Introduction

The CERN IT Mac Desktop Service provides support for Apple Mac computers, including installation, configuration and access to software.

Mac users are responsible for keeping their devices secure. This involves to regularly update the operating system and applications using update processes provided by software vendors. Note that the software update function in recent macOS versions has a tendency to get stuck and not showing available updates. Users need to take action to restart the software update daemon, see KB0008515

Users shall also regularly save user data files to a centrally-supported network file system (EOS / cernbox), see About Home Folders on Mac.

The currently supported versions of macOS are 12 ("Monterey"), 13 ("Ventura") and 14 ("Sonoma").

With the release of macOS 14 on September 26th, macOS 11 is unsupported.

If you are running any version of macOS older than 12, you are encouraged to migrate to at least macOS 12 as soon as possible. You may contact the Service Desk to assist you in the migration process. Before migrating check out the articles about all intermediate versions on the page About macOS Versions.

Microsoft has announced that the September 2023 update (16.77) of Office for Mac is the last build to support macOS 11 (Big Sur).

In order to get help, you can:

• Check this website, including the documents listed in the table of contents, which provide answers to many common questions.
• Report an incident or submit a request with the Service Desk. You can also reach the Service Desk by phone at 77777 or by e-mail at service-desk@cern.ch.

Moreover, the Mac community at CERN has an active mailing list: support-macosx@cern.ch, where you can get expert opinions for some very specific questions. Despite its name that list is not for requesting support. The archive of this mailing list is available here.

The Privacy Notice of the Mac Support can be found from here.