CodeQL Drops Traced Scans on macOS 27 and Xcode 27, No Swift 6.4 Support
GitHub says CodeQL can't run traced scans on macOS 27 or Xcode 27 and won't support Swift 6.4 anywhere. Pin workflows to macOS 26 and Xcode 26 or use build mode none.
GitHub says CodeQL can no longer run traced scans on macOS 27 or Xcode 27, and it won’t analyze Swift 6.4 on any platform. The change, posted to the GitHub changelog on October 19, 2026, follows Apple’s decision to stop shipping Intel (x86_64) code in some of the system binaries and libraries that CodeQL relies on to trace builds.
If you run code scanning with traced builds, this affects you directly. According to GitHub, installing Xcode 27 turns off traced extraction for C/C++, C#, Go, Java, Kotlin and Swift. On macOS 27, traced extraction may not be available for those same languages.
What breaks, and what to pin
Swift is the hardest hit: CodeQL doesn’t support Swift 6.4 anywhere, so upgrading your toolchain alone will break Swift scanning. If you scan Swift or depend on traced builds for other languages, GitHub’s advice is to pin your workflows to macOS 26 or earlier and Xcode 26 or earlier.
On GitHub Actions, that means pinning the runner image and toolchain in your workflow file instead of relying on the latest versions. Leaving a workflow on a floating image is the quickest way to land on macOS 27 without meaning to.
For C/C++, C# and Java there is a workaround: switch to build mode none, which doesn’t require tracing a build. That keeps those scans running without the Intel binaries CodeQL used to depend on.
Intel Macs get a deadline
GitHub also said CodeQL support for Intel-based Macs will be deprecated in mid-December 2026. The changelog does not give an exact date, so treat that as a window rather than a fixed cutoff.
There is nothing to install or update to fix this — the limits come from Apple’s binaries, not a CodeQL release. The practical step is to edit your scanning workflows now: pin the macOS and Xcode versions, or move C/C++, C# and Java jobs to build mode none. Discussion is open in the GitHub Community thread linked from the changelog entry.
Sources
- CodeQL changes for macOS 27, Xcode 27, and Swift 6.4 — GitHub Changelog
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