macOS Big Sur takes the most advanced operating system in the world to a whole new level of power and beauty, making your apps look better than ever on an all-new interface. New widget features and the new widget gallery help you deliver more value to your users. Adding intelligence to your apps with machine learning is even simpler and more extensive with new tools, models, training capabilities, and APIs. You can create more powerful Mac versions of your iPad apps with Mac Catalyst. And you can now easily bring your extensions to Safari — and to the App Store.
All-new Interface
macOS Big Sur brings a new design that’s been finely tuned for the powerful features that make a Mac a Mac. Core features, such as the menu bar and Dock, take advantage of the large Mac display, with translucent backings and spacious pull-down menus. The new Control Center, designed just for Mac, provides quick access to controls while keeping the menu bar clutter-free. Notification Center puts recent notifications and powerful new widgets together in a single view for at-a-glance information as you work. And a streamlined new design for apps features full-height sidebars and integrated toolbar buttons.
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Widgets
Easily build widgets using the WidgetKit framework and the new widget API for SwiftUI. Widgets now come in multiple sizes, and users can visit the new widget gallery to search, preview sizes, and add them to Notification Center to access important details at a glance.
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- For others, there's SheepShaver, a PowerPC emulator capable of running Mac OS 9.0.4 down to Mac OS 7.5.2 and there's Basilisk II, a 68k emulator, capable of running Mac OS (8.1 to 7.0). For everything older than System 7, you will need a Mac Plus emulator like Mini vMac NEW!
Safari Extensions
With support for the popular WebExtension API, it’s even easier to bring powerful extensions to Safari. Xcode 12 even includes a porting tool to streamline the process.
The new Extensions category on the Mac App Store showcases Safari extensions, with editorial spotlights and top charts to help users discover and download great extensions from the developer community.
Machine Learning
With macOS Big Sur, creating apps that leverage the power of machine learning is even easier and more extensive with additional tools in Core ML for model deployment, new models and training capabilities in Create ML, more APIs for vision and natural language, and improved resources for training on Mac and converting models to Core ML format.
Mac Catalyst
Create even more powerful Mac versions of your iPad apps. Apps built with Mac Catalyst now take on the new look of macOS Big Sur and help you better define the look and behavior of your apps. You can choose to turn off automatic scaling of iPad controls and layout, allowing you to precisely place every pixel on the screen. Provide full control of your app using just the keyboard, take advantage of the updated Photos picker, access more iOS frameworks, and more.
User privacy on the App Store.
Later this year, the Mac App Store will help users understand apps’ privacy practices. You’ll need to enter your privacy practice details into App Store Connect for display on your product page.
Universal App Quick Start Program
Get your apps ready for Apple Silicon Macs. Create next-generation Universal apps that take full advantage of the capabilities the new architecture has to offer. Get all the tools, resources, support, and even access to prototype hardware you’ll need. You can also watch a collection of videos from WWDC20 to help you get started.
Development Software For Mac
Tools and resources
Use Xcode 12 beta and these resources to build apps for macOS Big Sur.
With an all-new design that looks great on macOS Big Sur, Xcode 12 has customizable font sizes for the navigator, streamlined code completion, and new document tabs. Xcode 12 builds Universal apps by default to support Mac with Apple Silicon, often without changing a single line of code.
Designed for macOS Big Sur.
Xcode 12 looks great on macOS Big Sur, with a navigator sidebar that goes to the top of the window and clear new toolbar buttons. The navigator defaults to a larger font that’s easier to read, while giving you multiple size choices. New document tabs make it easy to create a working set of files within your workspace.
Document tabs.
The new tab model lets you open a new tab with a double-click, or track the selected file as you click around the navigator. You can re-arrange the document tabs to create a working set of files for your current task, and configure how content is shown within each tab. The navigator tracks the open files within your tabs using strong selection.
Navigator font sizes.
The navigator now tracks the system setting for “Sidebar icon size” used in Finder and Mail. You can also choose a unique font size just for Xcode within Preferences, including the traditional dense information presentation, and up to large fonts and icon targets.
Code completion streamlined.
A new completion UI presents only the information you need, taking up less screen space as you type. And completions are presented much faster, so you can keep coding at maximum speed.
Redesigned organizer.
An all-new design groups all critical information about each of your apps together in one place. Choose any app from any of your teams, then quickly navigate to inspect crash logs, energy reports, and performance metrics, such as battery consumption and launch time of your apps when used by customers.
SwiftUI
SwiftUI offers new features, improved performance, and the power to do even more, all while maintaining a stable API that makes it easy to bring your existing SwiftUI code forward into Xcode 12. A brand new life cycle management API for apps built with SwiftUI lets you write your entire app in SwiftUI and share even more code across all Apple platforms. And a new widget platform built on SwiftUI lets you build widgets that work great on iPad, iPhone, and Mac. Your SwiftUI views can now be shared with other developers, and appear as first-class controls in the Xcode library. And your existing SwiftUI code continues to work, while providing faster performance, better diagnostics, and access to new controls.
Universal app ready.
Xcode 12 is built as a Universal app that runs 100% natively on Intel-based CPUs and Apple Silicon for great performance and a snappy interface.* It also includes a unified macOS SDK that includes all the frameworks, compilers, debuggers, and other tools you need to build apps that run natively on Apple Silicon and the Intel x86_64 CPU.
Updated automatically
When you open your project in Xcode 12, your app is automatically updated to produce release builds and archives as Universal apps. When you build your app, Xcode produces one binary “slice” for Apple Silicon and one for the Intel x86_64 CPU, then wraps them together as a single app bundle to share or submit to the Mac App Store. You can test this at any time by selecting “Any Mac” as the target in the toolbar.
Test multiple architectures.
On the new Mac with Apple Silicon, you can run and debug apps running on either the native architecture or on Intel virtualization by selecting “My Mac (Rosetta)” in the toolbar.
Multiplatform template
Developing Software For Mac Computers
New multiplatform app templates set up new projects to easily share code among iOS, iPadOS, and macOS using SwiftUI and the new lifecycle APIs. The project structure encourages sharing code across all platforms, while creating special custom experiences for each platform where it makes sense for your app.
Developing Software For Mac Os
Improved auto-indentation
Swift code is auto-formatted as you type to make common Swift code patterns look much better, including special support for the “guard” command.
StoreKit testing
Software Developer For Machines
New tools in Xcode let you create StoreKit files that describe the various subscription and in-app purchase products your app can offer, and create test scenarios to make sure everything works great for your customers — all locally testable on your Mac.
Developing Software For Mac Software
Get started.
Best Mac Software
Download Xcode 12 and use these resources to build apps for all Apple platforms.