{"id":51309,"date":"2026-03-19T16:15:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=51309"},"modified":"2026-03-20T09:17:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T13:17:26","slug":"catalyst-in-tahoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/19\/catalyst-in-tahoe\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalyst in Tahoe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/811728\">fahad-sh<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/811728\">\n<p>I&rsquo;m exploring macOS development, comparing Mac Catalyst apps vs native AppKit\/SwiftUI apps.<\/p>\n<ul><li>What are the main limitations of Catalyst today?<\/li><li>In what scenarios is a native AppKit or SwiftUI app unavoidable?<\/li><\/ul>\n<p>Any insights are much appreciated &mdash; I&rsquo;m trying to understand when Catalyst is sufficient and when going native is worth the extra effort.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@ryanashcraft\/116211642047382786\">Ryan Ashcraft<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@ryanashcraft\/116211642047382786\">\n<p>Mac Catalyst seems dead to me. Five months since Tahoe&rsquo;s official release and I still have crashes, ugly layouts and glitches that weren&rsquo;t a problem pre-Liquid Glass.<\/p>\n<p>I see no option other than build an entirely new SwiftUI-native Mac App.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>I have a huge Foodnoms update that is almost ready, but I can&rsquo;t ship it, because it would break syncing with the Mac app.<\/p><p>I could load up Sequoia and Xcode 16.4, but Apple is going to stop accepting binaries from 16.4 in April. And the UI compatibility plist option isn&rsquo;t any better. It&rsquo;s ugly AF.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Searching the forums, it seems like there <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/808035\">a<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/807867\">lot<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/807970\">of<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/802898\">new<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/802194\">Catalyst<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/796244\">bugs<\/a> in Tahoe, but it does look like <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/811287\">they<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/799874\">are<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/803019\">being<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/forums\/thread\/804663\">fixed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.world\/@jordanhipwell\/116213335193358041\">Jordan Hipwell<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.world\/@jordanhipwell\/116213335193358041\">\n<p>I shipped Liquid Glass in my Catalyst app and haven&rsquo;t noticed any crashes or major issues. Most issues are SwiftUI regressions where I decided not to use UIKit &#x1F972;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@agiletortoise\/116211685549309799\">Greg Pierce<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@agiletortoise\/116211685549309799\">\n<p>That pure SwiftUI on Mac idea scares me, too. So many weirdly different things. I think I&rsquo;m sticking with sprinkling SwiftUI into AppKit where it&rsquo;s useful to do so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/29\/liquid-glass-disbelief\/\">Liquid Glass Disbelief<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/18\/swiftui-at-wwdc-2025\/\">SwiftUI at WWDC 2025<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/13\/catalyst-not-at-wwdc24\/\">Catalyst (Not) at WWDC24<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"catalyst-in-tahoe-update-2026-03-20\">Update (<a href=\"#catalyst-in-tahoe-update-2026-03-20\">2026-03-20<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@b3ll\/115539728976797815\">Adam Bell<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@b3ll\/115539728976797815\">\n<p>Why are the toolbar icons smushed?<\/p><p>Why is the search bar the wrong colour?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@b3ll\/115698102900918747\">Adam Bell<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@b3ll\/115698102900918747\">\n<p>Man, Catalyst has so many things busted on macOS 26 (even 26.2).<\/p>\n<p>Toolbars just do not render correctly at all, even a simple SwiftUI app. Works fine in AppKit tho!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@stroughtonsmith\/116257765535672590\">Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@stroughtonsmith\/116257765535672590\">\n<p>I can&rsquo;t back that up at all, Catalyst for the most part has been rock solid for all my apps for years now; UIKit has Liquid Glass bugs across all platforms (that SwiftUI will inherit anyway), and AppKit has plenty of its own, but they are all dwindling with each point update.<\/p>\n<p>I am on the Mac idiom on all my Catalyst apps though; Foodnoms is an iPad-idiom app (compatibility mode) so there may be dragons there I&rsquo;m unaware of, since it uses a completely different behavioral style<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@iKyle\/116259094073123922\">Kyle Howells<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@iKyle\/116259094073123922\">\n<p>I switched fully to using Catalyst for all my Mac projects and haven&rsquo;t had any issues at all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@iKyle\/116259139419148735\">Kyle Howells<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@iKyle\/116259139419148735\">\n<p>Mac native &amp; UIKit, no compatibility mode or SwiftUI. I consider both too buggy as is, let alone combining them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>fahad-sh: I&rsquo;m exploring macOS development, comparing Mac Catalyst apps vs native AppKit\/SwiftUI apps. What are the main limitations of Catalyst today?In what scenarios is a native AppKit or SwiftUI app unavoidable? Any insights are much appreciated &mdash; I&rsquo;m trying to understand when Catalyst is sufficient and when going native is worth the extra effort. Ryan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-03-19T20:15:56Z","apple_news_api_id":"bd96c2fc-2a27-49d3-bc7f-b891cd0d7684","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-03-20T13:17:31Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AvZbC_ConSdO8f7iRzQ12hA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1621,2903,30,2742,71,1812],"class_list":["post-51309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-marzipan","tag-foodnoms","tag-mac","tag-macos-tahoe-26","tag-programming","tag-swiftui"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51309"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51313,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51309\/revisions\/51313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}