
Even after fixing that, and adding the requisite document types in its Info plist, actually trying to open a file will send the document browser into an endless loop of showing the file picker.
Caffeine mac alternative mac#
There are many reasons it falls flat, but let's start with the basics: Xcode's 'Document App' template for iOS crashes on launch when you add Mac Catalyst support, because it lacks the basic entitlements for opening files. The biggest glaring hole in UIKit on macOS is its handling of document-based apps. This is my curated list, and there will definitely be things I didn't touch upon below as they haven't directly impacted what I'm working on or hoping to build.
Caffeine mac alternative code#
However, this piece is intended to explore the parts that don't work as-is having now used Mac Catalyst to build two successful and highly-rated medium-complexity Mac apps in Broadcasts and Pastel, and having spent the past year or so building sample code for developers, I wanted to take some time to lay out the areas of the framework that I've found just don't do enough to enable great Mac apps, and perhaps provide a checklist of things for Apple to solve in future versions of the OS. Most users would be hard-pressed to tell that the Messages, Podcasts, or Maps apps are anything but robust, native Mac apps, and though that level of quality is not evenly distributed amongst Apple's other UIKit-based Catalyst apps, it provides a great baseline for expectations of what you can achieve with Mac Catalyst, if you put the effort in. As we transitioned through macOS 11, however, and the introduction of the 'Mac Idiom', UIKit crossed a threshold that now makes it a great way to build Mac-like Mac apps.

With macOS Catalina, this initial half-step was put in developers' hands, and it took quite an effort to wrangle it into something that looked and felt like it fit on the Mac.

When the first UIKit-based apps appeared on macOS Mojave, it was abundantly clear that there was a long way to go before this technology was appropriate for developers making new Mac apps. Where Mac Catalyst Falls Short February 16 2022
