How to send OS X El Capitan public beta feedback
- jul
- 18
If you're on the OS X El Capitan public beta, you can send your feedback straight to Apple!
Betas are for testing. Developer betas are for developers to test with, and they have Bug Reporter—colloquially known as "radar"—to handle any problems they may encounter. Non-developers on the public beta have Feedback Assistant. If you're running the OS X El Capitan public beta, it's on your Mac and it's easy to use!
How to submit OS X El Capitan public beta bugs to Apple
The Feedback Assistant is located in the CoreServices folder, but there's a handy alias for it right in Applications, in the Utilities Folder. You can get to it by browsing in the Finder, by searching with Spotlight, or by doing a four-finger pinch to go into Launch Pad and then clicking on Other.
- Launch the Feedback Assistant app, as described above.
- Enter your Apple ID email address and password.
- Click the Compose button at the top, right of the search field (or the New Feedback button in the middle of the screen)
- Fill in a descriptive title, and then keep going through the form, filling out each section in turn.
- Click Submit to send your report to Apple.
You can provide feedback for any aspect of OS X or the built-in apps, and on anything from crashes to cosmetics, to "enhancement" requests for additional features you'd like to see.
Note on privacy
Feedback attaches the logs Apple engineers will need to troubleshoot your issues and fix the bugs you find. Those logs, however, may contain information including your name, location, calendar information, email messages, and more. The exact information will vary depending on what issue you're reporting.
Before submitting your feedback, you can easily review and delete any logs you don't want to include. You can also change your mind and cancel your feedback.
I recommend paying attention to what's attached, and deciding based on your comfort level and on a case-by-case basis
The power of feedback
There are a few things to keep in mind about feedback:
- Report bugs early. Right now Apple engineers have time to fix a wide range of bugs. As it gets closer to release, they'll only have time to fix the major ones, and eventually only the showstoppers.
- Report any bug you find. Even if you think a bug is so obvious it must have already been reported, the more people who report the same bug, the better. First, it "up-votes" the bug so Apple knows it affects a lot of people. Second, you never know if your report will have the crucial information an Apple engineer needs to fix it.
