Should I install the new macOS/iOS beta?

Are your apps compatible with the latest macOS or iOS betas?

Maybe! We’re always testing our apps on upcoming macOS and iOS/iPadOS releases to ensure they work well before the new OS is released to the general public. You can certainly try running Panic apps on a beta OS yourself, but you will likely run into OS-wide performance problems, crashing, and other instability in many apps, ours included. We cannot provide support for any issues you may encounter while using our apps on prerelease operating systems.

Developer previews are exactly that— a preview. They’re unstable, likely to change, and will introduce new bugs as time goes on. Even seemingly minor beta updates can sometimes introduce breaking changes or new bugs. These betas are meant for testing purposes only, not as a daily driver.

But I Want the New Shiny!

We’re excited about all the new stuff, too! We’re working very hard to integrate all the great new features and under-the-hood improvements that Apple is rolling out. It’s hard to wait!

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with installing and using these betas to test your own apps. We do the same thing at Panic. It’s always a good practice to install these developer betas on a non-mission critical device, or in the case of macOS, on a separate partition or in a virtual machine. We absolutely do not recommend running a macOS developer preview as your primary operating system.

Betas are Unstable.

It’s important to remember that beta software is – by definition – unstable.

A beta OS has not been fully tested, and developers like us have no guarantee that everything in the OS will work as our apps expect. More importantly, we have no assurance that these new things are done changing.

During the beta, Apple may fix one thing but break something else, often causing issues outside of our control. We may go out of our way to fix an issue only to see our work was for nothing when the next beta is released.

As such, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for app developers like Panic to immediately jump in and update their apps for a new OS when the OS isn’t going to be publicly released for several months and is likely to break and change along the way. We also use many developer tools that may not yet be compatible with new OSes, which makes development more difficult early in the beta period.

This is the nature of software development, and we’re used to it. But your data is important, and you need to get work done.

So instead of using untested, broken software that may waste your time and erase your data, we recommend sticking to official, stable releases.

What about public betas?

It’s the same story. Public betas will still be very much unstable and not meant to be used as your primary operating system.

Can I submit bug reports anyway?

Absolutely! We may not have a fix or a way around any potential bugs related to prerelease operating systems at the time you give us the feedback, but we welcome it.

Thanks for understanding!