Register changes in Q Mac

as a new Quicken MAC user after using Quicken Windows for 10+ years, I find the differences in the behavior of the register very POOR. Create a blank line in the register is more USER FRIENDLY than having to take manual steps to add a new row and new transaction

Here's what I can share with you from my personal experience. I came from 20 years of using the old Quicken for Mac, which had a register very similar to Quicken Windows — including the ever-present blank line. When the modern Quicken Mac came out, I initially found it jarring to have to open a new transaction every time I wanted to enter something. But after using it for a little while, I found that pressing Command-N pretty quickly became second nature. And when I'm entering multiple transactions, using Command-N to save a transaction and open a new one is exactly the same, single keystroke as my old version where I pressed Enter to save the transaction and open a new blank one; I just had to let my brain adapt to pressing Command-N instead of Enter.

You're of course entitled to your own opinion; I'm just sharing my experience. I've been working with the current Quicken Mac for a decade now, and I don't give a thought to creating a new transaction because my brain and hands do it automatically. So I recommend just living with it for a while until it becomes second nature for you instead of something you think about after every transaction.

For what it's worth, the former Quicken Mac product manager did offer an explanation many years ago about why it doesn't create the blank line with the architecture of the current database ; I don't recall all the details, but he made it sound extremely unlikely to try to re-create the old behavior just because people switching to Quicken Mac were used to doing it a different way.

– – – – –

As for pending transactions, I this is a relatively recent (2024) feature added to Quicken Windows — which was released, then withdrawn due to problems, re-released, then pulled again, and re-released a third time. Pending transactions can be problematic because sometimes they post for different amounts (such as when the pending transaction at a restaurant is your initial bill, but the posted transaction includes the tip you wrote on the slip), and because sometimes they are authorizations which simply never post (like at some gas stations, car rentals, or hotel check-ins).

It hasn't yet appeared in Quicken Mac, and we don't know if it's in the developers' plans or not. It's certainly not a "major defect" in Quicken Mac, even though it might be a feature you'd like to see implemented. (I think one of the issues is that different financial institutions do things differently — some download pending transactions and some don't; some include pending transactions in their online balance and some don't — so Quicken has to work around the quirks for different ways banks do things so it can present things correctly to users.) If you'd like to add your vote to a recent thread requesting this functionality, you can do so here:

Finally - at least for now — Where is the VAULT for all secure connections

Quicken Mac doesn't have its own secure vault like Quicken Windows. Instead, it uses the Keychain built into macOS for secure storage of account credentials. You can search on here or just Google macOS Keychain to learn about this feature on a Mac.

For what it's worth, more and more financial institutions are switching to a newer connection protocol where Quicken doesn't store your login credentials at all; it sends you to the bank's website for your to login and then the bank returns to Quicken a secure token for authentication without use of your username or password. While this is where things are hearing, adoption of this new standard (referred to by various names like EWC+, FDX, and OAuth) isn't universal yet, so many smaller financial institutions still rely on Quicken sending your username and password to log in.