[macOS] Deprecation of Xcode 16.3 and older runtimes on macOS 15 on January 12th, 2026.

[erik-bershel]

Breaking changes

The oldest runtimes existing in the image will be removed, namely:

"install_runtimes": [
    { "iOS": ["18.4"] },
    { "watchOS": ["11.2", "11.4"] },
    { "tvOS": ["18.2", "18.4"] },
    { "visionOS": ["2.3", "2.4"] }
]

Target date

Image deployment will start on Monday January 12th, 2026 and will take about 3 days.

The motivation for the changes

According to our support policy, we commit to supporting no more than three runtime sets for Xcode due to disk space limitations.

Possible impact

If your macOS 15 based workflow or pipeline uses one of the mentioned runtimes without prior configuration, it will stop working.

Platforms affected

• [x] Azure DevOps
• [x] GitHub Actions

Runner images affected

• [ ] Ubuntu 22.04
• [ ] Ubuntu 24.04
• [ ] Ubuntu Slim
• [ ] macOS 13
• [ ] macOS 13 Arm64
• [ ] macOS 14
• [ ] macOS 14 Arm64
• [x] macOS 15
• [x] macOS 15 Arm64
• [ ] macOS 26 Arm64
• [ ] Windows Server 2019
• [ ] Windows Server 2022
• [ ] Windows Server 2025

Mitigation ways

If your build uses one of the mentioned runtimes, you can install them on the fly using xcodebuild -downloadPlatform <iOS|watchOS|tvOS|visionOS> -buildVersion ${osversion}. See xcodebuild --help for details.

[theblixguy]

@erik-bershel Do you have an expected timeline for deprecating Xcode 16.4? Since Xcode 26.3 beta should be out soon and I assume you'll only be supporting Xcode 26.1, 26.2 and 26.3 beta (iOS 26.1, 26.2 and 26.3 runtimes respectively)?

Also, can you clarify whether you're just removing runtimes or Xcode 16.3 itself too? As in, will I need to download and switch to that Xcode manually if needed? I can see we have several versions of Xcode installed on the runner - https://github.com/actions/runner-images/blob/main/images/macos/macos-15-Readme.md#xcode

[ghost]

Do you have an expected timeline for deprecating Xcode 16.4?

It will be removed on macOS 26 once https://github.com/actions/runner-images/pull/13406 is merged.

[theblixguy]

It will be removed on macOS 26 once #13406 is merged.

Yes, but what about macOS 15?

[theblixguy]

On the post it said Xcode 16.3 and below will be removed

Yes, but I'm asking for future plans. Xcode 16.3 and below is being removed, but I assume 16.4 will be removed once Xcode 26.3 is available? (Given the policy of supporting only the last 3 releases)

[ghost]

On the post it said Xcode 16.3 and below will be removed

Yes, but I'm asking for future plans. Xcode 16.3 and below is being removed, but I assume 16.4 will be removed once Xcode 26.3 is available? (Given the policy of supporting only the last 3 releases)

From the readme only the runtimes will be removed

[erik-bershel]

Hey @theblixguy!

Do you have an expected timeline for deprecating Xcode 16.4? Since Xcode 26.3 beta should be out soon and I assume you'll only be supporting Xcode 26.1, 26.2 and 26.3 beta (iOS 26.1, 26.2 and 26.3 runtimes respectively)?

We don't expect Xcode 26.3 to be available on macOS 15.

Also, can you clarify whether you're just removing runtimes or Xcode 16.3 itself too?

Only runtimes.

[4brunu]

That's bad news for Azure DevOps users.

[jeroen]

Could we please keep Xcode 16.2 on MacOS 15? There were big breaking changes to Xcode 16.3 and we try to keep backward compatibility for now.

[erik-bershel]

We are not removing Xcode itself. We understand how difficult it is to install it at runtime. Only the simulator runtimes will be removed.