One of the most promising features of macOS Big Sur is running iPhone and iPad apps on M1 Mac. As expected, the experience of running iPhone apps on Mac was a mixed bag. Developers design the apps for smaller displays. However, Apple is taking the feature a step further with macOS Monterey. iPhone and iPad apps on the latest macOS will offer a better experience with full-screen mode and supports Apple Pay.

Apple has made multiple enhancements that help improve the iPhone app experience on macOS Monterey. In addition, it includes new practices and changes aimed at optimizing for M1 Macs. Interestingly, this also includes many new features in macOS Monterey. In other words, the new features will only work on M1 Mac and not on Intel models.

With macOS Monterey, we have made even more improvements. Apple Pay is now available for iPad and iPhone apps on M1 Macs using the same enhanced cross-platform API we introduced for Mac Catalyst applications in macOS Big Sur. This means you can now accept payments on every platform where Apple Pay is available, using a single implementation.

Previously, macOS Big Sur didn’t support full-screen mode for iPhone and iPad apps on M1 Mac. Most of the time, full-screen mode opened the apps with a window and not a full screen. Apple introduced few changes to improve the experience on macOS Big Sur 11.3, and now we finally get to see those changes on macOS Monterey. iPhone or iPad applications will support full-screen video playback. Other highlights include trackpad gestures, HDR support, Apple Pay and much more.

We’ve also made full-screen video with AVKit even better. AVPlayerView and AVPlayerViewController can now automatically take a video full screen using a separate window. This means that even apps whose window is otherwise restricted to the launch-time resolution and aspect ratio will make full use of the Mac display, as appropriate for the video content. And in case you need more control over the full screen experience, we’ve added new API to AVPlayerViewDelegate and AVPlayerViewControllerDelegate.

On top of that, AVFoundation supports HDR playback and streaming on Macs with M1. No Mac-specific adoption work is needed in your app. Finally, AVKit controls in iPad and iPhone apps now look the same as they do in other Mac apps. We even take full advantage of the Mac trackpad with support for new gestures.

Our Take

Apple has also announced that it will replace the Automator app on macOS with the Shortcuts app. Once this happens, apps that support Sirikit on iPhone and iPad will support it on macOS as well. Unfortunately, developers are still reluctant to work on M1 apps and are not opting in. We hope Apple offers an incentive for developers to port their apps to M1 Macs.