Hosted macOS jobs cancelled before steps: runner acquisition failures on ARM and Intel

[edolbf-collab]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Actions Runner

Discussion Details

On 4 November 2026, standard GitHub-hosted macOS jobs in our public repository repeatedly failed to acquire a runner. They were cancelled after approximately 15 minutes, before checkout or any application test. Job metadata showed no assigned runner and an empty steps list. Earlier iOS jobs succeeded the same day.

Repository: https://github.com/edolbf-collab/tamo-on

Examples:

• macos-latest (ARM): https://github.com/edolbf-collab/tamo-on/actions/runs/41850759229/job/126655511453
• macos-15-intel: https://github.com/edolbf-collab/tamo-on/actions/runs/41856710523/job/126667203254
• Latest macos-26-intel attempt: https://github.com/edolbf-collab/tamo-on/actions/runs/41862998792 (still queued at our last check; its Ubuntu layout job has passed).

Annotations on failed jobs:

The job was not acquired by Runner of type hosted even after multiple attempts
Internal server error

The ARM job also displayed a capacity warning. Switching to Intel did not resolve the allocation failure. We retained the same application code and Xcode 26.3 for the two Intel comparisons.

Similar reports: actions/runner#4833 and https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/211885. The Support portal currently displays degraded performance for Actions.

Could GitHub confirm whether these failures are part of the incident, or whether a repository/account scheduling restriction needs investigation? What is the recommended recovery procedure for standard hosted macOS jobs?

This blocks our iOS validation and internal TestFlight release. No credentials, signing keys, or private logs are included.

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[edolbf-collab]

Update: the macos-26-intel attempt has now failed as well.

Run: https://github.com/edolbf-collab/tamo-on/actions/runs/41862998792
Job: https://github.com/edolbf-collab/tamo-on/actions/runs/41862998792/job/126689717474

The simulator job was cancelled after 15m 1s. Its REST job metadata shows runner_id=0, an empty runner_name, and steps=[]. The annotations are:

• The job was not acquired by Runner of type hosted even after multiple attempts
• Internal server error. Correlation ID: 89c472c1-5c06-4e38-90dd-f3b49e85caa6

The Ubuntu layout job completed successfully, including the seven viewport checks. Its Node 20 action deprecation warning and ubuntu-latest migration notice did not prevent it from completing.

The public status page currently reports an active Actions/Pages/Webhooks incident, first posted at 16:05 UTC on 4 November: https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/xr3myzj7ms51 . We cannot yet confirm that this specific runner allocation failure belongs to that incident; the correlation ID above may help GitHub investigate.

[edolbf-collab]

Further evidence from the latest internal TestFlight upload attempt:

• Run: https://github.com/edolbf-collab/tamo-on/actions/runs/41872543159
• Job: https://github.com/edolbf-collab/tamo-on/actions/runs/41872543159/job/126723250297
• Restored the same macos-latest runner configuration used for the successful build 169; removed the Intel/Xcode 26.3 override.
• The environment deployment was approved, but the job was cancelled without running any steps.
• Internal server error. Correlation ID: 700738ab-0f33-4dbd-ba73-935c085a52fb
• The job was not acquired by Runner of type hosted even after multiple attempts.
• The annotations explicitly report capacity constraints for macOS arm64 runners.

For comparison, a rerun of our previously successful native validation completed successfully with macOS ARM and Xcode 26.6: https://github.com/edolbf-collab/tamo-on/actions/runs/41841694430/job/126710260667 . Our latest source still passed the Ubuntu layout checks, while its macOS validation also failed to acquire a runner.

The public incident was marked resolved at 17:01 UTC. This upload run was submitted at 16:56 UTC, before resolution, and its failed status was reported at 17:12 UTC. We are not claiming this was a new post-resolution submission.

Is standard macOS ARM capacity still constrained independently of the resolved incident? Is there a recommended available runner pool or recovery action?

[phanirithvij]

Duplicate of https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/211885