Creating a Mac version of your iPad app

Overview

Configuring your iPad app for Mac can be as simple as adding an entry to the list of your target’s supported destinations in Xcode. Depending on the features and frameworks that your app uses, the configuration process may require a few extra steps, such as manually excluding other frameworks or content.

Configure your app for Mac

To add support for Mac, open your Xcode project and select the iOS target that you want to configure. In the General tab, under Supported Destinations, click the Add button (+) to add a destination. Select Mac, then Mac Catalyst to add the destination.

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When you enable Mac support, Xcode adds the App Sandbox Entitlement to your project. Xcode only includes this entitlement in the Mac version of your app, not the iOS version. Xcode also adds My Mac to the list of destinations. Select this destination to run your Mac app from Xcode.

At this point, you may be able to build and run the Mac version of your app. To give it a try, select My Mac as the destination and run your project.

Go beyond the checkbox

You may find that the Mac version of your app still doesn’t build because:

• Your project includes incompatible frameworks, libraries, or embedded content.

• Your source code references unsupported APIs.

When you enable Mac support, Xcode automatically excludes incompatible frameworks and embedded content where possible for Mac builds of your project. Still, you may need to manually exclude other frameworks or content.

To manually exclude an item, open Frameworks, Libraries, and Embedded Content under the General tab for your iOS target. Then select only iOS under Filters for the item. This setting excludes the item from the Mac version of your app.

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If you have source code referencing APIs unavailable to the Mac version of your app, enclose the code in a compilation conditional block that uses the targetEnvironment() (Swift) or TARGET_OS_MACCATALYST (Objective-C) platform condition.

You can use these same approaches to include a framework and code that are available only in macOS. For a framework, select macOS for the platform setting, and enclose the code with a #if targetEnvironment(macCatalyst) (Swift) or #if TARGET_OS_MACCATALYST (Objective-C) statement.

Make your app more like a Mac app

After following these steps, you should be able to run your iPad app on Mac. But before you ship your new app to customers, it needs a few more changes to make it more like a Mac app. To learn more, see Optimizing your iPad app for Mac.