[macOS] Default Xcode on macOS 26 Tahoe will be set to Xcode 26.2 on January 26th

[erik-bershel]

Breaking changes

Default Xcode will be changed from 26.0.1 to 26.2 on macOS 26 Tahoe.

Target date

The update will start on January, 26 and take 2-4 days

The motivation for the changes

Xcode 26.2 is the latest stable release from Apple, .NET 10 is currently support Xcode 26.2 for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS development.

Possible impact

If you use the default Xcode version and your project is not compatible with Xcode 26.2 your build can be broken.

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

Please consider switching Xcode in runtime to the version that you need to build an app.
The following snippet can be used to switch Xcode as well as maxim-lobanov/setup-xcode action:

sudo xcode-select -s "/Applications/Xcode_26.0.1.app"

The list of all available Xcode versions can be found in the image documentation, for example: macos-26.

[santhosh-umapathi-wikifolio]

Hi @erik-bershel , how to actually use this image macOS-26, currently its not listed on the main table and when trying to use it, it throws error that the image is not found on Azure DevOps

[erik-bershel]

Hey @santhosh-umapathi-wikifolio! 👋

This image is not yet available to ADO users. As far as I know, work is underway to change it. More details will be published on the service's website: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agents/hosted?view=azure-devops&tabs=macos-images%2Cyaml

[santhosh-umapathi-wikifolio]

Thank you for your prompt reply. Keeping eyes on the link 👀

[dalemyers]

@erik-bershel Did anything change with the way that Xcode is ingested for these images? We are running into an issue with simulators not being found no matter what we try. Feel free to ping me internally since this image hasn't been released yet. My alias is the same as my GitHub username.

[erik-bershel]

Hey @dalemyers!

Something like that? #12948

[dalemyers]

No, not quite. The simulators are there. If we run xcrun simctl list devices they are there (we actually create a new one before each build). If we run xcodebuild test-without-building ... -showdestinations it shows up too. But as soon as we remove the -showdestinations flag, Xcode tries to actually use it, says it can't find it, then shows the ones that are available which are only the "generic device" ones.

[erik-bershel]

No, not quite. The simulators are there. If we run xcrun simctl list devices they are there (we actually create a new one before each build). If we run xcodebuild test-without-building ... -showdestinations it shows up too. But as soon as we remove the -showdestinations flag, Xcode tries to actually use it, says it can't find it, then shows the ones that are available which are only the "generic device" ones.

What is the macOS/Xcode version? And how possible is to share that exact job code? I'll reach you in Teams.

[dalemyers]

@erik-bershel We've found the root cause: The simulator runtime has been downloaded and installed as ARM only. That means any simulator builds depending on intel slices won't work. The runtime should be set to the universal version (even on an ARM agent).

[Alexbal54]

@erik-bershel We've found the root cause: The simulator runtime has been downloaded and installed as ARM only. That means any simulator builds depending on intel slices won't work. The runtime should be set to the universal version (even on an ARM agent).

From the toolset xcode is installed with the universal version https://github.com/actions/runner-images/blob/main/images/macos/toolsets/toolset-15.json and the runtime is installed as default.

[dalemyers]

@Alexbal54 That may be the aim, but it is not the reality. We've confirmed that around half of the installed runtimes on the image are arm64 only.