Citrix Workspace App 2109 Technology Preview for macOS

What's new in 2109

• Citrix Workspace app for Mac on macOS Monterey Beta

Citrix Workspace app 2109 for Mac has been tested on macOS Monterey Beta 6. Please use this setup in a test environment and provide your feedback. 

CAUTION:

Do not use Citrix Workspace app for Mac on macOS Monterey Beta versions in production environments.

• Email-based auto-discovery of store.

With this release, you can simply provide your email address in Citrix Workspace app for Mac to automatically discover the store associated with the email address. If there are multiple stores associated with a domain, then by default the first store returned by the Global App Configuration Service is added as the store of choice for logging in and accessing a store. Users can always switch to another store if necessary.

• Citrix Workspace browser

The Citrix Workspace browser is a native browser running on the client machine which enables users to open web or SaaS applications from within the Citrix Workspace app in a secure manner.

With a continued focus on enriching the user-experience, the new Workspace browser brings you an enhanced and a more native browser-like experience, complete with the following features:

• VPN-less access to internal web pages
• Microphone and webcam support
• Tabbed browsing experience
• Multi-window views
• Editable omnibox
• Bookmarks
• Shortcuts on the new tab page
• Customizable settings
• Analytics

Admins can enable Secure Workspace Access (SWA) or App protection policies including anti key-logging, anti-screen capture, download, printing, clipboard restrictions, and watermarking functionalities in varying combinations on a per-URL basis.

• EPA enhancement

Starting with this release, Citrix Workspace app supports End Point Analysis (EPA) as a pre-authentication scan, before you log in to your workspace. Advanced Endpoint Analysis (EPA) scans the device for endpoint security requirements configured on the Citrix Gateway. When the scan completes successfully, the Citrix Workspace app login window appears.

NOTE: This feature works only if you have configured nFactor authentication in your environment.

For more information on the EPA scan, see Advanced Endpoint Analysis scans.

• Adaptive audio

With Adaptive audio, you don’t need to configure the audio quality policies on the VDA. Adaptive audio optimizes settings for your environment and replaces obsolete audio compression formats to provide an excellent user experience. For more information, see Adaptive Audio ( https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/multimedia/audio.html.) Citrix recommends delivering audio using User Datagram Protocol (UDP) rather than TCP.

• Support for H.264 Advanced Video Coding (MPEG-4 AVC)
  

This release includes support for H.264 video encoding, which reduces the load on CPU usage and improves your video conferencing experience. The multimedia engine of Citrix HDX optimized Microsoft Teams now uses Apple's Video Toolbox framework for encoding and decoding. This framework compresses and decompresses video faster and in real time. Also, the offloading of encoding and decoding to the GPU is optimized. Hardware accelerated video decoding and encoding is enabled by default if a device supports it. This enhancement reduces the load on the CPU during multimedia usage.

Note: If Service continuity is enabled, and you upgrade to version 2109, the connection lease files are refreshed. All the existing leases are deleted and new leases are fetched as part of functionality enhancements.

Fixed issues in 2109

After you sign in to the Workspace app for Mac, you are prompted for authentication after a few hours. [RFMAC-10032]

Known issues in 2109

• When you add a store in the Workspace app, change the authentication domain in the server console, leave the app idle for a few minutes, and then open any app or desktop session, the workspace app may crash. [RFMAC-10133]
• When you open an app from the store and try to open another instance of the same app in the session, Citrix Workspace app for Mac becomes unresponsive. Also, when an app is already running, you are unable to open another app. [RFMAC-10138]

Please provide your feedback about this Early Access release.

To install and test an Early Access release:

1.    Uninstall the existing version of Citrix Workspace app for Mac.

2.   Install the Early Access release build. 

You will receive a notification when a new RTW version is available. However, if you do not have Auto update enabled, install the latest version of Citrix Workspace app for Mac from the downloads page or select Check for updates on the Workspace icon on your Mac.