ProTools 2020.3 + Catalina 10.15.4 + UA Apollo issues
 

Hi,

I just wanted to document my recent experience with updating ProTools and my Mac OS to Catalina somewhere if it can help prevent someone else from having a wild headache.

FYI I'm fully aware that ProTools 2020.3 is officially unsupported on 10.15.4, but I haven't seen my issue detailed anywhere else.

I have a MacBook Pro, 15" 2018, six-core i7 and tried to update my computer to Catalina 10.15.4 from Mojave 10.14.6. After experiencing problems after updating I tried a system wide wipe and clean install of Catalina and arrived at the same problem.

Once I updated when I connected to any UA interface on hand (Apollo 8, Twin etc) via Thunderbolt (via TB2 - TB3 dongle) the playback engine in ProTools would no longer detail any other available device - no external headphones, macbook pro speakers, etc" - literally only ProTools aggregate was available to choose from. Fascinatingly with the UA interface(s) disconnected it would provide headphones, macbook pro speakers etc as available options as normally expected.

The interfaces were accessible and working fine with both system audio as well as in Logic and Ableton, so there seems to be an issue with ProTools and the most recent version of Catalina. My colleague has a previous generation laptop (the non-USB C iteration) and seems to have his UA and ProTools working fine.

I had difficulty trying to source 10.15.3, which is supported as Apple make it very very very very difficult to acquire earlier versions of their OS (I was deep in forums trying to find rollback solutions etc to kind of no avail in a secure way) so I'm now back and have installed a fresh version of Mojave and things are going fine now.

I did temporarily have my UA routed through ProTools aggregate to at least get it working in ProTools, but that was a fairly inelegant solution and one I'd prefer not to use professionally.

Pretty disappointed and frustrated, but whatever. Hope this post helps someone and ProTools sorts it out with Catalina, very hesitant to ever try update again...

Re: ProTools 2020.3 + Catalina 10.15.4 + UA Apollo issues
 

Bad news as I'm just about to attempt this today, but with 10.15.3. I found updates here. It used to be the conventional wisdom to use the Combo Update, not sure if that still holds. Good luck! I'll be installing on a new drive and not losing my old system, but I'll check back and let you know how it goes.