Updated and republished for macOS 26.4; skip it unless you really really care about all the macOS releases. Originally published on November 14th, 2005.
(This post was on hiatus for 16 months…if you'd like to know what's new and improved, on both the front and back end, check out the behind-the-scenes writeup.)
Below the break is a table showing all major releases of macOS (previously Mac OS X) from the public beta through the latest released update, which is 26.4, as of March 24, 2026—the 287th release in total.
Click any row to load Apple's notes page for that release (or the closest match that could be found)
This table requires JavaScript to display and use; sorry!
Note: The Days column reflects the number of days between releases.
Some random notes, updated from the original post:
- Starting with the Public Beta and up through macOS 26.4, there have been 287 macOS releases, both major and minor. This figure includes the one odd macOS X release: 10.2.7. This version was only for the then-new PowerMac G5 and the flat panel iMac G4, and was never generally released.
- As of March 24, 2026 (26.4's release date), it's been 9,322 days since the Public Beta was released. So on average, we've seen some sort of update every 32.5 days.
- The shortest time period between any two releases in the same OS generation is six days, for both 10.15.5 → 10.15.5 SU1 and 26.3.1 → 26.3.2. The shortest period at all is two days, the gap between macOS 13.2.1 and macOS 11.7.4.
- The longest time period between any two minor releases is 165 days, which was how long we waited for the 10.4.9 update. (Tecnically, it's actually the 192 day interval between the Mac OS X Public Beta and version 10.0, but I'm counting from the official 10.0 release.)
And now, gratuitous graphics…
Releases by version number
Releases by year
A special "thank you!" goes to Mr. Ziebell (for providing some size values on very-old minor updates), and to Benton Quest (for providing size info on all the major releases up through Snow Leopard). See Benton's comment below if you want a nicely detailed history of those early releases.
Another special "thank you!" goes to Mads Fog Albrechtslund, who provided updated PR links for all the major releases—most of mine had broken over the years.
Finally, thanks to Claude Code for the modernized—and much easier to update—table. Claude wrote 100% of the Javascript and CSS that makes the magic happen with the table and variable post content. There is absolutely no way I could have written this myself.