If you use an external Pioneer USB drive to read and burn CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs on your Mac, you should hold off updating to macOS Ventura 13.2.
- What’s happening? The macOS Ventura update apparently has certain compatibility problems preventing it from working with Pioneer’s optical drives.
- Why care? Folks who rely on Pioneer’s USB drives to read and write CDs, DVDs or Blu-ray discs on their Mac will be inconvenienced until a fix arrives.
- What to do? Don’t update to macOS Ventura 13.2 if you use a Pioneer drive.
Pioneer’s optical drives don’t work in macOS Ventura 13.2
According to posts on Reddit, Apple Support Communities and other forums, macOS Ventura 13.2 breaks compatibility with Pioneer’s lineup of USB-connected drives. Apple’s own SuperDrive and other manufacturers’ optical disc drives are unaffected. macOS Ventura 13.2 was released on January 24, 2023.
Pioneer has confirmed some customers have been experiencing problems with Pioneer’s USB disc drives. “We have confirmed that our optical drives are not recognized by macOS Ventura 13.2,” according to the Pioneer website.
“We are currently investigating this symptom,” Pioneer notes.
Are there any temporary fixes?
Don’t download the update if you haven’t updated to macOS Ventura 13.2, but use a Pioneer USB drive. “We would like to ask our customers who are using our optical drives to refrain from updating to macOS Ventura 13.2,” Pioneer advises.
However, macOS may download and install pending macOS updates in the background, so some folks may not even realize that their computer is already up to date. Thankfully, it’s easy to stop automatic updates by turning off Install macOS updates in System Settings → General → Software Update.
If you’re already running macOS 13.2, your only choice is to downgrade back to macOS Ventura 13.1, which has no issues with the Pioneer drives. Other than avoiding the update and downgrading, there don’t seem to be any other temporary fixes for this problem. Read: How to automatically install macOS updates overnight
When might Apple release a fix?
Clearly, macOS Ventura 13.2 has a bug that breaks compatibility with external Pioneer drives. Apple should be able to fully resolve it in software via a future macOS update. A fix could arrive in macOS Ventura 13.2.1 or as part of the macOS Ventura 13.3 update due this spring. Watch this space as we’ll be making sure to update you on the situation as new information becomes available.