MAD Designer for macOS (Native AppKit)

MAD Designer for macOS (Native AppKit)

Standalone native macOS desktop application (MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET = 12.0, Apple Silicon arm64) built over the twelve multiplatform MAD frameworks and ten universal static C libraries (Compressor).

Install via Homebrew

brew install --cask mthomason/tap/mad-designer

Direct Downloads

• MAD-Designer-macOS.dmg — macOS Disk Image with MAD Designer.app and /Applications shortcut
• MAD-Designer-macOS.zip — Zipped MAD Designer.app bundle

macOS Gatekeeper Note: Because this open-source build is ad-hoc signed rather than notarized with a paid Apple Developer ID, macOS Gatekeeper may block first launch when downloaded from a browser. After dragging MAD Designer.app to /Applications, clear the quarantine attribute once in Terminal:

xattr -cr "/Applications/MAD Designer.app"

(Installing via brew install --cask mthomason/tap/mad-designer clears this automatically.)

Highlights

• Native NSDocument Architecture: Open and save .mad files directly from Finder or the standard macOS Open Panel (with an integrated New Document button), with automatic legacy Core Data .mad migration (MADStoreConverter) and full NSUndoManager (Cmd+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z) support.
• Database Connection & Schema Import Assistant: Connect to SQLite, MySQL / MariaDB, Microsoft SQL Server, or PostgreSQL, verify connectivity, store credentials in the macOS Keychain (MADKeyChain), and import database schemas into a new .mad document.
• MAD Query Workspace (Cmd+1): Interactive visual relationship canvas with draggable table cards, Bezier join connectors and join-type inspector popovers, WHERE filter and GROUP BY editors, and a full-width SQL Query editor (MADSQLParser + MADSQLQueryCompiler).
• MAD Designer Workspace (Cmd+2): Resizable 3-pane split view with an interactive Page & Section Minimap, Report Bands outline, searchable Query Fields drag source, zoomable/ruled design canvas with cross-section drag-and-drop and smart alignment guides, and a dual-card Page & Element Inspector.
• MAD Viewer Workspace (Cmd+3): Live data refresh (Cmd+R), instant Page Size re-pagination (US Letter, Legal, Tabloid, A3, A4, A5, B4, B5), framed PDFView preview, native NSPrintOperation printing (Cmd+P), and export (Cmd+E) to PDF, HTML, HTML Flow, CSV, JSON, JSON Full Report, and Plain Text.

See docs/macos.md for full documentation.