[macOS] The macOS 14 Sonoma based runner images will begin deprecation on July 6th and will be fully unsupported by November 2nd for GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps

[erik-bershel]

Breaking changes

GitHub Actions announcing the deprecation process for macOS 14 and macOS 14 arm64. While the images are being deprecated, You may experience longer queue times during peak usage hours. Deprecation will begin on July 6th, 2026 and the images will be fully unsupported by November 2nd, 2026 for GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps.

To raise awareness of the upcoming removal, we will temporarily fail jobs using macOS 14 and macOS 14 arm64. Builds that are scheduled to run during the brownout periods will fail. The brownouts are scheduled for the following dates and times:

• October 5, 14:00 UTC - October 6, 00:00 UTC
• October 12, 14:00 UTC - October 13, 00:00 UTC
• October 16, 14:00 UTC - October 17, 00:00 UTC
• October 19, 14:00 UTC - October 20, 00:00 UTC
• October 23, 14:00 UTC - October 24, 00:00 UTC
• October 26, 14:00 UTC - October 27, 00:00 UTC
• October 29, 14:00 UTC - October 30, 00:00 UTC
• October 30, 14:00 UTC - October 31, 00:00 UTC

Target date

Deprecation: July 6th, 2026
Retirement: November 2nd, 2026

The motivation for the changes

GitHub Actions maintains the latest two stable versions of any given OS version.

Possible impact

Workflows using the macos-14, macos-14-large, macos-14-xlarge image labels will be terminated with an error.

Platforms affected

• Azure DevOps
• GitHub Actions

Runner images affected

• Ubuntu 22.04
• Ubuntu 24.04
• Ubuntu Slim
• macOS 14
• macOS 14 Arm64
• macOS 15
• macOS 15 Arm64
• macOS 26 Arm64
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022
• Windows Server 2025

Mitigation ways

• Workflows using the macos-14 image label should be updated to macos-latest, macos-15, or macos-26.
• Workflows using the macos-14-large image label should be updated to macos-latest-large, macos-15-large.
• Workflows using the macos-14-xlarge image label should be updated to macos-latest-xlarge, macos-15-xlarge, or macos-26-xlarge.