GitHub Retires macOS 14 Actions Runner Image on November 2, With Eight Job-Failing Brownouts Starting October 5

Overview

GitHub will retire the macOS 14 runner image for GitHub Actions on November 2, 2026, and will deliberately fail jobs that still use it during eight scheduled brownout windows in October, according to a GitHub Changelog entry dated October 1. The first window opens on October 5.

What We Know

• Retirement date. The changelog says the macOS 14 runner image will be retired on November 2, 2026. A runner-images announcement issue opened in January says deprecation began on July 6, 2026, with the images fully unsupported by November 2 for GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps.
• Brownout windows. Jobs using macOS 14 will fail during eight windows, per the GitHub Changelog. Each runs from 14:00 UTC to 00:00 UTC the next day, starting on October 5, 12, 16, 19, 23, 26, 29 and 30.
• Affected labels. The deprecation covers the macos-14, macos-14-large and macos-14-xlarge labels, according to the GitHub Changelog. The runner-images issue says workflows using those labels will be terminated with an error.
• Queue times. The changelog says GitHub may reduce macOS 14 runner capacity in the lead-up to retirement, which could lengthen queue times for jobs that continue to use these labels, per the GitHub Changelog.
• Migration targets. GitHub tells users to move to macos-latest (macos-26), macos-15, macos-latest-xlarge (macos-26-xlarge) or macos-15-xlarge, according to the GitHub Changelog.

Azure DevOps Is Affected Too

The same image is being removed from Microsoft-hosted agents. Microsoft Learn lists a brownout schedule of October 5 to October 31, 2026, and a scheduled removal date of November 2, 2026. It recommends that pipelines using the macOS 14 Sonoma hosted image be updated to macos-latest or macos-15.

Microsoft’s page says the deprecation does not affect customers running macOS 14 Sonoma on self-hosted agents. It also says container images are not affected by the hosted-image deprecation, in answer to its FAQ on pipelines that use a container image with a deprecated image.

Why the Image Is Going

The runner-images issue gives the motivation in one line: GitHub Actions maintains the latest two stable versions of any given OS version.

What We Don’t Know

• The sources reviewed do not say how much macOS 14 runner capacity GitHub will remove before November 2, or when queue times may rise.
• They do not say whether any brownout dates may change; the schedule is as published on October 1.