PSA: Don’t Be Surprised if Some Apps Have Issues With macOS Catalina, Like Hazel

macOS Catalina logo

macOS Catalina dropped yesterday and some apps might not work with it. Catalina completely drops support for 32-bit apps, but some 64-bit apps are also running into trouble, like Hazel.

Hazel for Mac

As an example, the developers behind the Hazel app recently sent an email to their users, warning them about macOS Catalina:

Apple has just launched macOS Catalina. Unfortunately, it contains numerous bugs, unannounced changes and other issues which affect Hazel. If Hazel is important to your workflow, I strongly recommend against upgrading to Catalina at this time.

I am currently working on a version which works around many of these issues but it has proven difficult as many of the issues are in Apple’s control and they have shown little to no movement in terms of fixing them. If you are interested in trying the latest Hazel beta release, you can find details in the forums here (you will need to sign up for a forum account if you don’t have one already). I will also send out an announcement when Hazel is usable with Catalina.

I know that this may cause problems for many of you; please accept my apologies. If you need to contact me, you can always reach me at [email protected]. I am here to help address any specific issues you may be running into.

Other developers are probably experiencing issues with their apps, too. It’s possible that macOS Catalina has unresolved issues that Apple isn’t talking about. Twitter hasn’t released its Catalyst app yet, and Netflix has no plans to release one at all.

Further Reading:

[Jamf Has Day-Zero Support macOS Catalina]

[Create a macOS Catalina Bootable Drive for Installation]

2 thoughts on “PSA: Don’t Be Surprised if Some Apps Have Issues With macOS Catalina, Like Hazel

  • Hell, I can’t even get the Catalina Mac App Store to show ANY of my previous purchases. It’s as if I’ve never bought anything and have to buy everything again! WTF?! That’s not happening. Between that and some no-longer supported 32-bit apps I still use, guess I will be staying on Mojave quite a while longer. This is a buggy release. Downsides outweigh benefits like never before. Oh right, I forgot about iOS 13.

  • It is even worse. Much worse. Applications like DiskWarrior, TechTool Pro and Drive Genius cannot be released to rebuild directory of APFS disks (compulsory for booting disks since macOS 10.13 High Sierra, which was released by September 2017), because Apple has not yet released documentation about how to write to such disks more than two years latter:

    DiskWarrior 5.2 & Apple File System (APFS)
    What’s in the works
    The next major release of DiskWarrior will include the ability to rebuild APFS disks. Apple has recently released the “Read” portion of the APFS format documentation. Our developers are now waiting for the “Write” portion of documentation to update DiskWarrior to be able to safely rebuild Apple File System (APFS) disks.
    https://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior5apfs

    Please, send feedback to Apple about it:
    https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

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