Today, GitHub is releasing a public beta for the new, Apple silicon powered M1 macOS larger runner for GitHub Actions. Apple developers require the latest chipset to take advantage of features in the latest versions of iOS and macOS. They also want increased performance by leveraging the on-chip GPU capabilities of the M1 processor. The M1 macOS runner comes with GPU hardware acceleration enabled by default. Workloads are transferred from the CPU to the GPU for improved performance and efficiency. The runner is equipped with a 6-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 14 GB of RAM, and 14 GB of storage. It can reduce build times by up to 80% compared to the existing 3-core Intel standard runner, and up to 43% compared to the existing 12-core Intel runner. The GitHub mobile iOS team leverages the new M1 runner for 10k+ minutes to deliver updates of the GitHub iOS app to the Apple App Store every week. The transition from the 12-core Intel runner to the M1 runner resulted in a 44% build time improvement, from 42 minutes to 23 minutes. The M1 runner has proven to be advantageous for iOS teams, as it provides access to the VMs GPU and speeds up the App Store review process. To try the new Apple silicon macOS larger runner, update the runs-on: key in your GitHub Actions YAML workflow YAML file to target macos-latest-xlarge or macos-13-xlarge. There is no sign-up required for the beta and the runner is immediately available to all developers, teams, and enterprises. As part of GitHub’s continued commitment to deliver the best developer experience we are excited to share with you that we will be decreasing the price of our macOS larger runners. With today’s launch, our macOS larger runners will be priced at $0.16/minute for XL and $0.12/minute for large.
