macOS Tahoe 26.7 to 26.7.1 update size over 5 GB?

It is likely due to the Universal update patch which contains both Intel & Apple Silicon versions in one app bundle. It is Apple's standard way of delivering software during the transition between Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs. Everything is doubled in size until the release of macOS 28 next year when Intel support is being dropped.

FYI, all macOS software updates since 2020 & Big Sur have been this way.

Ok, I guess I've found myself an answer, however the size difference is staggering, considering last major update was about a week ago.

https://eclecticlight.co/2026/08/12/why-do-macos-update-sizes-vary-so-much/

Glooed wrote:

Again, point release every couple of weeks is huge and means somebody does something wrong over at the dev team. You might realize that not everybody is in the optical line world with unlimited bandwidth, but yeah "by any metrics".

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I take it you are not a software engineer by trade. The only users that need to worry about something like this are the ones who are very low on available storage. Many times the actual increase to storage after updating is very minor no matter how large the downloaded update is. So if the update says it's 5GB in size that does not mean your storage will decrease by 5GB after the update is complete.

Glooed wrote:

I'm updating from macOS Tahoe 26.7 to 26.7.1, but the update size that was advertised by Software Update as approx. 2,89 GB actually jumped to 5,31 GB.

Why such a jump for a minor point release? I have update to 26.7 less than a week ago.

Over 5 GB is huge.

[Edited by Moderator]

5 GB is not consider huge by any metric...

How is this an issue exactly?

Well, you're wrong in all assumptions.

As I've said earlier, it's such an update every couple of weeks, the sizes add up.

I understand you might not care at all, but it's a tragedy where the software development have got after all those years.

I started with Z80 assembly in the 80's. We were able to work and squeeze fantastic applications into 48 kB with still some kB of free memory.

This is just waste of resources, that's all I wanted to say.

Again, point release every couple of weeks is huge and means somebody does something wrong over at the dev team. You might realize that not everybody is in the optical line world with unlimited bandwidth, but yeah "by any metrics".

Nevermind, unsubscribe.

Thanks for your valuable time.