MacOS Catalina to be Released in October

For those who have been wondering when macOS Catalina will be coming out, Apple has announced that MacOS Catalina will be released in October.

While there is not yet a precise date known for release, October is a bit more specific than the general ‘fall’ release timeline for the MacOS Catalina release date that was offered earlier in the year.

MacOS Catalina is the next major operating system update for Macs, and it offers a variety of new features, including Sidecar which offers the ability to use an iPad as an external display for Mac, refinements to built-in apps like Photos and Reminders, new security protections at the OS level, the dissolution of iTunes into three separate apps for Music, Podcasts, and TV, and more.

The Sidecar feature of MacOS Catalina will require an iPad running iPadOS 13 or later as well.

MacOS Catalina 10.15 will be a free download, and run on basically any Mac released from mid-2012 or later. You can view a list of MacOS Catalina Macs here if interested in specifics.

For adventurous and advanced Mac users who don’t want to wait until the final version, installing MacOS Catalina public beta right now remains an option. Keep in mind that beta system software is buggier and less stable than final builds, and is therefore only recommended for advanced users to do so.

There are some rumors that MacOS Catalina will be released in October perhaps along with the release of some updated Mac hardware, but as always it’s best to be skeptical of rumors as nobody outside of Apple has any idea of when certain hardware or software will be released.

Separately for other Apple system software under active development, iOS 13 will debut on September 19, iPadOS 13 will be released on September 30, and watchOS 6 will launch on September 19 as well.