Today we’ll be showing you how to sign up for the OS X Beta Seed Program and how to get ready for OS X Yosemite beta, the public beta version of which will most likely be available sometime this summer.

The OS X Beta Seed Program was announced back in April, which allowed anybody with an Apple ID to try out pre-release OS X software for free. Not only did this step serve as an ideal opportunity for non-developers to see what’s new, but it also allows Apple to gather much more feedback from a wider audience, which in turn helps Apple make a better and more refined end user release. Signing up for the OS X Beta Seed Program is fairly simple, but for the benefit of those who didn’t catch our previous article, here are the steps:

  1. Open appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram in your browser.

  2. After scrolling down, you’ll see a rather large blue coloured “Sign up” button. Click it.

  3. You’ll need to type in your Apple ID credentials in the page that opens.

(Note: The Apple ID is the same username and password you’re often prompted to enter when downloading a new app.) 4. Once you’ve entered your Apple ID username and password, you’ll see a banner as shown below. This will state that an email will be sent to you when the beta is available to download from the Mac App Store.

Do keep in mind beta versions and unfinished software are not yet ready for public use. Thus, using OS X 10.10 Yosemite beta won’t be the refined, awesome experience you may have become accustomed to on your Mac. The software runs incredibly slow on our Mac right now, and many apps are known to crash only after a few minutes of use. So, if you cannot deal with imperfections, you’ll be better off waiting for the final edition to roll out this fall. For all the others though, enjoy, and do tell us what you thought of the new design and Yosemite features.