GitHub has announced the upcoming retirement of its macOS 14 runner images for GitHub Actions workflows, scheduled for full deprecation on November 2, 2026. The change impacts continuous integration and deployment pipelines reliant on Apple's older operating system environment for building and testing applications.
Scheduled Brownouts and Reduced Capacity
To alert development teams to the upcoming deprecation, GitHub will implement a series of temporary brownouts starting October 5, 2026. During these designated time windows, jobs configured to use macOS 14 images will fail intentionally. GitHub also noted that total runner capacity for macOS 14 may be scaled back during the transition period, leading to potential delays and longer queue times for active workflows.
The scheduled brownout periods run across eight windows throughout October, beginning with a session from 14:00 UTC on October 5 to 00:00 UTC on October 6, followed by recurring intervals on October 12–13, October 16–17, October 19–20, October 23–24, October 26–27, October 29–30, and October 30–31.
Affected Labels and Migration Targets
The retirement applies broadly across all standard and enlarged macOS 14 runner labels, specifically including macos-14, macos-14-large, and macos-14-xlarge environments. Maintainers relying on these specific labels must adjust their configuration files to avoid service disruption.
GitHub recommends updating workflow definitions to point to supported macOS arm64 environment labels. Recommended replacement targets include macos-latest (currently mapping to macos-26), macos-15, macos-latest-xlarge (macos-26-xlarge), or macos-15-xlarge. Developer documentation in the runner images repository provides details on installed toolchains and runtime dependencies for the newer environments.
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Source: GitHub Actions: macOS 14 runner image retirement
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