A full history of macOS (OS X) release dates and rates

Updated and republished for macOS 15.1.1; skip it unless you really really care about all the macOS releases. Originally published on November 14th, 2005.

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 15.1.1, as of Novembver 20, 2024—the 245th release in total.

The following was culled from Apple's support downloads page, and as such, some of the dates may be off just a bit. If you know for certain that something is incorrect, please let me know and I'll get it fixed. (Scroll to see all entries.)

Note: Click the ⓘ symbol to read Apple's release notes for a given update.

Note: The Days column reflects the number of days between releases.

Some entries may appear out of chronological order (i.e. 10.5 is shown on Oct 26, but above Nov 14 for 10.4.11). This is to keep the version numbers in the proper order, even when an older OS received an update after a major new release came out. This has happened a few times over the years.

Some random notes, updated from the original post:

• Starting with the Public Beta and up through 15.1.1, there have been 245 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 Novembver 20, 2024 (15.1.1's release date), it's been 8,834 days since the Public Beta was released. So on average, we've seen some sort of update every 36.2 days.
• The shortest time period between any two releases in the same OS generation is six days, which is how quickly the 10.15.5 Supplemental Update 1 came out after the 10.15.5 release. 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.)
• The smallest update was 10.3.1, at only 1.5MB. The largest (non-combo, non-main OS release) update was 10.15.1 at 5.3GB.
• The "???" entry for Size on a given release indicates I was unable to find the size. Feel free to contact me if you can help replace any of the "???" entries.

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.