Ultimate Catalyst Guide

Features

released Fri, 05 Jul 2019
Swift Version 5.1

Here's a bullet point guide on Catalyst:

  • Run iPad apps on macOS
  • macOS 13.0 only
  • Supports most of iOS (i.e. no ARKit)
  • Adds macOS sandbox support (and a AppName.entitlements file
  • Uses Settings.bundle for automatic macOS Preferences
  • You can build full-fledged macOS apps
  • You can sell your apps outside of the Mac App Store
  • Dynamic Type is disabled as it doesn't exist on macOS. Everything is Large
  • Your whole app, when run on macOS, is resized to 77% of the original size. That's all automatic and in the background
  • A default menu bar for your app.
  • Support for trackpad, mouse, and keyboard input.
  • Support for window resizing and full-screen display.
  • Mac-style scroll bars.
  • Copy-and-paste support.
  • Drag-and-drop support.
  • Support for system Touch Bar controls.

Apart from that, another major difference is that the Application Lifecycle behaves slightly different. We will look at that next.