Few weeks ago, Apple announced the new version of macOS coming this fall: Catalina. Since 2014, Apple names macOS after California locations and version 10.15 refers to Santa Catalina Island, located just 35 kilometers off the Southern California coast.
Catalina will offer some neat features:
- New Music, TV and podcasts apps, replacing iTunes
- Improved Notes and Reminders apps
- Sidecar lets you extend your workspace by using your iPad as a second display
- Screen Time is giving you greater insight into how you’re spending your time
And behind the scenes, macOS Catalina will come with enhanced security features to better protect macOS against tampering, help ensure that the apps you use are safe, and give you greater control over access to your data. This is what impacts our apps most.
We immediately started to test and adapt all ours apps to be fully compatible with Catalina when it will be released. New security features affect many functions in our apps, because you’re now requested to give new permissions in Catalina: accessing files in your Documents, Desktop and iCloud folders, capturing keyboard activity or a photo/video of your screen. For example, taking screenshots for the first time with our app Displays will pop-up a system dialog asking your permission to take screenshots. We’ve also reworked some functions to avoid unnecessary permission dialogs.
Our iTunes & Spotify companion, TunesArt, offers a different challenge: iTunes is not available anymore on macOS Catalina. But don’t worry, the new Music app is quite similar to iTunes and we’ve successfully adapted TunesArt to it.
