macOS Catalina (version 10.15) is the sixteenth major release of

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

's desktop operating system for

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

computers. It is the successor to

macOS Mojave macOS Mojave ( ; version 10.14) is the fifteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. Mojave was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 4, 2018, and was released to the ...

and was announced at

WWDC The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is currently held at Apple Park in California. The event is used to showcase new software and technologies in the macO ...

2019 on June 3, 2019 and released to the public on October 7, 2019. Catalina is the first version of macOS to support only

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

applications and the first to include Activation Lock. It is also the last version of macOS to have the major version number be 10.x; its successor,

Big Sur Big Sur () is a rugged and mountainous section of the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of the U.S. state of California, between Carmel Highlands and San Simeon, where the Santa Lucia Range, Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from th ...

, released on November 12, 2020, is version 11. In order to increase web compatibility,

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...

and

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

have frozen the OS in the user agent running in subsequent releases of macOS at 10.15.7 Catalina. The operating system is named after Santa Catalina Island, which is located off the coast of

southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...

. macOS Catalina is the final version of macOS that supports the Unibody MacBook Pro, as its successor, macOS Big Sur, drops support for its mid-2012 and final model.

System requirements

All standard configuration Macs that supported

support macOS Catalina. 2010 to 2012

Mac Pro Mac Pro is a series of workstations and servers for professionals made by Apple Inc. since 2006. The Mac Pro, by some performance benchmarks, is the most powerful computer that Apple offers. It is one of four desktop computers in the current ...

s, which could run Mojave only with a GPU upgrade, are no longer supported. Catalina requires 4 GB of memory, an increase over the 2 GB required by

Lion The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large Felidae, cat of the genus ''Panthera'', native to Sub-Saharan Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body (biology), body; a short, rounded head; round ears; and a dark, hairy tuft at the ...

through Mojave. *

iMac The iMac is a series of all-in-one computers from Apple Inc., sold as part of the company's Mac (computer), Mac family of computers. First introduced in 1998, it has remained a primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since and evol ...

(Late 2012 or later) *

iMac Pro The iMac Pro is an all-in-one personal computer and workstation sold by Apple Inc. from 2017 to 2022. At its release, it was one of four desktop computers in the Macintosh lineup, sitting above the consumer range Mac Mini and iMac, and serv ...

(2017) *

MacBook MacBook is a type of Mac laptop computer that is developed and marketed by Apple that use Apple's macOS operating system since 2006. The MacBook brand replaced the PowerBook and iBook brands during the Mac transition to Intel processors, ann ...

(Early 2015 or later) *

MacBook Air The MacBook Air is a line of Mac (computer), Mac laptop computers developed and manufactured by Apple Inc., Apple since 2008. It features a thin, light structure in a machining, machined aluminum case and currently either a 13-inch or 15-inch ...

(Mid 2012 or later) *

MacBook Pro The MacBook Pro is a line of Mac laptop computers developed and manufactured by Apple. Introduced in 2006, it is the high-end sibling of the MacBook family, sitting above the ultra-portable MacBook Air and previously the low-end MacBook li ...

(Mid 2012 or later) *

Mac Mini Mac Mini (stylized as Mac mini) is a small form factor (desktop and motherboard), small form factor desktop computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is one of the company's four current Mac (computer), Mac desktop computers, positioned ...

(Late 2012 or later) *

(Late 2013 or later) It is unofficially possible to install macOS Catalina on many older Macintosh computers that are not officially supported by Apple. This requires using a patch to modify the install image. (dosdude1)'s Catalina Patcher is an example of those tools, which can be used to Install Catalina on machines between 2008 and 2011.

Changes

System

Catalyst

Catalyst is a new software-development tool that allows developers to write apps that can run on macOS,

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and

iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple for its iPad line of tablet computers. It was given a name distinct from iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones to reflect the diverging features of the two product lines, suc ...

. Apple demonstrated several ported apps, including Jira and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

(after the latter discontinued its macOS app in February 2018).

System extensions

An upgrade from Kexts. System extensions avoid the problems of Kexts. There are 3 kinds of System extensions: Network Extensions, Endpoint Security Extensions, and Driver Extensions. System extensions run in userspace, outside of the kernel. Catalina will be the last version of macOS to support legacy system extensions.

DriverKit

A replacement for IOKit device drivers, driver extensions are built using DriverKit. DriverKit is a new SDK with all-new frameworks based on IOKit, but updated and modernized. It is designed for building device drivers in userspace, outside of the kernel.

Gatekeeper

Mac apps, installer packages, and kernel extensions that are signed with a Developer ID must be notarized by Apple to run on macOS Catalina.

Activation Lock

Activation Lock helps prevent the unauthorized use and drive erasure of devices with an Apple T2 security chip (2018, 2019, and 2020

; 2020 5K

; 2018

; 2019

Dedicated system volume

The system runs on its own read-only volume, separate from all other data on the Mac.

Voice control

Users can give detailed voice commands to applications. On-device machine processing is used to offer better navigation.

Sidecar

Sidecar allows a Mac to use an

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

(running

) as a wireless external display. With

Apple Pencil Apple Pencil is a line of wireless stylus pen accessories designed and developed by Apple Inc. for use with supported iPad tablets. The first-generation Apple Pencil was announced alongside the first iPad Pro on September 9, 2015. It communi ...

, the device can also be used as a

graphics tablet A graphics tablet (also known as a digitizer, digital graphic tablet, pen tablet, drawing tablet, external drawing pad or digital art board) is a computer input device that enables a user to hand draw or paint images, animations and graphics, w ...

for software running on the computer. Sidecar requires a Mac with Intel

Skylake Skylake or Sky Lake may refer to: * Skylake (microarchitecture) Skylake is Intel's codename for its sixth generation Core microprocessor family that was launched on August 5, 2015, succeeding the Broadwell microarchitecture. Skylake is a mic ...

CPUs and newer (such as the fourth-generation MacBook Pro), and an iPad that supports Apple Pencil.

Support for wireless game controllers

The Game Controller framework adds support for two major console game controllers: the

PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013, in ...

's DualShock 4 and the

Xbox One controller The Xbox Wireless Controller is the primary game controller for the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S home video game consoles, also the official controller for use in Windows-based PCs, and compatible with other operating systems such as macOS, Lin ...

Time Machine

A number of under-the-hood changes were made to Time Machine, the backup software. For example, the manner in which backup data is stored on network-attached devices was changed, and this change is not backwards-compatible with earlier versions of macOS. Apple declined to document these changes, but some of them have been noted.

Applications

iTunes

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

is replaced by separate

Music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

Podcasts A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an episodic series of digital audio files that users can download to a personal device or stream to listen to at a time of their ...

, TV and

Books A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, mo ...

apps, in line with

. iOS device management is now conducted via Finder. The TV app on Mac supports

Dolby Atmos Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. It expands on existing surround sound systems by adding height channels as well as free-moving sound objects, interpreted as three-dimensional objects with neither horiz ...

Dolby Vision Dolby Vision is a set of technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories for high dynamic range (HDR) video. It covers content creation, distribution, and playback. It includes dynamic metadata that define the aspect ratio and adjust the picture ...

, and

HDR10 HDR10 Media Profile, more commonly known as 'HDR10'', is an open high-dynamic-range video (HDR) standard announced on 27 August 2015, by the Consumer Electronics Association. It is the most widespread HDR format. HDR10 is not Backward compatibil ...

on MacBooks released in 2018 or later, while 4K HDR playback is supported on Macs released in 2018 or later when connected to a compatible display.

Find My

Find My Mac and Find My Friends are merged into an application called

Find My Find My is an asset tracking service made by Apple Inc. that enables users to track the location of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS devices, AirPods, AirTags, and a number of supported third-party accessories through a connected iC ...

Notes

The

Notes Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened versi ...

application was enhanced to allow better management of checklists and the ability to share folders with other users. The application version was incremented from 4.6 (in macOS 10.14 Mojave) to 4.7.

Reminders

Among other visual and functional overhauls, attachments can be added to reminders and Siri can intelligently estimate when to remind the user about an event.

Voice Memos

The Voice Memos application, first ported from iOS to the Mac in macOS 10.14 Mojave as version 2.0, was incremented to version 2.1.

Removed or changed components

macOS Catalina exclusively supports 64-bit applications. 32-bit applications no longer run (including all software that utilizes the Carbon API as well as QuickTime 7 applications, image, audio and video codecs). Apple has also removed all 32-bit-only apps from the

Mac App Store The Mac App Store (also known as the App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac" eve ...

Z shell The Z shell (Zsh) is a Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a command interpreter for shell scripting. Zsh is an extended Bourne shell with many improvements, including some features of Bash, ksh, and tcsh. Zsh w ...

(executable "zsh") is the default login shell and interactive shell in macOS Catalina, replacing Bash, the default shell since

Mac OS X Panther Mac OS X Panther (version 10.3) is the fourth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X Jaguar and preceded Mac OS X Tiger. It was released on October 24, 2003, with the retail price of US$12 ...

in 2003. Bash continues to be available in macOS Catalina, along with other shells such as csh/

tcsh tcsh ( “tee-see-shell”, “tee-shell”, or as “tee see ess aitch”, tcsh) is a Unix shell based on and backward compatible with the C shell (csh). Shell It is essentially the C shell with programmable command-line completion, command- ...

and ksh.

Dashboard A dashboard (also called dash, instrument panel or IP, or fascia) is a control panel (engineering), control panel set within the central console of a vehicle, boat, or cockpit of an aircraft or spacecraft. Usually located directly ahead of the ...

has been removed in macOS Catalina. The ability to add Backgrounds in Photo Booth was removed in macOS Catalina. The command-line interface

GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a text editor and suite of free software tools. Its development began in 1984 by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU ...

application was removed in macOS Catalina. Built-in support for

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

, Python 2.7 and

Ruby Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapph ...

are included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS will not include scripting language runtimes by default, possibly requiring users to install additional packages. Legacy

AirDrop An airdrop is a type of airlift in which items including weapons, equipment, humanitarian aid or leaflets are delivered by military or civilian aircraft without their landing. Developed during World War II to resupply otherwise inaccessible tr ...

for connecting with Macs running

Mac OS X Lion OS X Lion, also known as Mac OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. A preview of OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the "Back to the Mac" Apple Speci ...

Mountain Lion The cougar (''Puma concolor'') (, ''Help:Pronunciation respelling key, KOO-gər''), also called puma, mountain lion, catamount and panther is a large small cat native to the Americas. It inhabits North America, North, Central America, Cent ...

and Mavericks, or 2011 and older Macs has been removed. Support for legacy Safari extensions such as

uBlock Origin uBlock Origin ( ) is a free and open-source browser extension for content filtering, including ad blocking. The extension is available for Firefox and Chromium-based browsers (such as Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Opera). uBlock Origin is activ ...

, and WebSQL has been removed in Safari 13. Circular app icons now have outlines matching their main color.

Security

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'' reported that macOS Catalina contained a critical

privilege escalation Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a Software bug, bug, a Product defect, design flaw, or a configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resource (computer science), resources that ar ...

vulnerability, which resulted in a backdoor being installed if users visited a Hong Kong pro-democracy website. The vulnerability was reported to Apple in August 2021 and patched in a Catalina update in September, but it had already been patched by Apple in macOS Big Sur 11.2, released 234 days earlier on February 1. Security experts have criticized Apple for not patching critical known vulnerabilities in older versions and for not being transparent about older versions only receiving some, but not all, security patches. The latest major release of Apple's operating systems (macOS, iOS, and others) receive all security updates.

Reception

Catalina received favorable reviews on release for some of its features. However, some critics found the OS version distinctly less reliable than earlier versions. The broad addition of user-facing security measures (somewhat analogous to the addition of

User Account Control User Account Control (UAC) is a mandatory access control enforcement feature introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems, with a more relaxed

dialog boxes with

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

a decade earlier) was criticized as intrusive and annoying.

Release history

References

External links

* – official site
macOS 10.15 Catalina
download page at

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

{{Apple software 2019 software 15 Products and services discontinued in 2022 X86-64 operating systems