macOS Big Sur
macOS Big Sur (version 11) is the seventeenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s operating system for Macintosh computers. It was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 22, 2020, and was released to the public on November 12, 2020.
| Version of the macOS operating system | |
macOS Big Sur's desktop in "light appearance" | |
| Developer | Apple Inc. |
|---|---|
| OS family | |
| Source model | Closed, with open source components |
| General availability | November 12, 2020 |
| Latest release | 11.7.10 (20G1427) (September 11, 2023) [±] |
| Update method | Software Update |
| Platforms | x86-64, ARM64 |
| Kernel type | Hybrid (XNU) |
| License | Proprietary software with open-source components |
| Preceded by | macOS Catalina |
| Succeeded by | macOS Monterey |
| Official website | www.apple.com/macos/big-sur at the Wayback Machine (archived 2021-10-18) |
| Tagline | Doing it all, in new ways. |
| Support status | |
| Unsupported as of September 26, 2023. Finder is still able to download driver updates to sync to newer devices. Drops support for Macs released from 2012 to early 2013. | |
| Part of a series on |
| macOS |
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Big Sur is the successor to macOS Catalina, and was succeeded by macOS Monterey, which was released on October 25, 2021. The release of Big Sur was the first time the major version number of the operating system had been incremented since the Mac OS X Public Beta in 2000.
For the first time since OS X Yosemite 6 years earlier, macOS Big Sur features a user interface redesign. It features new blurs to establish a visual hierarchy, along with making icons more square and UI elements more consistent. Other changes include a revamp of the Time Machine backup mechanism, the control center from iOS 7, among other things. It is also the first macOS version to support Macs with ARM-based processors. To mark the transition, the operating system's major version number was incremented, for the first time since 2001, from 10 to 11. The operating system is named after the coastal region of Big Sur in the Central Coast of California, continuing the naming trend of California locations that began with OS X Mavericks.
macOS Big Sur is the final version of macOS that supports Macs with Nvidia graphics cards, specifically the 15-inch dual graphics late 2013 and mid 2014 MacBook Pro models, as its successor, macOS Monterey, drops support for those models.