Finale Notation Products and macOS 10.15 Catalina

Apple has publicly released its latest operating system macOS 10.15 Catalina. In light of this, we want to provide more detailed information on how this affects Finale notation products and how we plan to address this. 

Finale 26.2 (released 11/19/19) is considered compatible with macOS 10.15 Catalina. This is a free maintenance update for users that own Finale v26. It is recommended that all users apply this update. The installer can be downloaded with the in-app updater under the Finale menu by selecting Check for Update...  or you can get the full installer from your My Software page by logging into your MakeMusic account.

Finale v25.5 is not compatible with macOS 10.15 Catalina, and we will not release any maintenance updates for this version. Finale v25.5 users still qualify for technical assistance from our Customer Support team on compatible operating systems — macOS 10.10 through 10.14 — but we cannot provide support for this version on Catalina or future Apple operating systems. Known issues with this version are listed below. 

Although the scope and severity of these issues will not prevent users from accomplishing most tasks within the program, we do not feel that it offers the best customer experience and consequently cannot consider the program compatible due to this. If you are in a position where macOS Catalina is your only option, and you are encountering issues not listed below, please use the Submit a Request option above to contact Customer Support to see if there are possible solutions for the situation you are experiencing. 

 Known issues affecting Finale v25.5 on macOS 10.15 Catalina: 

1. Restarting the computer may be necessary for Finale to recognize the ARIA Player plug-in after installation.
2. After updating to macOS Catalina, some Engraver fonts will be shown as “missing” or displayed incorrectly in certain text font selection menus and dialog windows.
3. EPS images do not export properly and are not visible within a document. This includes files exported as .eps and .ps (Compile PostScript Listing). This also affects version 26.2 and is currently under review for further development. 
4. When opening .mus documents (created in Finale 2012 or earlier), text created using MaestroTimes will not display correctly.
5. Coda and Dal Segno symbols are not visible in the Repeat Selection dialog window. 
6. The Simple Entry Caret does not display modifiers correctly.

All users of legacy software (versions 2014.5 and earlier) should be aware that we do not expect these products to work on macOS 10.15 Catalina due to Apple’s removal of 32-bit application support.