macOS Sonoma 14.5 build 23F79 is a relatively small update, with limited changes listed by Apple. Its brief release notes identify two enhancements in Apple News+, bringing Quartiles, a new word game, and Scoreboard in Puzzles. In its developer notes, Apple states that this update should also fix a problem in which users were unable to approve or decline FaceTime link calls because of a failure in notifications.

Security release notes for 14.5 list 22 vulnerabilities addressed, among them two in AMFI and one in the kernel. Apple doesn’t identify any as being known to be exploited yet.

There are small firmware increments for some Macs, at least. iBoot is updated to 10151.121.1, and Intel Macs with T2 chips have an iBridge update, bringing their firmware to 2022.100.22.0.0 (iBridge: 21.16.5077.0.0,0).

Significant changes in bundled apps include:

• Books to version 6.4
• Find My, build increment
• Home, build increment
• Mail, build increment
• Maps, build increment
• Messages, build increment
• Music to version 1.4.5
• News to version 9.4
• Photos, build increment
• Podcasts, build increment
• Safari to version 17.5 (19618.2.12.11.6)
• Shortcuts, build increment
• TV to version 1.4.5.

Changes seen in /System/Library include:

• ARDAgent, AppleVNCServer and Screensharing, build increments
• AGX and AppleIntel graphics kernel extensions, new versions
• AudioDMA controller kernel extensions (Apple silicon), new versions
• APFS to version 2236.120.10
• asp_tcp kernel extension, new version 9.0
• NetFSPlugin AFP bundle, new version 7.0
• FileProvider frameworks, build increments
• Virtualization framework, build increment
• iCloud private frameworks, build increments
• Cosmo and Tabi, new private frameworks
• A great many other private frameworks have build increments.

This update’s little mysteries are the two new private frameworks, Cosmo and Tabi. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in a comment.