Deployment Target for iOS app running on a Mac with Apple Silicon

Question

Created 2d

Replies 1

Boosts 0

Participants 2

Currently, I am working on an iOS app with a Deployment Target set to iOS 15.0, and macOS 12.0. The app is allowed to run on Macs with Apple Silicon.

A customer with a Mac running macOS Monterey (12) is complaining that in the TestFlight app, they cannot install the app since it shows "Requires OS Update", even though the deployment target is smaller than the installed version of macOS 12.

Are there any specifications available on which macOS version is required in order to use iOS apps on Silicon Macs?

Boost

Answer 1

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

1d

I’m assuming you’re talking about the iOS Apps on Mac feature here. If not, let me know because my answer very much depends on the premise.

Currently, I am working on an iOS app with a Deployment Target set to iOS 15.0, and macOS 12.0.

With iOS Apps on Mac there’s only a single binary, the iOS binary, and thus only the iOS deployment target build setting is relevant.

Given that, macOS has to infer the macOS deployment target from the binary’s iOS deployment target. Normally this is done in the obvious way, based on the year of the OS release. So iOS 18 implies macOS 15, iOS 17 implies macOS 14, and so on.

By that logic your app should run on macOS 12, because its deployment target is iOS 15 and that was released alongside macOS 12 back in 2021.

Given that, I’m not sure why this is failing. I don’t support you have a macOS 12 machine you can test this on yourself?

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

0