macOS Catalina – How System Preferences Are Categorized

catalinamacossystem-prefs

Starting with macOS 10.15 Catalina, the contents of System Preferences are divided into two categories. This is a change from 10.14 Mojave in which the panels are divided into four rows.

What is the logic that determines how the panels are divided up in Catalina? There is no name that appears for the category, so I'm not sure what is common between the various panels that make up a category group.

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Best Answer

According to /System/Applications/System Preferences.app/Contents/Resources/NSPrefPaneGroupsBanner.xml, there appear to be 3 primary categories now:

  • __banner - Apple ID and Family Sharing pref panes
  • personal - the set of pref panes from General to Security
  • hardware - the set of pref panes from Software Update to Startup Disk (or more, depending on your hardware)

Two further categories are listed in the file:

  • net - empty, unclear what pref panes would go here
  • addons - this category is historically used for user-added PrefPanes, and presumably remains so in Catalina
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