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Aren't App Store and Photos Mac Catalyst apps?

• favorited 4y ago
  Nope! Both are fully native macOS apps, at least on the version of Monterey that I'm running. You can examine which frameworks a binary links by running `otool -l /System/Applications/Photos.app/Contents/MacOS/Photos`. Traditional macOS Cocoa apps will link AppKit, while Catalyst apps will link UIKit. For example, if you run that command with a Catalyst app (e.g., Messages or Maps), you'll see that those apps link against `/System/iOSSupport/System/Library/Frameworks/UIKit.framework/Versions/A/UIKit`, and AppKit is nowhere to be found.
  • astrange 4y ago
    Photos on the Mac actually uses their own private reimplementation of UIKit called UXKit from before Catalyst. (So does Twitter on the Mac, which was written by a developer on the original iPhone.)
    • jolux 4y ago
      The new Twitter app does use Catalyst though.
  • jolux 4y ago
    Interesting, I thought I had heard that App Store was Catalyst now for some reason.
    • favorited 4y ago
      It does kinda look like a Catalyst app, with its navigation stack, whitespace, etc.