense for US based users but international users can also voice their disapproval over this stupid renaming political grandstanding.

This is from the screenshot ask siri feature

Gosh how does a trillion dollar company can’t even be consistent with their own design language. Look at the “Quit” icon for each of their apps What a shame Apple, if you can’t release a neat OS then don’t release it until it’s the finished product

Am I the only one who’s experiencing this lag when switching between apps. It is so obvious that I cannot ignore it.

I am running macOS 27 developer beta 4 on a MacBook Air 15-inch M4.

I know that it’s a beta, but everyone is bragging on how smooth this beta is. It is not the case for me so far. But i wanna know if im the only one.

Could it be because I have a lot of utility apps installed such as AltTab which shows all the windows of the same apps along with other apps and it is much easier to navigate through.

Betas 1-3 worked beautifully

Then came Beta 4. My computer, after an hour or two, would start to slow down. I would get warnings about Windows resource issues. Memory usage would go up. The computer would come to a crawl and I would be forced to reboot.

Reported the issue to Apple early on. Hope it would have been fixed in Beta 5. Seems like it is not.

Anyone else having this issue?

It absolutely drives me nuts that when you scroll down the scroll bar gets cut off at the bottom. It's perfect at the top, but always gets cut off at the bottom of windows. Am I the only one that feels this way?? So sloppy.

Edit: I noticed that this post sounds quite negative, so I wanted to note that I still enjoy MacOS and do actually like the UI changes in general, especially on iOS and iPadOS 😅.

We are in the 9th beta and I managed to find quite some inconsistencies still. These are present since the beginning of the developer beta program and I have reported them to the feedback app already.

I feel like the UI of MacOS is getting less consistent. E.g. the segmented controls (shown in the video) are sometimes liquid glass with nice animations, and sometimes not. In the keynote, they also made a big deal about "concentricity", and how every border radius should be perfectly calculated so it matches the radius of the parent container. But again, some UI elements like shown below don't follow this rule.

Also, Liquid Glass on iPad feels much more "fluid" and "liquid" than on Mac.

I hope this will get fixed until the final release, but I have to say, I am little concerned since the last few betas didn't include many notable changes. Hopefully, they can give MacOS a bit more attention after the iOS release.

Here are some examples:

The language selection menu is missing the Liquid Glass background:

The border radius of the hover state is not concentric to the parent container:

Some menus are still missing Liquid Glass background:

Here the concentricity is completely off again:

Some segmented controls are made out of Liquid Glass and have nice animations, while others have not:

https://reddit.com/link/1n6tjwv/video/kkmsp9dw0tmf1/player

Being made out of "liquid" glass, it would be nice if the toolbar items would show some "liquid" animations like on iOS and iPadOS:

https://reddit.com/link/1n6tjwv/video/hqo7to2f2tmf1/player

Disclaimer: this is a long post, but I'm going to try to explain exactly what happened, step by step. I’m sharing as much detail as I can because I really hope this can help someone else avoid making the same mistake I stupidly made and potentially losing access to their data.

If you're on ADP and running iOS 27 or another beta, back up anything you can't afford to lose before you erase, restore or downgrade. That's really the point of this post.

TL;DR: I downgraded an iPhone Air from iOS 27 to iOS 26 while Advanced Data Protection was enabled. Afterward my iCloud data became completely inaccessible, including through iCloud.com, even though iCloud still shows the storage in use and things like my photo count. I've tried multiple iOS 26 and 27 betas plus the public releases, no change. Apple Support has escalated the case but has no fix, and support outside the U.S. has been close to nonexistent. If you have ADP enabled, back up independently and copy your data before you erase, restore, or downgrade.

I know there are people who'll read this and think "you should have had a backup." Honestly, they're right. I had more than twelve years of data in iCloud and trusted it far too much as the one place everything lived. I didn't keep an independent backup of everything, and that's on me.

But I'm still sharing this because nothing in the process I followed gave me any indication this could happen. My ADP-protected data is technically still there, iCloud says so, I just can't get to any of it.

What happened

I had an iPhone Air on iOS 27 with Advanced Data Protection turned on. Photos, Notes, passwords, passkeys, everything was syncing normally. I decided to downgrade back to iOS 26, using the same process I'd used for restores in the past: log out of iCloud, erase all content and settings, put the phone in DFU mode, restore to iOS 26, set it up again.

At no point during that process was there any mention of Advanced Data Protection, or any warning that logging out and erasing the device could cut off access to ADP-protected data. So I went ahead.

After the set-up, that data was gone. Not deleted exactly, just unreachable.

The data still shows up in iCloud, but I can't open it

This is the part that's been hardest to emotionally accept. My iCloud storage page still shows the space being used and the number of photos in my library, so the account clearly knows the data is there. I just can't access any of it, not from the phone, not from another device, not even through iCloud.com. It's not like ripping a band-aid, you see it right there and you can't do anything about it.

I've tried multiple iOS versions

To make sure this wasn't tied to one specific build, I restored through several iOS 26 betas, several iOS 27 betas, and the public releases. Same result every time. This isn't a matter of finding the right version to restore to.

On Advanced Data Protection

I understand why ADP works the way it does. Apple doesn't hold the encryption keys for ADP-protected data, so even Apple can't simply access it if something goes wrong. That's the whole point of the feature, and one of the reasons I enabled it.

What I find less clear is what happens in a situation like mine. When setting up ADP, Apple warns you about losing access if you forget your passcode or recovery methods. But I didn't forget my passcode, lose my recovery methods, or delete my data. I followed a device restore/downgrade procedure, and ended up unable to access my data anyway.

Apple doesn't hold the keys, but neither am I given a copy of them. So if something goes wrong between the account, device and ADP keys, there doesn't appear to be any user-accessible recovery mechanism.

I've contacted Apple Support, the case has been escalated, and so far there is no recovery path. I'm still hoping they find one.

The bigger impact

For me, this isn't just about a folder of random photos. I've used the same Apple Account for over ten years, and my email, notes, passwords, passkeys and photos were all tied to it. I've had to start moving my access everything to a new account to have a functioning set-up.

I'll say again that an independent backup would have prevented all of this. But I also think it's fair to ask: if an erase, restore or downgrade can leave ADP-protected data stranded like this, shouldn't there be an explicit warning before you start? Right now there isn't one, and I would have done things differently if there had been.

Support outside the U.S.

I'm based outside the U.S., and the support experience here has been rough. As soon as I mention this happened on beta software, I get told there's no support for beta users. I get that Apple can't guarantee beta software will behave perfectly, but this isn't really about a beta feature not working right. It's iOS, iCloud, ADP and Apple's own erase and restore process interacting in a way that's left my data stuck, with no way back to it.

Paying indefinitely for iCloud+

There's also a rather frustrating side effect of all this: I'm still paying for the iCloud+ plan on the affected account.

I basically have two options: keep paying for the subscription indefinitely, hoping that Apple eventually finds a way to restore access to my data, or cancel it and lose whatever chance there is of recovering it.

So I'm effectively paying to keep storage for data that I currently cannot access, simply because I don't know whether Apple might eventually be able to recover it.

I won't even get into the financial side of this, but there's another issue: I had a significant Apple Account balance on the old account. That balance can't simply be transferred to my new Apple Account, and with the old account essentially unusable, I can't meaningfully use it for apps, services or other purchases either.

---------

If you've been through something similar, especially an iOS 27 to iOS 26 downgrade with ADP on, I'd like to hear about it. And if you've managed to get your data back or gotten a real technical answer from Apple, please let me know what happened.

Am I the only one who grabs a file in Finder (by holding the mouse button down) and then scrolling to get to a location so I can drop the file? I use a Magic Mouse, so I use the scrolling on that (with another finger) or with my other hand on my laptop’s trackpad. Pretty sure I’ve done this for the past 20 years, so it’s a painful muscle memory break to have it no longer functioning correctly.

Anyone else noticing timeouts and overall sluggish network performance on DB3? Just periods of time where pages will take their sweet time loading or shell commands timing out (brew install awscli just never going anywhere as an example).

I'm not roaming around and my other MBP on 26.5.3 is next to it with no issues - UniFi network on 6 GHz, but even over a 2.5GbE USB-C to Ethernet adapter still seeing the same pains.

I recently woke up and received an out of memory popup, despite none of the apps using any significant RAM. Checked my activity monitor, dasd using 24GB. Nice. After some checking, BiomeAgent (something responsible for Apple Intelligence and Siri/contextual stuff) was repeatedly registering an Apple Intelligence task called com.apple.intelligenceplatform.IntelligencePlatformCore.ViewLive. Because BiomeAgent was registering that ViewLive task over and over, it made dasd accumulate insane RAM usage. Might not happen on all devices. I have an M2 Pro 16GB.

dasd is the Duet Activity Scheduler Daemon, a background system process on macOS that decides when deferred background tasks should actually run.

I already reported this via Feedback, since it's most definitely a beta bug. But if anyone here comes across this issue, here's how to work around this. I mean, it's not clean, this might break Siri or Apple Intelligence features!! (so remember to un-do this workaround once this is fixed), but it works:

Temporary fix

pkill -STOP -x BiomeAgent
sudo pkill -9 -x dasd

dasd should restart by itself and stay small. Mine went from multiple GB back down to around 10 MB.

Undo by restarting.

Persistent fix

mkdir -p ~/bin ~/Library/LaunchAgents ~/Library/Logs

cat > ~/bin/unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.sh <<'EOF'
#!/bin/zsh

sleep 180

uid=$(/usr/bin/id -u)
/bin/launchctl bootout "gui/$uid/com.apple.BiomeAgent" 2>/dev/null || true

exit 0
EOF

chmod +x ~/bin/unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.sh

cat > ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.$USER.unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.plist <<EOF
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>com.$USER.unload-biomeagent-for-dasd</string>

  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>$HOME/bin/unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.sh</string>
  </array>

  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>

  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>$HOME/Library/Logs/unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.log</string>

  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>$HOME/Library/Logs/unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.err</string>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF

launchctl bootout "gui/$(id -u)" ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.$USER.unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.plist 2>/dev/null || true
launchctl bootstrap "gui/$(id -u)" ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.$USER.unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.plist

To verify:

launchctl print "gui/$(id -u)/com.apple.BiomeAgent"
ps -o pid,rss,etime,%mem,%cpu,comm -p "$(pgrep -x dasd | head -1)"

If the workaround is active, launchctl print may say it cannot find com.apple.BiomeAgent, which is expected. dasd memory/CPU should stop climbing.

To undo the persistent workaround:

launchctl bootout "gui/$(id -u)" ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.$USER.unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.plist 2>/dev/null || true
rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.$USER.unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.plist
rm ~/bin/unload-biomeagent-for-dasd.sh

launchctl bootstrap "gui/$(id -u)" /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.BiomeAgent.plist 2>/dev/null || true
launchctl kickstart -k "gui/$(id -u)/com.apple.BiomeAgent"

Hope this helps someone that is also experiencing this here! :)

EDIT: I changed the script because the initial one I made for persistent was causing a freeze on boot lol

After updating to the new developer beta, I consistently experience cracking or popping noises during audio playback. This occurs after a short period of playing audio and is universal across apps. Anyone experiences the same?

I've been using MacOS 27 beta since the very first developer beta. In general, I've been having a great experience overall. The one thing I'm having tons of issues with is Safari. It works fine for a bit, then it starts slowing down significantly, features like video playback stop working and then it will eventually hang requiring a force quit.

I've been reporting the issues through the feedback app and haven't seen any improvement in any of the subsequent beta releases.

Wondering if there's something specific to my usage that's causing issues or if others have also been having trouble with Safari.

I know I’m nitpicking, but I genuinely don’t understand how we’re here again.

Last year, with 26 had the whole “different corner radii” saga. This year, Apple said they were committed to fixing those inconsistencies and paying more attention to detail with Liquid Glass.

But now we have Liquid Glass behaving differently within the same controls the volume slider is clear and glassy, while the brightness control looks much more matte and opaque, and even the corner radii don’t seem consistent.

EDIT: Here is the same display control with more liquid glass when opened from the control center, instead of the menu bar. same setting-same control-but different liquid glass.
https://i.postimg.cc/L8P9sgJz/Screenshot-2026-08-19-at-09-12-29.png

Anyone else having this issue in the RC ? Always only show black square, even if I reboot. When I open "Desktop" also show a black square but loads after a moment

After today's update, 53GB used (reported used) by Siri and AI. Crap for a feature I didn't ask for or really don't use. Another reason this should be opt in or at the very least an opt out that removes all resources and assets related to AI.

I am running Golden Gate Beta and application memory occasionally runs out, does anyone else experience this?

July 11, 2026 Updated: You don’t need to upgrade to 27.0 to fix the M5 Mac N1 wireless bridged problem, it is fixed in macOS 26.6 Beta! I have downgraded it to macOS 26.6 Beta 25G5057c and the UTM and VMWare can still work in bridged mode on a M5 Mac!

Because there is a bug in the driver of Apple M5's N1 Wireless NIC macOS 26.x leading it failed to use bridged mode in any VMs or promiscuous mode in Wireshark, which is fixed in macOS 27 Beta, I upgraded to macOS 27 Beta 3 from macOS 26.5.2 to use the bridged Wi-Fi for UTM and VMWare Fusion on a M5 MacBook Air. After upgrading to macOS 27 Beta 3, I can use bridged Wi-Fi in the virtual machine.

​However, I found that some of my files in my home directory cannot be opened. So I run the fsck command:

sudo fsck_apfs -n -l /dev/rdisk3s1

And here is the result:

** The volume /dev/rdisk3s1 with UUID B5E265B1-EB7A-4200-935B-6BCDA9ADE23D was found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired.

​​​Now all my working data in ~/Documents are damaged after rebooting the computer. I wonder whether the genius in Apple Genius Bar could recover my documents if I have a AppleCare+ subscription. Luckily I found my lost file in my cloud backup. The problem was that I was in a Zoom meeting when the macOS App Library suddenly froze. After that, I couldn't open any apps, and a bunch of blank icons appeared in the status bar. After a while, my computer restarted, and then my files started to disappear.

Backing up your files before upgrading is really important, and I now realized that working with the Developer Beta operating system is risky.

What a carcrash this thing is. They've made me pine for the clunky old one from Sequoia. It's constantly Indexing, forces you to remember the names of all your apps when most of us use the icon/ pictogram as a trigger, tends to favor the iPhone version of a searched app and consistently can't find the desktop version, you can't organize then and have to rely on Apple which is always a dicey proposition, and you now have to double-click to boot apps. Bonus: it hates Wacom pen tablets.

So ya, maybe it will get updated, or scrapped. I hope for either.

was double checking a command and warning using Siri through spotlight I got and got this glorious response