Mac Catalyst

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Start building a native Mac app from your current iPad app using Mac Catalyst.

Posts under Mac Catalyst tag

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Popovers are broken on Catalyst builds without portrait support
On macOS 15.2, any Mac Catalyst project that does not support portrait iPad orientation will no longer be able to successfully show the contents of any popover controls. This does not appear to be a problem on earlier versions of macOS and it only affects Mac Catalyst builds, not "Designed for iPad" builds. STEPS TO REPRODUCE Create a project that utilizes Mac Catalyst. Create a simple button that shows a popover with simple content. Remove Portrait as a supported orientation. Run the project on macOS 15.2 as a Mac Catalyst build. Note that the content inside the popover is not shown the popover is shown. Run the project as Designed for iPad. Note that the popover content shows correctly.
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Does Mac Catalyst support Background Processing?
I have an app for macOS that is built using Mac Catalyst. I need to perform some background processing. I'm using BGProcessingTaskRequest to schedule the request. I have also integrated CKSyncEngine so I need that to be able to perform its normal background processing. On iOS, when the user leaves the app, I can see a log message that the request was scheduled and a bit later I see log messages coming from the actual background task code. On macOS I ran the app from Xcode. I then quit the app (Cmd-q). I can see the log message that the request was scheduled. But the actual task is never run. In my test, I ran my app on a MacBook Pro running macOS 26.0. When I quit the app, I checked the log file in the app sandbox and saw the message that the task was scheduled. About 20 minutes later I closed the lid on the MacBook Pro for the night. I did not power down, it just went to sleep. Roughly 10 hours later I opened the lid on the MacBook Pro, logged in, and checked the log file. It had not been updated since quitting the app. I should also mention that the laptop was not plugged in at all during this period. My question is, does a Mac Catalyst app support background processing after the user quits the app? If so, how is it enabled? The documentation for BGProcessingTaskRequest and BGProcessingTask show they are supported under Mac Catalyst, but I couldn't find any documentation in the Background Tasks section that mentioned anything specific to setup for Mac Catalyst. Running the Settings app and going to General -> Login Items & Extension, I do not see my app under the App Background Activity section. Does it need to be listed there? If so, what steps are needed to get it there? If this is all documented somewhere, I'd appreciate a link since I was not able to find anything specific to making this work under Mac Catalyst.
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Mac Catalyst: AUv3 Extension no longer works on MacOS, still works on iOS
I have a Catalyst app ('container') which hosts an embedded AUv3 Audio Unit extension ('plugin'). This used to work for years and has worked with this project until a few days ago. it still works on iOS as expected on MacOS the extension is never registered/installed and won't load extension won't show up with AUVal seems to have stopped working with the 26.1 XCode update I'm fairly certain the problem is not code related (i.e. likely build settings, project settings, entitlements, signing, etc.) I have compared all settings with another still-working project and can't find any meaningful difference (I can't request code-level support because even the minimal thing vastly exceeds the 250 lines of code limit.) How can I debug the issue? I literally don't know where to start to fix this problem, short of rebuilding the entire thing and hope that it magically starts working again.
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Mac Catalyst Getting Unacceptable Window Resizing Performance on macOS Tahoe With Liquid Glass Design
When I run my Mac Catalyst app I'm getting unacceptable performance when resizing the window. Window resizing is very unresponsive/laggy. Configuration: The root view controller is a UISplitViewController (three pane split using UISplitViewControllerStyleTripleColumn). Sidebar is configured. It's using a UICollectionView sidebar style (so it looks like NSOutlineView in AppKit). On initial launch there is no selection and the second and third view controllers in the split have empty placeholder view controllers. At this point window resizing is fine. Now I make a selection in the sidebar. This populates the supplementary view controller with a view controller that uses a UITableView. Now resizing the window performance is awful. Basically this is unusable. When resizing the window a bunch what looks to be Core Animation related logs flood the console during window resize: cannot add handler to 3 from 1 - dropping Library: QuartzCore | Subsystem: com.apple.coreanimation Now if I go to my app's Info.plist and add: UIDesignRequiresCompatibility entry with a value of TRUE and follow the same steps described above window resizing works as expected and I do not experience performance issues. Also with UIDesignRequiresCompatibility there is no "cannot add handlers" error logs flooding the console on window resize.
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Mac Catalyst Crash on App Launch on macOS 26.1: Assertion failure in -[NSToolbarItemGroupView _layoutWrapperViewsWithAttributes:], NSToolbarItemGroupView.m:599
Returning to a Mac Catalyst app that I put to the side for awhile..when running it on Xcode 26.1 it crashes at launch with: Assertion failure in -[NSToolbarItemGroupView _layoutWrapperViewsWithAttributes:], NSToolbarItemGroupView.m:599 No attributes were found for item Call stack has a bunch of Autolayout code in AppKit like: [NSWindow(NSConstraintBasedLayoutInternal) _layoutViewTree] + 120 50 AppKit 0x00000001911e8a10 -[NSWindow(NSConstraintBasedLayoutInternal) layoutIfNeeded] + 240 51 UIKitMacHelper 0x00000001a98f293c -[UINSWindow layoutIfNeeded] + 56 A few unnamed symbols mixed in maybe that's that Swiftness beneath the surface. App is just murdered on launch. I assume this is related to using NSToolbarItemGroup when building an NSToolbar... I do see this log out: NSToolbarItemGroup does not support selectionMode. Create the group with one of the class constructors to support selection. Which is an interesting log so I commented out all calls to setSelectionMode: but still the same crash. I do set the groups subitems property directly (I do not use the class constructors as the logging statement above indicates). I have no idea if using the class constructors will workaround this issue or not but I'm not particularly excited about that idea because I have items in the same toolbar group with different actions.
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Button Glass Style Incorrect in Sheet + ScrollView on Mac Catalyst 26
Hi everyone! I've encountered an issue when using Sheet + ScrollView on Mac Catalyst: the buttons in the toolbar appear with an abnormal gray color. import SwiftUI struct ContentView: View { var body: some View { VStack { } .sheet(isPresented: .constant(true)) { Sheet() } } } struct Sheet: View { var body: some View { NavigationStack { ScrollView { // <-- no issue if use List } .toolbar { Button(action: {}) { // <-- 👀 weird gray color Image(systemName: "checkmark") } } } } } Steps to Reproduce: On macOS 26.0 beta 9, use Xcode 26.0 beta 7 to create an iOS project and enable Mac Catalyst. Paste the code above. Select the Mac Catalyst scheme and run the project. The buttons in the toolbar show a strange gray appearance. If you change the ScrollView to a List in the code, the issue does not occur. FB20120285
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Oct ’25
PHPickerViewController unusable via Mac Catalyst on macOS 26 when interface is "Scaled to Match iPad"
There is a serious usability issue with PHPickerViewController in a UIKit app running on macOS 26 via Mac Catalyst when the Mac Catalyst interface is set to “Scaled to Match iPad”. Mouse click and other pointer interactions do not take place in the correct position. This means you have to click in the wrong position to select a photo and to close the picker. This basically makes it unusable. To demonstrate, use Xcode 26 on macOS 26 to create a new iOS app project based on Swift/Storyboard. Then update ViewController.swift with the following code: import UIKit import PhotosUI class ViewController: UIViewController { override func viewDidLoad() { super.viewDidLoad() var cfg = UIButton.Configuration.plain() cfg.title = "Photo Picker" let button = UIButton(configuration: cfg, primaryAction: UIAction(handler: { _ in self.showPicker() })) button.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false view.addSubview(button) NSLayoutConstraint.activate([ button.centerXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.safeAreaLayoutGuide.centerXAnchor), button.centerYAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.safeAreaLayoutGuide.centerYAnchor), ]) } private func showPicker() { var config = PHPickerConfiguration() config.selectionLimit = 10 config.selection = .ordered let vc = PHPickerViewController(configuration: config) vc.delegate = self self.present(vc, animated: true) } } extension ViewController: PHPickerViewControllerDelegate { func picker(_ picker: PHPickerViewController, didFinishPicking results: [PHPickerResult]) { print("Picked \(results.count) photos") dismiss(animated: true) } } Then go to the "Supported Destinations" section of the project target. Add a "Mac (Mac Catalyst)" destination. Then under the "Deployment Information" section, make sure the "Mac Catalyst Interface" setting is "Scaled to Match iPad". Then build and run the app on a Mac (using the Mac Catalyst destination) with macOS 26.0.1. Make sure the Mac has a dozen or so pictures in the Photo Library to fully demonstrate the issue. When the app is run, a simple screen appears with one button in the middle. Click the button to bring up the PHPickerViewController. Now try to interact with the picker interface. Note that all pointer interactions are in the wrong place on the screen. This makes it nearly impossible to choose the correct photos and close the picker. Quit the app. Select the project and go to the General tab. In the "Deployment Info" change the “Mac Catalyst Interface” setting to “Optimize for Mac” and run the app again. Now the photo picker works just fine. If you run the app on a Mac running macOS 15 then the photo picker works just fine with either “Mac Catalyst Interface” setting. The problem only happens under macOS 26.0 (I do not have macOS 26.1 beta to test) when the “Mac Catalyst Interface” setting is set to “Scaled to Match iPad”. This is critical for my app. I cannot use “Optimize for Mac”. There are far too many issues with that setting (I use UIStepper and UIPickerView to start). So it is critical to the usability of my app under macOS 26 that this issue be resolved. It is expected that PHPickerViewController responds correctly to pointer events on macOS 26 when running a Mac Catalyst app set to “Scaled to Match iPad”. A version of this has been filed as FB20503207
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Oct ’25
Mac Catalyst: IOHID InputReportCallback not firing, USBInterfaceOpen returns kIOReturnNotPermitted (0xe00002e2) for custom HID device
Hi everyone, I am developing a .NET MAUI Mac Catalyst app (sandboxed) that communicates with a custom vendor-specific HID USB device. Within the Catalyst app, I am using a native iOS library (built with Objective-C and IOKit) and calling into it via P/Invoke from C#. The HID communication layer relies on IOHIDManager and IOUSBInterface APIs. The device is correctly detected and opened using IOHIDManager APIs. However, IOHIDDeviceRegisterInputReportCallback never triggers — I don’t receive any input reports. To investigate, I also tried using low-level IOKit USB APIs via P/Invoke from my Catalyst app, calling into a native iOS library. When attempting to open the USB interface using IOUSBInterfaceOpen() or IOUSBInterfaceOpenSeize(), both calls fail with: kIOReturnNotPermitted (0xe00002e2). — indicating an access denied error, even though the device enumerates and opens successfully. Interestingly, when I call IOHIDDeviceSetReport(), it returns status = 0, meaning I can successfully send feature reports to the device. Only input reports (via the InputReportCallback) fail to arrive. I’ve confirmed this is not a device issue — the same hardware and protocol work perfectly under Windows using the HIDSharp library, where both input and output reports function correctly. What I’ve verified •Disabling sandboxing doesn’t change the behavior. •The device uses a vendor-specific usage page (not a standard HID like keyboard/mouse). •Enumeration, open, and SetReport all succeed — only reading input reports fails. •Tried polling queues, in queues Input_Misc element failed to add to the queues. •Tried getting report in a loop but no use.
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Oct ’25
Bottom toolbar Button truncated on Mac Catalyst 26
On Mac Catalyst 26, a Button bar item in a bottom toolbar look squished. This happens only when the "Mac Catalyst Interface" option is set to "Optimize for Mac". When it is set to "Scale to match iPad", the buttons look fine. For example, in the screenshots below, the text button should say "Press Me", instead of "…" A simple reproducible snippet and a screenshot below. The toolbar button comparison between "Scale to match iPad" and "Optimize for Mac" are shown. Optimize for Mac Scale to match iPad import SwiftUI struct ContentView: View { @State private var selectedItem: String? = "Item 1" let items = ["Item 1", "Item 2"] var body: some View { NavigationSplitView { List(items, id: \.self, selection: $selectedItem) { item in Text(item) } .navigationTitle("Items") } detail: { if let selectedItem = selectedItem { Text("Detail view for \(selectedItem)") .toolbar { ToolbarItemGroup(placement: .bottomBar) { Text("Hello world") Spacer() Button("Press Me") { } Spacer() Button { } label: { Image(systemName: "plus") .imageScale(.large) } } } } else { Text("Select an item") } } } }
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Oct ’25
Crash while presenting popover on toolbar item in MacCatalyst app
struct ContentView: View { @State private var showingPopover:Bool = false private var popOverHeight: CGFloat { return 566 } var body: some View { NavigationStack { VStack { Image(systemName: "globe") .imageScale(.large) .foregroundStyle(.tint) Text("Hello, world!") } .padding() .toolbar { ToolbarItem(placement: .topBarTrailing) { Button { showingPopover = true } label: { Image(systemName: "plus") .font(Font.system(size: 15)) .foregroundColor(Color.red) } .popover(isPresented: $showingPopover) { FTShelfNewNotePopoverView1() .frame(minWidth: 340.0) .frame(height: popOverHeight) } } } } } }
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Oct ’25
SwiftUI Slider will cause app to crash on macOS Tahoe RC
Hello, creating a simple-as-it-gets Slider in SwiftUI and then running that app on Mac Catalyst with the macOS idiom enabled, the app crashes: struct ContentView: View { @State private var sliderValue: Double = 0.4 var body: some View { VStack { Slider(value: $sliderValue) } .padding() } } running this will result in an exception: _setMinimumEnabledValue: is not supported on UISlider when running Catalyst apps in the Mac idiom. See UIBehavioralStyle for possible alternatives. This is obviously not ideal and also apparently no documented. Is there a workaround for this? It used to work for on macOS Sonoma. macOS 26 RC Xcode 26 RC FB20191635 Thanks!
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Oct ’25
Mac Catalyst: Toolbar still appears below title bar, leaving empty safe area
Hi everyone, I’m testing my Catalyst SwiftUI project on iOS 26 / iPadOS 26 / macOS 26. I started with a NavigationSplitView (triple-column) inside a WindowGroup. On iPad it looks great: the toolbar items merge into the navigation bar, with the three traffic lights. But on Mac Catalyst, the app always reserves a blank safe area below the traffic lights, and places the toolbar on a separate line beneath the title bar. That leaves wasted vertical space I don’t want. What I expect (based on Apple’s WWDC session “Elevate the design of your iPad app”): The toolbar should merge into the title bar with the traffic lights, no separate row. Content should extend into the full height of the window. What I get on Mac Catalyst: Title bar + traffic lights at the top. Then a completely separate toolbar row below it. Safe area inset prevents my content from reaching the top of the window. What I’ve tried: .toolbarRole(.automatic), .editor, .browser → no effect. Hiding the title bar via titlebar?.titleVisibility = .hidden → removes the text but not the toolbar gap. Clearing titlebar?.toolbar → no difference. So far, I can’t find any way to get Catalyst to integrate toolbars into the window chrome the way native SwiftUI on macOS does. Is this a known limitation of Mac Catalyst, or is there a supported way to achieve the same “inline toolbar with window controls” layout? Switching to a Mac app vs. Catalyst fixes the issue, but I would have a lot more work to do to get the app ready for release, not ideal since it works near perfect on iPad. Thanks!
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Oct ’25
Does Mac Catalyst support an "always on top" window scene?
My UIKit/Mac Catalyst app supports a user opening multiple windows (multiple scenes). One of these is a special scene that shows content that I want to appear in front of all other app windows/scenes, even while the user is interacting with one of the app's other scenes. I do not need this special scene to stay in front of the windows of other apps, just in front of the windows of my own app. While I'm not 100% sure, it seems that AppKit supports this through the NSWindow level property. I can't find any equivalent feature in UIKit/Mac Catalyst. UIWindow windowLevel is not the same thing since that only affects the order of windows within a given scene. I need an entire scene (and its windows) to stay in front of my app's other scenes (and their windows). I don't see anything relevant in UIWindow, UIScene, UIWindowScene, UISceneSession, UIScene.ActivationRequestOptions, or UIWindowScene.ActivationRequestOptions.
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Oct ’25
AVPlayerViewController Mac Catalyst 26 Full Screen Crash
I have a SwiftUI Mac Catalyst app that shows a video player using a UIViewControllerRepresentable AVPlayerViewController. When I tap the full screen button on the native playback control, the app crashes. The app crashes only when built with Xcode 26. When I build with Xcode 16, this does not cause a crash. Here is some of the crash log: 0 CoreFoundation 0x000000019a5cc770 __exceptionPreprocess + 176 1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x000000019a0aa418 objc_exception_throw + 88 2 CoreFoundation 0x000000019a69b7fc -[NSException initWithCoder:] + 0 3 AppKit 0x000000019eeee1d0 -[NSBezierPath(NSBezierPathDevicePrimitives) _deviceMoveToPoint:] + 104 4 AppKit 0x000000019eeec930 -[NSBezierPath appendBezierPathWithRoundedRect:xRadius:yRadius:] + 200 5 AppKit 0x000000019eeea238 +[NSBezierPath bezierPathWithRoundedRect:xRadius:yRadius:] + 88 6 AVKitMacHelper 0x0000000247d73cc4 -[AVScrubberSliderCell drawBarInside:flipped:] + 1264 7 AppKit 0x000000019f35cf7c -[NSSliderCell drawInteriorWithFrame:inView:] + 680 8 AppKit 0x000000019f35ccbc -[NSSliderCell drawWithFrame:inView:] + 104 Any ideas!?
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Oct ’25
Image sizing in context menus on Tahoe via Catalyst
I've got a Catalyst app that exposes some custom context menu items via the buildMenu API. When it runs on Tahoe, there's some weirdness with how the images in the menu items are sized. See attached screenshot below. The three items on the bottom are using SF Symbols for their images, and the rest are using custom images from an asset catalog. Is this a bug in Tahoe 26.0? Or should I be resizing my images before giving them to UIAction? If the latter, what should the size be, and is this documented somewhere or available from an API?
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Sep ’25
macOS 26 toolbar has wrong tint color sometimes in Dark Appearance
I have a SwiftUI Mac Catalyst app. I create a toolbar like this NavigationSplitView(columnVisibility: $sceneModel.columnVisibility, preferredCompactColumn: $preferredColumn) { sidebarView() } detail: { contentView() .toolbar { ToolbarItemGroup(placement: .topBarTrailing) { HStack { Button { sceneModel.onMaps(sender: self) } label: { Image(systemName: "map") .font(.title2) } Button { sceneModel.onSearch(sender: self) } label: { Image(systemName: "magnifyingglass") .font(.title2) } ... } } } } When my Mac Appearance is set to dark mode and the content under the toolbar is dark the toolbar looks good like this. But then if I have light content under the toolbar, the glass effect changes to light, but the tint on the icons stays white instead of changing to black and it is hard to see the icon. It looks like this. When I set the Appearance on my Mac to light, then the toolbar works just fine on both dark and light colored backgrounds. Does anyone know how I can fix this when the appearance is Dark?
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Sep ’25