GitHub Actions now offers M2 Pro-powered hosted runners in public preview

[samus-aran]

The GitHub macOS hosted runner fleet is being upgraded to M2 Pro-powered machines on our largest runners. Starting today the macOS XLarge runner sku now utilizes a 5 vCPU M2 Pro machine.

M2 Pro machines

Apple developers can take advantage of the more powerful machines using the latest versions of iOS and macOS. They can also benefit from increased performance by leveraging the on-chip GPU capabilities of the M2 processor. It can reduce build times by up to 15% compared to the existing 6-core M1 runner. The M2 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 5-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 14 GB of RAM, and 14 GB of storage.

How to use the runners

To try the new M2 macOS larger runner, update the runs-on: key in your workflow YAML file to target one of the following labels:

• macos-latest-xlarge
• macos-15-xlarge
• macos-14-xlarge
• macos-13-xlarge

The 6-core M1 macOS larger runner is no longer available.

Pricing for M2 runners

There is no price change from the existing XLarge runner sku with today’s launch. Pricing for these runners is $0.16/min.

There is no sign-up required for the public preview and the runner is immediately available to all developers, teams, and enterprises. For more information on the M2 runners please see our larger runner documentation.

Post a comment below on how upgrading has impacted your builds. We would love to hear your feedback! 💬