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Apple has gone to great lengths to make it easy for iOS developers to build apps for Mac, and some have. Here’s how to find what’s available in macOS Ventura.
It’s now literally a checkbox in Xcode for a developer to produce a macOS version of their iOS app, if they don’t mind the Mac app being garbage. To make one that works well on the Mac, looks great, and performs a useful function, that takes more work.
So far it seems like it’s not a job the developers have rushed to do. Anecdotally, it seems that iPadOS developers might be more on board as those may be closer to the Mac in appearance, but still, it wasn’t the gold rush.
This means that all Apple Silicon Mac owners have this ability to run iPhone and iPad apps on their Macs, but finding what works is tricky.
You will always have to make the decision as to what works well for you on a Mac. To find just which iOS and iPadOS apps will physically run on macOS Ventura, there are two things you can do.
How to check Apple’s list of which iPadOS apps run on macOS Ventura
- Open the Mac App Store
- Click on Discover
- Scroll down to iPhone and iPad apps for Mac with Apple Silicon
- Click on See all To the right
This section in the Mac App Store is not a hardwired button, it’s a promotional listing. So Apple could take it away, or Apple could rebrand it, at any time.
Apple has curated a selection of iOS apps for Mac. It’s not a flood.
If it’s there when you check, what will you get when you click See all it’s a surprisingly small list of apps. At the time of writing, it features around 40 titles, which include some notable ones like LumaFusion and Flighty.
How to look for a new iPad app that will run on an Apple Silicon Mac
- Open the Mac App Store
- Click in the search box on the top left
- Enter a search term or app name and press Enter
- In the list of displayed apps, click Apps for iPhones and iPads on the top
Apple is quietly improving it more and more. For example, it took an absurd 15 steps to find an iOS app and then run it on your Mac.
In the Mac App Store, search for a title or topic, then click the iPhone and iPad apps section
So Apple made this search in the Mac App Store work, but only for the iOS and iPadOS apps you’ve already purchased.
Now you can search anything anytime and find it. Or at least, nothing from Apple or the Mac App Store stands in your way.
Instead, now it’s only if the developers have decided to allow their iOS apps to run on the Mac. When they have, and when you’ve found them, you can just click To install or Get and download them to your Mac as if they were Mac apps.