Apple releases macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta 2 to developers

Apple has released macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta 2 to developers. The update features a number of critical bug fixes and improvements for Accessibility, AppKit, iOS apps on Apple Silicon Macs, macOS Recovery, and boot.

macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta 2

Apple had released the first macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta a few weeks back. The new beta released today includes many fixes targeted towards Apple Silicon Macs. The main highlights in this update include support for non-resizable iOS apps to work fine in full-screen mode and reinstallation support for macOS Big Sur using Recovery on Apple Silicon Macs. The latter should help fix the issue with users being unable to recover M1 Macs, without using another Mac and Apple Configurator 2.

If you are on an M1 Mac, we don’t recommend that you jump on the beta bandwagon just for the macOS Recovery fix, as this is still a beta and might have other instability issues.

Here are the complete release notes from Apple for macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta 2:

Accessibility

Resolved in macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta 2

• VoiceOver now supports InfoVox voices from AcapellaGroup. (64880915)

AppKit

Known Issues

• Certain NSToolbar controls unexpectedly draw a background highlight when you click or roll over them. (71592628)

Mac Catalyst

Known Issues

• When you present a view controller with page sheet or form sheet presentation style, the size of the view controller’s root view is, by default, determined by the value returned from the presented view controller’s preferredContentSize method and the view is not resizable. You can arrange for the presented view controller to be resizable by using Auto Layout to specify the maximum and minimum sizes of its root view. To enable this, set the canResizeToFitContent property of the application’s main window to YES. One way to do this is to override the willMove(toWindow:) or didMoveToWindow() methods of a view in the main view controller. (65254666)

Resolved in macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta 2

• Full-screen mode in a non-resizable iOS & iPadOS app now works as expected. (71440982)
• The zoom-to-fit state is now preserved across app launches. (70885745)

Software Update

Resolved in macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta 2

• Booting back into macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 after installing macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta onto a separate volume on Macs with Apple silicon is now supported. (71353899)
• Using either macOS Recovery or a bootable installer to reinstall macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta on Macs with Apple silicon is now supported. (71221267)