Thanks Mike. I've held off on installing the developer seed since it's still early. But good to hear one can still boot from an external drive. I do use Carbon Copy Cloner and have a clone that is maintained. But I thought that as of a few OS's ago, Apple made it very onerous or impossible to boot from a clone. There are ways to do it, but it's not guaranteed. So I might try that, which is how I used to test early development seeds of macOS. Back then, I hated it because my external drives were all hard drives running over USB-A and booting took forever, whereas all my external drives (I have three connected to my MBA right now) are SSDs, so it's much more feasible in that regard.

I'm not surprised some UX aspects of Finale are not working right but suspect as we get to september, things will have ironed out. Please report any issues that arise to Apple, of course. Thanks! 

Thanks Mike - Your advice is very much appreciated. Will watch for your remote drive instructions.

Thanks Mike. Do you mean that these GUI problems (Save, etc..) appear in several programs or only in Finale ?

@Mike: how did you get it installed on an external SSD? For at least a year or so, I have been updating to the Appleseed development release in System Settings:Software Update. I've not seen links to a standalone installer for some time. Did you boot into your SSD and then update in Software Update? Thanks.

Thanks Mike. Do you mean that these GUI problems (Save, etc..) appear in several programs or only in Finale ?

There are GUI issues in many apps. Today, Save appears and works as it should. The Stop button in Playback Controls doesn't work (did yesterday) but Play does and the Spacebar Stops/Starts as it should.

 Did you boot into your SSD and then update in Software Update? Thanks.

Yes. This was my Sequoia test drive before. I have multiple APFS Volumes on three drives but only three are bootable including the one I've labelled Finale 27 Test Tahoe.

I do use Carbon Copy Cloner and have a clone that is maintained. But I thought that as of a few OS's ago, Apple made it very onerous or impossible to boot from a clone. 

Apple hasn't allowed cloning since Tiger. CCC is an API for Disk Utility and Time Machine and nothing that anyone writes changes this—if their scripts work,for you, then the money is worth it. If Apple won't allow it, can't be done. Recovery Partitions are no longer allowed on external drives—can't be done. There are workarounds for most of this but not all. Just stuff to deal with.

Creating external boot drives for Apple Silicon is not intuitive—can't be done from a USB flash drive, BTW. Good luck figuring that out but I did. Creating one that boots both Intel and ARM is a major PIA but it can be done and I will detail that soon.

There are several problems with interface controls. The playback Stop button doesn't work (though you can press space). And under certain circumstances, menu items can become greyed out. 

In the Authorization Wizard, the buttons don't work (though you can press Return to complete the process.)

Given Apple's redesign of the interface, it's possible that Finale's controls may not work correctly without revision. 

Mike, CCC has nothing to do with Time Machine, to be precise. I bought it years ago and have used it for many years and so keep using it. It can be helpful to have a clone simply because it’s a few clicks quicker than navigating through many TM backups, and when I had external hard drives, incremental cloning was much faster than running TM, but that’s me.

You’ve stated before that you would detail your methodology for a bootable finale backup. Would love to see it, finally. My recollection is that Bombich Software has detailed how to make a bootable clone but yes, it’s not a quick and minor thing. Curious if your approach is similar. 

Definitely nebulous, especially for those of us with Apple Silicon devices: https://support.bombich.com/hc/en-us/articles/20686422131479-Creating-legacy-bootable-copies-of-macOS

Mike, CCC has nothing to do with Time Machine, to be precise. 

To be precise, David, you don't know what you are talking about. Please stop bringing it up. I've posted links to where you could go to learn the required scripting language so you could write your own version of CCC or SD! if you wanted. Learn or don't but you gotta change the channel.

Definitely nebulous, especially for those of us with Apple Silicon devices

Yes, Apple allows it again — one does not need that document. They restored it for Sonoma the same day. I had already figured this out over Ventura where it never went away and updating from Ventura to Sonoma or Sequoia preserved the ability.

One cannot create a recovery partition except on the system drive with Apple Silicon, only Intel. This complicates things but only a little. Permissions must be set to Reduced but they apply to external drives connected, even when booting from them. Weird but Apple has never written the White Paper on APFS so that anyone outside knows everything going on under the hood—we just figure out how to deal with it.

Please try to avoid ad hominem attacks. The first line of your response was hurtful. I’m sure you didn’t realize it when you hit Submit.

I think you indicated that CCC is an API for TM. I didn’t bring it up. But while I might not be as knowledgeable as you about this stuff, perhaps, there are very clear differences between a clone and a TM backup. CCC is not a different interface for TM. It’s an entirely different approach and has worked alongside my TM backups but both represent different approaches for file archiving. You might as well be saying that Backblaze is nothing more than a cloud equivalent of TM. And of course, it isn’t that, either.

Finale 27 does run on macOS 26 Tahoe Developer Beta, but it's not fully stable yet—issues like inconsistent File menu options (e.g., Save missing at times) and odd behavior with NotePerformer 5.01 show that it's not ready for serious work. While it's usable for testing, the GUI glitches and performance quirks mean you should wait for future Beta updates before relying on it in a production environment.   nulls clash

Hey y'all, jumping in here because I'm braving the waters of macOS 26 Beta and Finale 27, and I might be able to help you all out with the CCC / dual boot issues. IF you have an Apple Silicon Mac, use UTM to make a virtual machine. Apple's VM hypervisor will let it run fairly close to the bare metal so you don't get much performance penalty. You can easily download .ipsw files for older versions of MacOS and run those too. (Yeah, Apple uses the same .ipsw file format for updating M-series laptops as they used to update the old click-wheel iPods). 

I have both macOS 14.6 and macOS 26 VMs set up with their virtual hard drives stored on an external SSD. It's not quite as snappy as my main OS, but it's fast enough to run Finale, and I can run it on my home MacBook Pro M1-Pro or my work M1 MacBook Air. It also solves the issue of dual-booting, specifically the rebooting part. 

UTM can be downloaded for free from getutm.app or for $10 from the AppStore. IPSWs of all varieties can be downloaded from Apple. Mrmacintosh.com has a list of links that all point to Apple's CDN servers. If you need any tips or tricks setting it up, just reach out, but given how deep y'all are into using CCC to dual boot, you'll probably be able to figure it out and save some major headaches. 

As to Finale 27 and macOS 26, I have managed to install Finale without major issue. I was able to load and save an empty default document. I'll do some more in-depth tests here in the coming weeks. MacOS 26 is still a bit rough around the edges so I'm not putting a ton of stock into functionality since the underlying system still needs some changes before the Release Candidate. 

As of beta four, the stop button in the playback controls doesn’t work but one can stop playback with the space bar.

Neither cloneware nor virtual machine are necessary to run 27 on any macOS from Mojave to Sequoia 15.6. This includes Intel and Apple Silicon.

 I built an external SSD that will boot any Mac made between 2012–2025 3rd Q. — no exceptions.

Tahoe still has issues. Waiting to see what the next developer beta does before I include macOS 26.

I was finding issues with Finale 27 regardless of macOS versions (I couldn’t get system dividers to be removed en masse and had to remove them manually from a lengthy score, as one example), and figured it couldn’t be that much worse on Tahoe. And so far that seems to be true. But then, I don’t use finale very often anymore, just to maintain some older scores, and suspect I will still be able to use it on those infrequent occasions for the immediate future. New scores are all being done with Dorico. Soon to start my eighth work with that software since last September.

Be aware that macOS 26 (at least the development seed) turns FileVault on by default. I never had it enabled until installed Tahoe, and I suspect that might make it harder to use an external SSD as a boot drive (except perhaps on an Intel CPU). Not sure and I can’t test that.

Just spent about 45 minutes messing with Finale 27 in Tahoe Public Beta 2 / Developer Beta 5 in a VM. I'm seeing the same stop button issue as David had in Beta 4, but overall the major UI overhaul doesn't seem to be creating havoc with the Finale UI. There are bugs especially in macOS dialog boxes, but those seem to be system-level issues and not Finale-specific issues. Scrolling in Finder / File Dialog windows is a bit of an adventure. 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Finale 27 remains mostly functional. You should at a bare minimum be able to open a score and export into mxml. The boat is adrift, and the pilot (MM) locked the door to the control room before leaving, but it's not sinking (yet).

We will see how future public betas fare, but I'm old enough to remember Finale 2014 working with El Capitan Public Betas right up until RC1 when everything broke...

Agreed but for some reason (and it was also true with sequoia), on my system, smart shapes no longer work. Trying to create a hairpin yields a straight line for example. Not sure why. Just one of those bugs that crop up unexpectedly.

Hi David,

I'm on Sequoia, too, Finale 27.4.1 and I don't have your problem with hairpins. Check the settings in Smart Shape Options, Crescendo/Decrescendo for opening width (short and long), they shouldn't be 0. Otherwise, regenerate preferences as usual.

Thanks. Will try that.

Trashing prefs and restarting my mac did the trick initially. Thanks! But oddly, once I changed a few settings in the Finale Prefs (minor things like closing subsidiary pallets when closing a tool, etc), now any smart shape just displays a dashed line. Bizarre.

Fixed it by deleting the smart lines.lib file in ~/Library/Application Support/Libraries folder and restarting my MacBook Air. At least for now. That file was from 2021 so probably got corrupted along the way. 

Went back to change the audio in an earlier Finale file from GPO5 to NotePerformer and just for kicks, tried out the Smart Shape tool again, selecting a crescendo (hairpin). Now it defaults to a wavy glissando line. I give up. I'm on beta 6 of Tahoe but strongly doubt it's a macOS 26 issue...

I'm on beta 6 of Tahoe but strongly doubt it's a macOS 26 issue...

The final release of Tahoe is somewhat better. Edit: All Smart Shapes now work as expected. Playback controls are unchanged since the first beta, however: Stop button may work once or bot at all but the spacebar is reliable. There are other functions requiring workarounds.

I certainly can't recommend Tahoe but I am able to install, authorise, install Garritan and Aria 2.026 and NotePerformer 5.01. It works — except for the few places where it doesn't.

Some Mac Studios have a problem upgrading to the release build of Tahoe—Apple knows about this but basic Support does not. I spent 10 hours over two days with Engineering at the Cupertino mothership getting it installed onto my Test drive. Fortunately, I live only two miles away. I wanted to get this done before posting directions on making a universal boot drive that can run Finale for all Macs made between 2012–2025.

My main System drive will remain on Sequoia 15.7 for the foreseeable future.

Be aware that macOS 26 (at least the development seed) turns FileVault on by default.

Easily turned off during setup.

Please try to avoid ad hominem attacks. The first line of your response was hurtful. I’m sure you didn’t realize it when you hit Submit.

I have never tried to insult you. I have tried to educate you with links and responses while letting others know that, when it comes to the macOS, you don't know as much as you think and you refuse to learn. The pages that you want me to read are well-written but they are marketing pieces—the tech that they contain supports what I am saying. Unfortunately, you don't understand that. I'm sorry that this offends you but I know that I have observed correctly.

All 3rd party cloneware consists of scripts designed to give you more control over Time Machine and Disk Utility. Period. Do you know who never argues with me on this point? The developers of these products and we hang out in some of the same discussion groups.

If the time savings is worth it to you, then the money is well spent. For example, I can filter Finder/Find to locate anything on my system but why? $8 in the App Store or $6 to Thomann gets me FindAnyFile which is similar to how Finder/Find worked on my Mac Plus 39 years ago. It's infinitely easier than nesting the filters that Apple has designed to filter results while not showing any if we haven't set them correctly. The extra $2 to the App Store notifies me when updates to the app are available.

Anyway, in the next few days when I can make the time, I will detail how to make a boot drive that runs Finale 27.4.1 on any Mac built between 2012–2026 (even though I will recommend avoiding Tahoe if possible unless a 2026 Mac that can't run anything older). I will use Apple installers and Disk Utility which will work much, much faster—doesn't need to be scripted for this use. I will include a hardware list including adapters and cables plus links where to find on Amazon. I will also share the dirty little secret about MakeMusic's License Server/Manager that I've been promising.

I built this this last August when the news dropped but wanted to see how Sequoia worked out. I don't know why you were having problems with 27 but it's done quite well for me even if MM wouldn't support it.

Hello, are there any updates on the compatibility of Finale 27 with Tahoe? Is the playback error the only one you noticed?

Not sure if it’s Tahoe specifically but as mentioned, even after completely uninstalling and reinstalling finale 27, smart shapes do not work for me and there are expression oddities too. I just had to add a missing hairpin to a score and had to create a hairpin as a graphical expression to enter it (the existing hairpins in the expression tool are not perfectly straight lines). That took some time since the antiquated shape designer is mired in the early 90’s. Again, no idea why this happens to me and is one reason why I’m glad I moved onto something else as a notation program, but in general, people aren’t reporting major issues except for the stop button being nonfunctional.

David, since you are having these problems over Sequoia, too—and the rest of us aren't, try a clean install.

Create a new APFS Volume in Disk Utility. Download the Sequoia installer and install onto that Volume. When it boots into that Volume, you will be in Migration Assistant—bring only your Network Settings over and select as your Startup Drive. Update to Tahoe. Run the Finale 27 and GIFF Installers—if you have NotePerformer 5, go ahead and install that, too. Using the test templates and files that install with 27, see if there are any issues besides Start/Stop in Playback. Your SmartShapes will work—as mine did after I adjusted my click settings on my Trackpad.

thanks. I already had uninstalled (and that's totally uninstalled; nothing came up with any content or name of Finale using EasyFind, which is pretty robust) and reinstalled. And at this point, only occasionally needing to tweak an old score or two in Finale, probably not worth going through that process. But you raise an interesting point about your trackpad settings; I will try different ones on my end and see if that has anything to do with it. I suspect not, since it isn't a matter of a click not being recognized, but literally the same, undesired smart shape getting invoked. But happy to try that. 

Addendum: as expected, changing the touch or speed of my trackpad doesn't fix it. It currently selects an Accel--------  marking.

Decent instructions on how to create a bootable drive in Tahoe (or any other macOS version, including Sequoia); note that it's all or none in terms of allowing the system to boot from external drives