Apple macOS Big Sur Download Date: November 12

Apple’s upcoming desktop and laptop operating system, macOS Big Sur, will be released on November 12, the company announced today during its “One More Thing” event.

Apple announced macOS Big Sur at WWDC in June, and though a public beta in September gave us our first look, the software has yet to officially roll out.

At its Mac-focused “One More Thing” event today, the company unveiled its new ARM-based chipset for laptops: the M1. It also shared some additional optimizations for the new silicon as well as an official release date for the latest macOS software update, which rolls out on November 12.

“For the first time ever, we’ve been able to design macOS for our own silicon,” Apple’s lead of software engineering Craig Federighi said. “MacOS Big Sur is engineered down to its core to fully take advantage of all the capability and power of M1.”

With MacOS Big Sur running on Macs with the new M1 chip, launching apps is nearly instantaneous, Federighi said. Safari will be almost twice as responsive, and apps that require strong performance to render 3D animations or edit raw video footage will run more smoothly.

The M1 chip will also bring increased security, including hardware verified secure boot, automatic high performance encryption for all files, and MacOs run-time protections.

macOS Big Sur will be supported on Macs and MacBooks dating back to 2013.