OK, I feel cloudy asking this, but, my iPhone is backed up and such to my MacStudioProUltra, not my MacbookAir. So on my Macbook Air, the App Store ACCOUNTS shows apps for MacOS and iOS. Since I don’t use the MacbookAir as connected to my iPhone, but I do want to update apps for macOS, do I ONLY select Mac Apps to update. Seems a dumb question to me, but iPhone & iPad Apps have a lot of updates.
Thank you and excuse my possibly not seeing the obvious. Patrick
Well, yes, the short answer is to just select “Mac Apps.”
Executables that will run on both macOS and iOS will show up there (but not in “iPhone & iPad Apps,” when viewed from macOS, oddly enough).
1 Like
OK. Going to belabor an issues. Please forgive me.
So, throughout recent time, I’ve updated iOS apps on my MacbookAir15 M2 not realizing I should have just stuck with MacOS app updates.
So:
Settings > General > System Report > Software > Applications
If I sort by “KIND” I see many iOS apps.
Is it prudent to remove those since this is a macOS unit to save space and reduce chances of iOS apps interfering w macOS apps???
Thank you
Patrick
Only iOS apps that can actually run on a Mac with Apple silicon (M1+) can be installed on macOS. These are listed in the App Store as “Designed for iPhone” (or iPad). It’s up to the developer to indicate what the target platform is, which usually indicates the platform on which the app runs best.
Installing these apps on your Mac should not interfere with anything. They will take up a bit of space, and there is certainly no harm in removing them if you want to reclaim that. I have selectively installed a few such apps on my Mac, because having a physical keyboard or a bigger screen is sometimes an advantage for particular apps.
The interesting thing I found when looking at the System Report you mentioned is that there are some apps listed as kind = iOS that seem to me to be a better fit for the Mac (e.g., Libre Office and VLC). So before you remove something, just be sure it really is a duplicate of an app on your phone, and not something creatively identified by the developer with iOS as its target platform.
3 Likes