Apple Seeds Fifth Beta of macOS Catalina to Developers

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of macOS 10.15 Catalina for testing purposes, a little over two weeks after seeding the fourth macOS Catalina beta and more than a month after the new Mac operating system update was first unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

The new macOS Catalina beta can be downloaded using the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences. As with all new betas, macOS Catalina should not be installed on a primary machine because it is early release software and has bugs.

test macOS 10
macOS Catalina eliminates the iTunes app, splitting it into Music, Podcasts, and TV apps. The Apple Music and Apple Podcasts apps are available now, while the Apple TV app is coming later this year.

The three new apps offer similar functionality to iTunes, but are split up by feature. iOS device management is still available on the Mac, but it's now done through the Finder rather than iTunes.

With a new Sidecar feature, you can turn your iPad into a second display for your Mac with just the click of a button. The Apple Pencil works with ‌Sidecar‌, so you can turn your ‌iPad‌ into a drawing tablet in apps like Photoshop and Illustrator.

Your Apple Watch can be used to approve security prompts for passwords and other info in macOS Catalina, and Macs with a T2 chip now support Activation Lock, making them more secure. There's a new Find My that brings the ‌Find My‌ Mac app to the Mac for the first time and even lets you track your devices when they're offline, or, in the case of notebooks, closed.

Screen Time is available on the Mac as well as iOS devices, and Project Catalyst, a new Apple initiative, will let developers easily port their ‌iPad‌ apps over to the Mac to increase the number of Mac apps available.

There's a new Photos interface that surfaces your best photos organized by day, month, or year, there's a new start page in Safari, Mail has new tools for muting email threads and blocking senders, and the Reminders app has been overhauled. 32-bit apps no longer work in macOS Catalina, which is something to be aware of before installing the beta.

For more details on macOS Catalina, make sure to check out our macOS Catalina roundup.

Related Forum: macOS Catalina

Popular Stories

Generic iOS 19 Feature Mock Light

iOS 19 Leak Reveals All-New Design

Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app. Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
2024 App Store Awards

Apple Explains Why It Removed TikTok From the App Store in the U.S.

Sunday January 19, 2025 6:58 am PST by
Apple on late Saturday removed TikTok from the App Store in the U.S., and it has now explained why it was required to take this action. Last year, the U.S. passed a law that required Chinese company ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok due to potential national security risks, or else the platform would be banned. That law went into effect today, and companies like Apple and Google...
iPhone 17 Air Size Feature

'iPhone 17 Air' With Rear Camera Bar Allegedly Shown in Leaked Photo

Tuesday January 21, 2025 12:46 pm PST by
A leaker known as "Majin Bu" today shared an alleged image of a component for the rumored, ultra-thin "iPhone 17 Air" model. The blurry, pixelated image shows a pair of rear iPhone shells with a pill-shaped, raised camera bar along the top. On the left side of the bar, there is a circular cutout that appears to be for a single rear camera. On the right side of the bar, there appears to be an ...
iPhone SE Dynamic Island Majin Bu

iPhone SE 4 Leak Shows Dynamic Island, Casts Doubt on Rumored 'iPhone 16E' Name

Monday January 20, 2025 9:01 am PST by
A new iPhone SE is widely rumored to launch this year, and the device has potentially been confirmed today by known leaker Evan Blass. In a private social media post, Blass shared an image of what appears to be source code mentioning an iPhone SE (4th Gen), which casts doubt on the alternative "iPhone 16E" name rumored for the device. However, the name in the source code could be a...
airtag 4 pack blue

AirTag 2 Launching This Year With These 3 New Features

Sunday January 19, 2025 8:11 am PST by
After a four-year wait, a new AirTag is finally expected to launch in 2025. Below, we recap rumored upgrades for the accessory. A few months ago, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple was aiming to release the AirTag 2 around the middle of 2025. While he did not offer a more specific timeframe, that means the AirTag 2 could be announced by the end of June. The original AirTag was announced...
iOS 19 Roundup Feature

iOS 19 Rumored to Be Compatible With These iPhones

Saturday January 18, 2025 10:28 am PST by
iOS 19 will not drop support for any iPhone models, according to French website iPhoneSoft.fr. The report cited a source who said iOS 19 will be compatible with any iPhone that can run iOS 18, which would mean the following models: iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Plus iPhone 16 Pro iPhone 16 Pro Max iPhone 15 iPhone 15 Plus iPhone 15 Pro iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 14 iPhon...
apple power beats pro 2

Powerbeats Pro 2 Coming Soon: Apple to Announce Them 'Imminently'

Sunday January 19, 2025 8:25 am PST by
In September, Apple said that it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and it appears the wireless earbuds are coming very soon. Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the Powerbeats Pro 2 in regulatory databases last month, Gurman said Apple is...
ipad pro 2024

New iPad Pro Reportedly Launching This Year

Tuesday January 21, 2025 6:40 am PST by
Apple plans to release at least one new iPad Pro model this year, according to a supplier-focused report today from Korean website The Elec. It is likely that the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models would be updated simultaneously. After receiving an OLED display last year, the report said the iPad Pro will receive only "minor" changes this year. Overall, the next iPad Pro is expected to...
Generic iOS 18

Everything New in iOS 18.3 Beta 3

Thursday January 16, 2025 12:39 pm PST by
Apple provided the third beta of iOS 18.3 to developers today, and while the betas have so far been light on new features, the third beta makes some major changes to Notification Summaries and also tweaks a few other features. Notification Summary Changes Apple made multiple changes to Notification Summaries in response to complaints about inaccurate summaries of news headlines. For...

Top Rated Comments

DrJohnnyN Avatar
72 months ago
Great salad dressing.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Aeternum Avatar
72 months ago
In the 10 year’s or so that I’ve been testing betas, Catalina’s are the worst.

With this latest Beta, the installation got stuck with the Apple logo and the progress bar around 2/3 of the way. It’s been like that for 4 hours.

After forcefully powering off the Mac and powering on again I was prompted with the log in screen with Mojave’s background. Typed in the password, press entered... the progress bar took like 10 min to reach the end and now stuck there for the last 30 or so minutes.

I won’t be updating any other machines from Beta 4, that one gave me a lot of problems but Beta 5 isn’t even loading up.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tethead Avatar
72 months ago
You waited 2 days? That's ridiculous.

If your install is stuck after 1hr RESTART THE COMPUTER. If you're afraid to restart its because you haven't done a proper backup or have no computer skills. Some people shouldn't be installing beta software.
first of all, chill, or quit smoking crack. you'll live longer.

second of all, I restarted a few times after it was taking more than an hour - reset PRAM, reset SMC, booted into recovery and verified HD, tried recovery install (failed), so went back to it. you can check my post history if you still think i'm a moron who just sat for 40 hours staring at a screen.

anyway, the moral of the story is that NOTHING seems to alleviate this. i sent a ton of logs thru Feedback but haven't heard anything about it, and it's clearly not fixed, so not sure what else to do at this point but wait.
[doublepost=1564677629][/doublepost]
Just one of his posts


Seems like he's a long time Mac user, he knows his stuff.
Again, you're throwing insults at someone without knowledge of how much he (Or she) knows.
thank you.

now get off my damn lawn.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tethead Avatar
72 months ago
I'm hopeful the extra days before releasing this means they will have fixed the extremely long update times some of us had on b4. As mine took around 40 hours last time (!!), I will hold off until some of you who had issues last time around verify that it's all fine now.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
justperry Avatar
72 months ago
You waited 2 days? That's ridiculous.

If your install is stuck after 1hr RESTART THE COMPUTER. If you're afraid to restart its because you haven't done a proper backup or have no computer skills. Some people shouldn't be installing beta software.
Restarting got him back into the installer, a loop.
You make a lot of assumptions, you don't know his skills, throwing insults on top of it.

Maybe you should do research before you write such a post, like looking at his posts history.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
retrospek Avatar
72 months ago
Just hope Music now works - as all I had previously was 'Loading Music Library' all the time.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)