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!