macOS Sequoia (also known as macOS 15) is inching closer, and it's packing a few nifty features. From iPhone Mirroring, to a new Passwords app, there's a little something for just about everyone.

One of the major features that we've been waiting for for years is an updated suite of Window Management tools. Traditionally the domain of Windows (it's in the name, after all), Mac users have needed to use third-party apps like Magnet or Moom to be able to snap windows side by side or in a variety of configurations, but macOS Sequoia will finally bake it into the OS.

It's remarkably easy to use, but there are also a variety of additional features you may not have spotted if you're running the beta.

Here's how to get the most out of window snapping in macOS Sequoia.

How to use Window Tiling in macOS Sequoia

If you've used any Windows machine in the last decade and a half, you'll likely know what to expect from window snapping - and it works similarly on macOS Sequoia.

Click to drag a window, and move it around, and by holding it for a second or two along the side of your screen you'll have the option to snap it to that side.

It's a little finicky in the current beta, but it'll likely get better with time. Other apps can't get smaller than a certain size, though, so your mileage may vary.

You can hold your cursor over the green "traffic light" button on your app window, hold the click, and select a preset area there, too. Options include half-screen options, full-screen, and tiling with a couple of apps together.

The full-screen options allow for multiple apps to run on each side of the display, entirely borderless, too.

Additional window management options

If you head into the System Settings app on your Mac, and then Desktop & Dock, there are a few options inside the menu.

You can toggle "Tile by dragging windows to screen edges" on and off, as well as "Hold Option key while dragging windows to tile". The latter makes it easier to allocate space on your display, but Tiled windows will have small borders between them.

You can turn that off by toggling off "Tiled windows have margins". Try experimenting with the settings to find what works best for you.

What about third-party apps?

If you're already comfortable using an app like Magnet, you don't have to give it up just yet.

Third-party window tiling apps will still be able to be used with macOS Sequoia - but it's good to know Apple finally has an option, too.

Personally, I'll stick with Magnet. It's not that I don't like Apple's built-in option in macOS Sequoia, but it has a whole host of keyboard shortcuts that make it much easier to shift my active apps around.

The latest version of Safari Technology Preview is here for anyone who wants to mess around with some of its latest experimental features.

Today, Apple released Safari Technology Preview 200. The latest version doesn't include any major features that end-users will notice but does include a number of notable updates for the underlying technology that powers the browser.

The latest version of Safari Technology Preview is an experimental version of Safari for users running a Mac that currently has macOS Sonoma or the upcoming macOS Sequoia — which is giving a huge upgrade to Safari — installed. The preview allows developers and the generally curious to test out the latest and greatest features of Apple's browser and provide feedback to the company before the public version goes live for everyone else.

What's new with Safari Technology Preview 200?

Apple has laid out in the release notes of Safari Technology Preview 200 that it has released a number of updates:

• CSS
  • Fixed: Optimized Masonry Grids for items with a span of 1. (280919@main) (131407028)
• JavaScript
  • Implemented Uint8Array.prototype.toHex in SIMD. (280719@main) (131249821)
  • Fixed class field initializers to disallow yield and await expressions. (280837@main) (119044881)
  • Fixed DestructuringAssignmentTarget to be evaluated prior to calling [[Get]] or a stepping iterator. (281013@main) (121960976)
  • Fixed throwing an exception for negative exponent in BigInt in the JIT compiler. (280841@main) (131051084)
  • Fixed RegExp range quantifier to allow 2^53 - 1. (280953@main) (131710011)
• Rendering
  • Fixed garbled bold text caused by glyph lookup using the wrong font’s glyph IDs when multiple installed fonts have the same name. (281022@main) (129891005) (FB13909556)
  • Fixed scrolling of content overflowing a flex item in an end-aligned flex container. (279992@main) (131201271)
• Web Extensions
  • Fixed Service Workers not appearing in the Develop menu or remote Web Inspector menu. (280912@main) (130712941)

If you want, you can download Safari Technology Preview and test it out for yourself. You can check out the release notes of Safari Technology Preview 200 on the Apple Developer website. It's currently unclear when the features in Safari Technology Preview 200 will make it to the general public.

If you want to try it on the latest software, you can try out macOS Sequoia as a developer or public user as well through Apple's beta programs.

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Earlier this year I wrote about “click to reveal desktop” and called it the “most annoying change in Mac update history.” Seven months later, macOS Sonoma’s divisive feature has won me around and I think everyone should learn how to master it.

macOS Sonoma, the latest operating system for all the best Macs allows you to quickly disperse all of your open applications to the side of the screen, letting you access your desktop easily.

At launch, many couldn’t quite understand why all of their applications would randomly disappear only to return with a click sparking confusion and annoyance at the feature that’s meant to make window management on Mac that little bit easier.

Here’s how to quickly access your desktop from anywhere and master macOS Sonoma.

Window ninja

If you’ve got multiple windows open across different applications simply click any area of your screen where your wallpaper is visible. Just like magic all your windows will move off to the corners showing your full uninterrupted desktop.

If you’re aware of the feature's existence then you can use it to your advantage, clicking on your wallpaper to see macOS Sonoma’s widgets or if you need help finding a window that’s hidden at the back of the pile.

If, like me, your desktop houses your most important folders and files, “click to reveal desktop” helps you have them accessible with the click of a mouse button. I’ve found myself using this feature more and more over the last few months and think it’s an excellent addition to the world of macOS.

If you’re still not satisfied and find the feature infuriating throughout your workday, you can simply turn off “click to reveal desktop” by following our handy guide.

macOS Sequoia launches later this year and adds further window management to Mac similar to the features Windows users have had for years. Combined these window management tools will help you take full advantage of everything macOS has to offer.

When iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia combine you get a magical new feature called iPhone Mirroring that unlocks new possibilities in the way you use your smartphone at your desk.

iPhone Mirroring allows you to control the best iPhones with your mouse and keyboard on your Mac all without unlocking the physical device itself. 

It’s a revolutionary new way to use your iPhone when working on a Mac and merges perfectly with Standby mode introduced in iOS 17. You’re able to use your iPhone as a widget hub or clock and at the same time interact with the device via your Mac — it’s truly impressive. 

iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia release later this year but you can try iPhone Mirroring today by downloading the public beta software available right now. Whether you’ve got access to these new operating systems now or are waiting for the official release, here’s how to use iPhone Mirroring on macOS Sequoia.

What you'll need

How to use iPhone Mirroring

iPhone Mirroring works similarly to Continuity and Universal Clipboard, to get it working you’ll need an iPhone with iOS 18 and a Mac with macOS Sequoia. Once you’ve downloaded and installed the updates to your iPhone and Mac follow these steps to enable iPhone Mirroring:

1. On iPhone, open Settings
2. Tap General, then AirPlay & Continuity
3. Select iPhone Mirroring and make sure your Mac is listed

Ensure both devices are on the same WiFi and nearby, then open the iPhone Mirroring application on Mac. You’ll need to make sure that your iPhone display is locked and then your Mac will magically start casting your iPhone’s Home Screen.

That’s all there is to it! iPhone Mirroring is one of the biggest changes to macOS and iOS coming later this year. While Apple Intelligence has everyone excited, iPhone Mirroring could completely change the way you use your iPhone and Mac in tandem.

iOS 18 is set to launch alongside the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro in the Fall. Apple Intelligence will also arrive at the same time, albeit, in beta. Stay tuned to iMore for all your iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia news.

If you're waiting for an airplane or wondering why you can't log into your online banking, there's a good chance that CrowdStrike is to blame. The cybersecurity company pushed an update out early this morning that has caused untold problems the world over, but there's good news — your Mac is just fine.

Banks, airlines, airports, retailers, and a whole host of companies in numerous industries have reported a variety of issues over the last few hours as servers and services go offline thanks to a faulty CrowdStrike update that has caused Windows PCs to fail to restart correctly.

But in a post on the X social network, CrowdStrike president and CEO George Kurtz delivered some good news. He says that "Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted," although that won't help you too much if a service or app you rely on happens to hook into a Microsoft server that is affected.

Safe and secure?

In the post on X, Kurtz said that the issue is not a security incident or a cyberattack, which is of course good news for everyone. He went on to add that "the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed." It will not be up to service management and technical teams around the world to implement the fix on their impacted servers in order to fully restore services.

People have taken to the internet to report canceled and delayed flights while some retailers are currently unable to process contactless payments as a result of the outage.

Apple fans will of course point out that those running Apple's old Xserve servers are unaffected by this issue, although we have to imagine that the number of those still in use is infinitesimal compared to those powered by Windows. The Xserve was discontinued back in 2011, and it definitely won't run macOS Sequoia when it is released this fall.

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• macOS 15 is macOS Sequoia, unveiled at WWDC
• macOS 15 Sequoia: Here are all the new features coming to your Mac this year

One of the best uses for an older Mac mini is as the powerhouse at the center of a home cinema system, running software like Plex to access all of your favorite movies and TV shows (legally sourced, of course). macOS Sequoia just made the use case even better — there’s a new HDMI passthrough setting for Dolby Atmos so that your Mac can send an unencoded surround signal to a separate AV amp or sound bar.

That’s going to make watching surround sound content a much smoother experience, and also let you play Spatial Audio tracks from Apple Music. 

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More audio options on Mac

MacRumors found the passthrough mode in the settings menu of various apps including Apple Music, Quicktime, and Apple TV amongst others. It works simply enough, separating the audio and video channels so that the outside device (in this case, a receiver or soundbar) can decode the audio while the video goes straight to a TV or projector.

At the moment, the feature is in Beta, so only those having a whirl with the testing software have a chance to try out pass-through mode. New features are trickling into the beta for testers as well, all presumably building up for the launch of Apple intelligence later this year.

macOS Sequoia was unveiled at WWDC 2024, and looks to bring a whole bunch of new features to the table — some of which weren’t announced during the event, like passthrough mode. The public beta of the software could well be launching soon, although there isn’t yet an official date. Anyone can access the developer beta, but given its proclivity to crash and other general instabilities, we’d recommend you wait until the aforementioned public beta, or, even better, the full release of the OS sometime later this year.

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• macOS 15 Sequoia: Here are all the new features coming
• macOS 15 is macOS Sequoia, unveiled at WWDC
• macOS 15 set to get a revamped and smarter Calculator app

I’ve written in the past about how I’ve always felt a little like a “fake Pro” having a MacBook Pro. Not only does Apple’s “top of the line” laptop cost a fortune, but there’s always been a sort of status that comes with it.

Growing up, everyone I knew wanted a MacBook Pro, and after spending time with outdated MacBook Airs provided by employers, I’d grown to feel like Apple’s slimline machines were somehow “lesser”.

If you’d felt a tad snobbish about the gap between the two product lines, though, I’m pleased to tell you that you can drop that misconception - I swapped my MacBook Pro for a MacBook Air, and I may never go back. 

 Light as Air

My main reason for the change was simple - I travel fairly regularly for work, and lugging a 16-inch MacBook Pro in a backpack was starting to become a drag. It’s not that it’s all that heavy, and the MacBook Pro is an unbelievably impressive machine, but it began to get harder to find backpacks and bags that fit its chunkier chassis without too much of a squeeze.

I considered the MacBook Air as a replacement and thought better of it. After all, could I really give up the speakers, ports, ProMotion refresh rate, and the extra inch of screen real estate just for a slimmer laptop?

As it turns out, each of those was easier to reckon with than anticipated. I don’t game on my Mac (I have a Windows machine and consoles), and I can’t say ProMotion has ever stood out to me in day-to-day usage anyway.

My laptop is also usually docked and connected to a monitor and speakers which means the built-in speakers only really need to be impressive on the rare occasions it’s not, and I connect everything via a single USB-C port. As for the extra portion of screen size, it’s pretty negligible for the most part.

There was just one issue - the M2 chip couldn’t handle two external displays at once.

Make room for M3

Thankfully, the M3 chip fixed that issue, albeit by requiring the laptop to be in clamshell mode. This means I could hook the MacBook Air up to my dual-monitor setup, with a single cable, but also know I could remove it and throw it in a bag if I wanted to work elsewhere.

After ticking off everything on my list, it all comes down to performance. Could I really do what I need to do on a laptop with an M3, rather than the M1 Pro? Surely it couldn’t be that simple?

As it happens, yes, it is. Since I’ve not done big tasks like editing audio in years, the bump in single-core performance from the M1 Pro to the M3 was more than enough, but the M3 Air also performs at a similar level to the MacBook Pro M1 Pro when it comes to multi-core tasks.

While the lack of a fan may change things under sustained load, I’ve been really impressed so far - and I’m only just scratching the surface.

It’s all about intelligence

Apple made a big deal in its M3 MacBook Air press release about the potential of the device for AI tasks, packing additional neural cores into its third-generation chip.

With Apple Intelligence on the way, that could be a great way to future-proof, but it’s also likely to come in handy for me, a tech freelancer who regularly contributes content to iMore and its sister sites about AI developments.

So, if you're concerned about moving from a Pro to an Air, rest assured - it's a much easier transition than you may think.

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WWDC 2024 highlighted iOS 18, iPadOS 18, tvOS 18, visionOS 2, watchOS 11, macOS Sequoia and plenty more, but Apple already has one eye on next year's updates.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman revealed in this week's Power On newsletter that the tech giant has begun work on iOS 19 (codenamed Luck), macOS 16 (codenamed Cheer), watchOS 12 (codename Nepali) and visionOS 3 (codenamed Discovery).

While Gurman notes it's "far too early to tell what the actual features will be" for any of the platforms, he does suggest that this is about the same schedule the company has stuck to for a while.

So why is it news?

Right on schedule

While Gurman dubs the four platforms in question "major", which may disappoint iPad die-hards (hey, we are getting iOS 18 features in iPadOS 18 without a year wait in between!), what's interesting here is that Apple may not finish rolling out many of its features from the current cycle of OS upgrades until well into 2025.

After all, Apple intends to withhold Apple Intelligence features from EU users in response to anticompetitive accusations, while key features from across multiple platforms like iPhone mirroring on macOS Sequoia also may not arrive this year.

That could mean Apple needs to more carefully consider it's rollout as the tail-end of iOS 18 and the start of the eventual iOS 19, along with other platforms, become closer and closer.

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• Apple's biggest iOS 18 and macOS features, including Apple Intelligence, won't come to the EU this year because of the Digital Markets Act
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When macOS Sequoia was announced at the start of June during Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote, one feature, aside from Apple Intelligence, stood out: iPhone Mirroring.

At first, I questioned why anyone would want to control their iPhone from their Mac, but as the demo went on showcasing how your iPhone can stay in StandBy while you use it via your Mac, I started to get it.

Now, with the launch of iOS 18 beta 2 and macOS Sequoia beta 2, iPhone Mirroring is finally here and after using it for 24 hours, I can easily say that this is one of the biggest new features coming to the Apple ecosystem later this year, and one of the best upgrades to Mac in a long time

Mirror mirror on the Mac

iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia are still in development, so I don’t want to focus too much on the performance of this feature and more on what it’s like to use. Essentially, iPhone Mirroring connects your iPhone and Mac via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, just like Universal Clipboard. From there, you can use your iPhone as normal, but on your Mac’s display.

So far from my testing, it feels incredibly intuitive: You have an iPhone icon in your Mac’s dock that when clicked lets you access everything as you would from your smartphone. The feature only works when your iPhone isn’t in use, allowing you to be sure that no one is looking at your screen when using your iPhone via iPhone Mirroring.

As someone who works at a desk every single day, iOS 17’s StandBy mode was incredibly enticing when it launched last year. Nearly 12 months later I never use it because it stops you from having access to your iPhone. iPhone Mirroring feels like the feature that should’ve launched alongside StandBy as it allows you to set your iPhone on one of the best MagSafe charging stands while using the device via your Mac.

While using iPhone Mirroring your iPhone’s notifications appear on your Mac and you don’t ever need to reach for your iPhone, it’s completely seamless.

A touchscreen Mac in the future?

It’s very seldom that a new feature gets added to such an established operating system and it just clicks with users, leaving you wondering how you ever lived without it. But with iPhone Mirroring, I feel like in a few months' time everyone that has one of the best Macs and one of the best iPhones compatible with the latest software will be using it.

In the same way after a day’s use StandBy now makes sense to me, I do wonder how the masses will react to using their iPhone with a mouse via Mac. For many, it might not be intuitive but it does sprinkle a few hints of a future with touchscreen Macs. If Apple sees the next generation of workstations with users charging their iPhones in StandBy mode as they use their smartphones on a Mac’s display then it feels like only a matter of time until we see touch input on Apple’s computers. Until then, iPhone Mirroring will have to do, and do it will.

This is an incredible feature that makes you reassess how you use your devices within the Apple ecosystem — after just a day, I already think it’s essential.

If you're a Mac user who installs their apps via the Mac App Store, you're probably already familiar with strange behavior relating to storage space. Current macOS releases require double the app's storage requirements in order to initiate the download and installation process, and that can be an issue for those with relatively small SSDs. However, macOS Sequoia has the answer.

According to Apple, the second macOS Sequoia beta includes a tweak that fixes this annoying issue, freeing up storage space and making it easier for people to install large apps such as games.

Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait a while before you can take advantage of this change – macOS Sequoia isn't set to be made available to the public until this fall.

Space-saver

Apple confirmed the news in the macOS Sequoia beta 2 release notes, saying that  "Starting in macOS 15, the App Store no longer needs twice the space free for an initial app download and install. The free space requirement will now be the final install size of the app, plus a small buffer." The notes go on to say that developers should factor that into any messaging that they might have relating to installation requirements.

The macOS Sequoia update will bring with it Apple Intelligence and a slew of other features, and developer betas are currently in testing.

The final macOS Sequoia release will be joined by iOS 18 as well as new updates for the iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro.

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With WWDC 2024 firmly in the rearview mirror, all eyes are on iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence. However, one subtly great improvement to Mac has just arrived in macOS Sequoia beta two that you have to try out for yourself. 

iPhone mirroring is finally here if you are willing to download the macOS Sequoia beta, and it allows you to control your iPhone from your Mac. What is perhaps the smartest feature of iPhone mirroring is you don’t even need to unlock your iPhone to do so. If you want to work from a cafe and check your notifications without running the risk of leaving your iPhone unlocked, you can. 

During the WWDC 2024 Apple Keynote, iPhone mirroring was shown off very briefly but it still looked incredible. If you edit videos from both iPhone and Mac, you can simply drag clips from one device and they will seamlessly work on the other. When combined with StandBy Mode, you can use your iPhone as a watch and calendar whilst doing all the heavy lifting on the impressive screen of the best MacBooks. 

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What else is coming with macOS Sequoia?

The Calculator app has been entirely redesigned and will pair with Notes for smarter number note-taking. Passwords, a new password manager is also coming with Sequoia, making the Apple ecosystem even easier to use. The biggest change coming to Mac is the implementation of Apple Intelligence, Apple’s AI suite. This will make Siri much faster and more efficient and will allow you to more easily create Shortcuts and customize your device. ChatGPT integration will be coming alongside it, allowing you to query the chatbot for information and advice. 

Finally, one that Mac fans have been waiting a long time for, tiling is arriving for program windows, allowing you to snap windows together while you work. Silicon Macs are about to get so much better. 

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Apple's big WWDC unveiling of macOS Sequoia as well as software updates for the rest of its platforms mainly focused on Apple Intelligence. But that doesn't mean that there aren't other improvements of note. In the case of macOS Sequoia, one of those improvements appears to pave the way for Xbox 360 game emulation on the Mac.

The improvement comes in the form of support for AVX 2 emulation via the upgraded Game Porting Toolkit 2, a system that Apple offers developers as a way to more easily bring Windows games to the Mac. The lack of AVX support on Apple silicon chips previously meant that Xbox 360 emulation was a non-starter. But that's all changed.

In fact, some people are already able to make Xbox 360 games run on their Macs, and some of those people have published videos showing how well everything works.

Emulators on emulators

As you'll see in the video embedded above, plenty of games work surprisingly well including big-name titles like Gears of War 2. Some games do perform better than others, but as the YouTuber Andrew Tsai points out, it's a miracle that anything works at all given the layers of emulation that are being used. This is all made possible by the Xenia Xbox 360 emulator running atop Rosetta 2, and that's the simplified version of what's really going on here.

Of course, it's fair to say that anyone who wants to play Xbox 360 games should probably just buy a used console and hook it up to their TV. But from a purely technical standpoint it's impressive to see these kinds of things in action — be sure to check the video out for the full rundown of what's required to make a modern Mac play Xbox 360 titles.

As for macOS Sequoia, that's currently available in developer beta and will roll out to the public via a public beta program next month. From there, a global launch is likely to take place in September.

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The big Apple Intelligence launch finally took place when Apple showed off iOS 18 and other software updates at WWDC earlier this week, but it's far from the only game in town. Microsoft's Copilot Plus PCs are set to launch next week, but they'll now be missing one of the company's tentpole features.

Following the controversial unveiling of Recall, a feature that can take screenshots of a Windows PC to make things easier to find later, many people raised privacy and security concerns about how such information could be misused. Now, Microsoft has backed down and confirmed that it is delaying Recall's launch.

“We are adjusting the release model for Recall to leverage the expertise of the Windows Insider community to ensure the experience meets our high standards for quality and security,” Microsoft confirmed in a blog post. “When Recall (preview) becomes available in the Windows Insider Program, we will publish a blog post with details on how to get the preview.”

Better late than never

The Recall feature could undoubtedly be useful, but some people are understandably concerned about the prospect of Microsoft taking constant screenshots of whatever they are doing on their computers. The potential for then being able to access information at a later date that might otherwise be lost is huge, of course, but so is the potential for that data to be misused. And that seems to have been enough to get Microsoft to rethink its launch.

"Recall uses local AI models built into Windows 11 to screenshot mostly everything you see or do on your computer and then give you the ability to search and retrieve items you’ve seen," The Verge explained when detailing Microsoft's new plans. "An explorable timeline lets you scroll through these snapshots to look back on what you did on a particular day on your PC. Everything in Recall is designed to remain local and private on-device, so no data is used to train Microsoft’s AI models."

No such feature will be available as part of the Apple Intelligence launch when macOS Sequoia arrives this fall.

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When Apple announced macOS Sequoia at WWDC on June 10 there was a lot to take in, and that was even before the company took the wraps off Apple Intelligence. Some of the new features are bigger than others, but one new change that I think might have an outsized impact on the way people use their Apple devices from this fall is the arrival of a popular password manager.

Sure, iCloud Keychain is nothing new and it's been a solid option for people who want to sync passwords, passkeys, and notes between devices for years. But it's always felt like something of an afterthought for Apple with the company hiding it deep inside the Settings app on iPhone and iPad and the System Settings app on the Mac. Some people, including yours truly, resorted to using a shortcut to more quickly access the potion of settings that houses passwords. But no more.

An actual, bona fide Passwords app is coming to the Mac as well as the iPhone and iPad via iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 respectively. But just having an app that you can tap on your Home Screen or in the Dock is just one part of the improvement here. The other, we've found, is a much-improved method for importing passwords from other services and apps like 1Password and LastPass.

Import all the passwords

Switching password managers isn't something that most people do lightly — I made the move from 1Password to iCloud Keychain myself not that long ago. Doing so involved exporting all of my passwords from the former via the ubiquitous and surprisingly powerful CSV file before importing it into the latter. But actually doing that is something I am willing to bet a whole lot of people don't even realize is an option.

See, importing passwords into iCloud Keychain on macOS Sonoma involves knowing you can actually do it in the first place. Apple — in typical System Settings fashion — does a great job of hiding the fact it can be done, but if you know which nondescript button to press, it's pretty easy once you get going.

With macOS Sequoia, the whole endeavor is made easier by the fact you have an actual app to use, and from there you just click a couple of buttons and you're off to the races. It isn't magic, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's more discoverable and that's key. Apple's Passwords app will ask you if you want to import saved passwords from another password manager the first time you open it. The macOS Sonoma System Settings situation is terrible, and it isn't much better in macOS Sequoia from what I've seen, either. But that's all the more reason to be glad that Apple has come to its senses and finally broken iCloud Keychain out into its own app.

Now, if only the Passwords app didn't look almost identical to Reminders. Is it too much to ask for a unique design?

Maybe that's coming in beta 2.

The macOS Sequoia beta is currently in the hands of developers and a public beta will arrive next month. From there, more beta updates are expected before the software is released to the public this fall, likely in or around September.

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• macOS 15 is macOS Sequoia, unveiled at WWDC
• How to download macOS Sequoia beta — the latest operating system for your Mac
• I'm a Windows user, here are my honest macOS Sequoia first impressions

I have a confession to make, reader. Despite my enduring tenure as the News Editor of an Apple website, I use Windows. Not exclusively — I’ve had a Mac of some description for nearly a decade — but I’d say the split of my Windows vs. Mac usage is about 90:10. I’ll happily use macOS to do one thing in full screen (although my colleagues tell me that using full screen on macOS is questionable behavior) — but I simply refuse to rely on macOS to do anything that requires multiple windows, tabs, moving files, and any level of precision or speed. 

Naturally, then, I am the perfect candidate for a hands-on first impressions write-up of the new macOS Sequoia update, the beta of which is now available to download. As with our iOS 18 hands-on, and our iPadOS 18 first impressions, macOS Sequoia suffers from the same glaring absence of Apple Intelligence, which isn’t coming out until the fall in beta form. My task is made easier (and more difficult) further still by the lack of two other standout macOS Sequoia features, iPhone Mirroring, and Safari Highlights. But what about the new features that actually are available? Nose held, I’ve taken a deep dive into the very first iteration of macOS Sequoia to give you my honest thoughts on all the new features this year. 

Wallpapers

Not a new feature per se, but worth noting nonetheless, Apple continues to dominate the computing wallpaper scenes. Sequoia arrives replete with not one but two smashing wallpaper options, including a stunning retro collection that can be tailored to several colors. Likewise, the Sequoia piece for 2024 and beyond is a real head-turner. 

Notes

My first stop on my tour of macOS was the new Notes app. Fresh to Mac is a new audio transcription feature that lets you record audio sessions and type notes as you go. The target market here is clearly the student, with the new interface for recording a handy sidebar that lets you track your recording as you go, so you know it hasn’t stopped accidentally. By recording and typing notes at the same time, you’ll always have a recorded record of college lectures or classroom lessons, replete with the notes you typed alongside. The feature also includes live audio transcription, but you’ll need Apple Intelligence for that. 

I love the formatting boost that lets you include collapsible sections within notes, and you can now highlight notes to make them stand out. The biggest notes upgrade, however, is Math Notes. A headline of the iPadOS 18 launch, Math Notes lets users generate sums, equations, and more, solving them as they go. In Notes on macOS, you can now use the feature to great effect. You can simply type sums into Notes and macOS will generate the correct answer in real time. While the feature can be used for expressions and equations, it’s most useful in Notes on Mac for things like budgeting, expenses, and planning. For instance, if you were to tally up the cost of moving house in a quick note, you can use Math Notes to add up all the various expenses, rather than switching to your calculator app. All of these features make Notes much more useful and versatile, and at their heart ensure that users who rely on Notes for anything at all don’t have to dip in and out of the app if they want to start a recording, divvy up a restaurant bill, or anything else.  

Video conferencing

Whether you love to show off in Zoom calls with fancy backgrounds, make your colleagues giggle with a funky-looking spaceship, or want to hide a messy backdrop with blur or some nice mountains, video conferencing backgrounds are a staple of the remote worker and the office-goer alike. To that end, macOS Sequoia includes some snazzy new system-level backgrounds that you can apply to your video when on calls. As noted, these are system-level, so you set them by clicking on the green video icon in the menu bar. Once applied, they show up in whichever video feed you’re using, be it Zoom, Google Meet, or of course FaceTime. Right now there’s a limited selection of colors and the macOS High Sierra mountains. You can also add any background of your own choosing, so really the possibilities are endless. The video processing on these backgrounds is noticeably better than software clients like Google or Zoom, with edges of the subject much more crisp and the overall animation much smoother. If you use video backgrounds in calls, you’re going to love Sequoia. The new presenter preview mode also gives you a quick look at your presentation view before you share it with the group, so you can make sure you’ve only given access to the right presentation tab and not your embarrassing side chat with a colleague or the background movies you pretend not to watch. 

Passwords app

The Passwords app is one of the few truly new things in macOS, and it definitely shines on the computing platform. While the Passwords app is available on iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, and even my beloved Windows, using it on macOS for any kind of password admin seems to make the most sense. Here the expansive interface makes all of the information readily digestible, and I personally consider changing passwords (and booking flights) to be a laptop job. The app is quite rudimentary — it only has three main fields and six categories — but simplicity is what’s needed here and the Passwords app has that in spades. Whether or not this means I’m now going to attend to my several hundred security recommendations remains to be seen. 

Messages

Messages on macOS Sequoia come with all the new flavors and spices of iOS 18. That means you can send messages with flair such as bold text, italics, and more. These can all be accessed with a right-click on the highlighted text you want to jazz up, but accessing the menu is definitely not as intuitive as using shortcuts. The usual array of CMD + B, I, etc, will generate bold, italic, and other effects as you’d expect. Right-click on Mac also gives access to the new emoji tapbacks. What’s more, all of these effects also display on macOS just fine, letting you get in on all the mobile fun of messaging. Scheduling messages is also just a click away and very easy to use. 

Maps

Keen hikers will be pleased to know that macOS Sequoia now comes with Apple’s fancy topographical maps, which give vital data about elevation and incline on prospective hikes. Only available in the U.S. and Japan right now, the new maps include trails from all 63 U.S. national parks. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a filter or way to search routes that have topographical support, so finding them is basically the luck of the draw. Naturally, the Sherman Tree Trailhead demoed by Apple works and looks wonderful, with a route and elevation readily available to be added to your library or navigated too. Apple awarded AllTrails its prestigious iPhone App of the Year award in 2023, but now planning a hike can be done without any third-party help whatsoever. 

Photos

The Photos app got one of the biggest overhauls of any app at WWDC 2024. Many of the iPhone-centric upgrades, like the Carousel, are notably absent, but the new Photos app on Mac does at least automatically organize your library into topics like Trips, and People & Pets. The Memories and Days collections are also nice, and all the changes stack up to make browsing your photos much better, especially at a glance. 

Calculator

I rarely reach for the calculator on my Mac, preferring the tactile feel of the iPhone version. However, both now come with an epic conversions feature with options for weight, measurements, and even currency powered by Yahoo Finance. On Mac, clicking Math Notes simply opens your Notes app.

Calendar and Reminders

As promised, you can now generate reminders directly from within the macOS calendar app in macOS Sequoia. The ‘+’ icon that once only created events now includes a clear option for setting a Reminder, selecting this opens up all the options you’d expect in this field, with spaces for notes, as well as settings for alerts and timing. 

Windows tiling and Stage Manager

Stage Manager on macOS Sequoia has not changed since its advent in macOS Ventura two years ago. It’s a divisive feature, but one that some find useful. As such, if you like Stage Manager and want to keep using it, you’re going to be pleased with Sequoia. If you still don’t like Stage Manager, you can still turn it off. However, the most noteworthy multitasking shift in macOS Sequoia is the brand-new easy window tiling, which you can use with or without Stage Manager. That’s right, macOS Sequoia stole Windows’ best feature, killing off notable third-party apps like Rectangle in the process. As a Windows user who thrives on the Redmond outfit’s immense multitasking capabilities, I was overjoyed to see this feature unveiled in macOS. It’s one of the biggest obstacles keeping me from macOS adoption, and I was really excited to try it. The news is, I’m afraid, mixed. The new tiling in macOS improves macOS window management by orders of magnitude. However, in other ways, it is a pale imitation of the Windows feature that keeps me from macOS. To start with the good, you can now grab a macOS window and snap it to either side of your main display. Using the mouse in this way, there are only two options, left and right. You can arrange two windows in a side-by-side configuration, resizing them to taste if you don’t want a 50:50 split. Perhaps more enticingly, hovering your mouse over the green full-screen button in the corner will bring up a list of various window configurations. That includes a vertical side-by-side, but also a horizontal, landscape 50:50 split. You can also pick from various combos that arrange four apps, one in each corner, and holding down the Alt key shows more options. 

As noted, however, the feature is not perfect. Firstly, macOS puts a gap around your windows so they don’t touch the dock, menu bar, or the far edge of your screen. That’s a design choice I would broadly file as “psychopathic” and one that needs to be rectified immediately. Secondly, while you can grab any window by its title bar and move it around, you cannot grab the tab from an internet browser and snap it the way you can on Windows. As someone who uses browser tabs more than anything else in the pursuit of multitasking, this is another criminal oversight. Less egregious, but still leaving room for improvement, there’s no “auto-suggest” option like that of Windows. If you have two apps floating on your Home Screen, and you choose to snap one to the left side, you’d have expected Mac to automatically offer to snap your second window to the right side, and vice versa. Instead the remaining window just kind of floats wherever it's left, and you have to do it manually. 

I don’t want to overstate the weaknesses of tiling in Sequoia, because it truly is a massive improvement on every iteration of macOS that has gone before. With a bit of tweaking, it could be a game changer, but it’s not enough to tempt me away from Windows just yet. With the feature still in beta, I’m hopeful for some improvements before the fall public release. 

In conclusion

By all accounts, there’s not a lot going on in the new macOS beta. Without Apple Intelligence, and without the impressive new iPhone Mirroring Continuity upgrade, the two headline features are still missing. macOS 15 Sequoia shows great promise, but in its current form, it’s more of a refinement than an upgrade.

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macOS Sequoia was announced at WWDC 2024 and is coming to all of the best Macs later this year. Some of the biggest updates you'll find on the brand-new operating system are the ones coming to Safari, Apple's web browser the company claims is the "world's fastest".

With new features that help you browse the web like never before, some users might opt to download the macOS Sequoia beta in order to access everything new Safari has to offer long before the official release later this year.

Here is everything coming to Safari in macOS Sequoia.

Highlights

Highlights is a new way to discover information while browsing the web and it looks like it could be seriously useful. Housed inside the address bar, Highlights can show you directions, summaries, and relevant links to learn more about a subject without ever leaving the webpage you're looking at.

The summaries addition to Safari can be found throughout the new version found in Sequoia and it could be one of the most useful tools we've seen on macOS in years. Using the power of Apple Intelligence, Safari will now be able to summarize a webpage giving you key information and saving you time if you don't want to scroll all the way to the bottom.

A new Reader

There is a big redesign to Reader in Safari in macOS Sequoia allowing you to get a streamlined view of an article, a table of contents, and a topic summary directly from within the view. Reader is one of the most useful features in Safari and these new additions make it even better, especially if you want an uninterrupted way to consume content on the internet.

Viewer makes videos on Safari better

Viewer on Safari automatically detects when there is a video on a webpage and puts it at the forefront of your experience. Users will have full access to playback controls, including Picture in Picture, bringing a much-improved way to watch videos while browsing the web. It's a really neat feature that we can't wait to try when macOS Sequoia and all these Safari updates come to the best Macs later this year.

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• macOS 15: Rumored features, supported devices, and more
• macOS 15 is macOS Sequoia, unveiled at WWDC
• Here are the four biggest changes coming to Mac with macOS 15

macOS Sequoia is the name of macOS 15, coming to all of Apple's best desktop Macs and MacBooks in the fall. Announced at WWDC 2024 and currently available through the macOS Sequoia beta, the headline feature is of course Apple Intelligence. Coming as its own beta with the public release, Apple has jammed AI into every corner of macOS, with generative tools for images and text, file organization, and more. 

Beyond that, there's an epic new iPhone Mirroring feature that lets you use any iPhone on your Mac, even when it's in standBy Mode. There's a new Windows tiling feature, and the new Passwords app also features. 

So whether you want a rundown of all the new features, or a list of compatible devices, or the latest release date information, here's everything you need to know about macOS Sequoia. 

Apple Intelligence

Only compatible with Macs with Apple silicon, Apple Intelligence comes to macOS Sequoia for U.S. English users to start with, later this year.

Siri finally gets supercharged with a whole new look that can look into the apps you use every day, as well as give you detailed results that can make you aware of what you do on your Mac daily.

You can also craft custom emojis called Genmoji with Apple Intelligence. Prompt the service at any time in Messages or Mail, and a unique emoji will appear.

Writing Tools are also available with Apple Intelligence. If you want to reword a reply to an email with a more casual tone, tapping an icon to the left of the text will allow you to do just that.

Apple also confirmed it's partnering with OpenAI for ChatGPT 4.0 functionality.

You'll be made aware when data needs to be sent off your device at any time. ChatGPT will also be able to process images you share with it, too, letting you ask questions about documents, files, and more. Like Apple Intelligence, you'll also be able to have ChatGPT write out a brief for you.

Continuity — iPhone Mirroring

Developers have been able to do this for years when creating apps — mirroring an iPhone to their Mac can help them check how their apps work directly in macOS.

For Sequoia, this comes to the general user in a new way. Imagine having docked your iPhone beside your Mac while it charges, and you want to check Snapchat or Instagram quickly. Using this new Continuity feature, your iPhone will appear on your Mac, and you can use your keyboard and trackpad to navigate through your device.

You can also drag and drop files as you wish — saving you the headache of having to use AirDrop or the Files app.

Window tiling

Do you have multiple windows open when using your Mac? Thanks to Sequoia, you'll finally be able to snap them automatically.

This is a similar feature to one Windows users have had for years. You'll be able to tile multiple windows automatically so you can see all your active apps at once. Not only can you drag windows around with your mouse or trackpad, but you can also move apps to a tiled position using dedicated keyboard shortcuts. 

New backgrounds

A brief mention, but a useful feature all the same. In Sequoia, you'll be able to change your background in almost any video-conferencing app.

Passwords app

Available on iOS 18, iPadOS 18 as well as macOS Sequoia, Apple's new Passwords app will let you view every account you've ever created and used without having to go to the Settings app.

From Passkeys to WiFi passwords, you'll be able to find all of these in this new app.

Safari

Safari has a huge new feature called Highlight. This uses machine learning to detect relevant information on any web page, such as music, movies, and more. Highlight can also summarize a webpage into an easy-to-read paragraph.

Reader has been redesigned for macOS Sequoia. Now, it can show a Table of Contents as well as a Summary on web pages.

Gaming

Gaming on the Mac goes up to another level in Sequoia with Game Porting Toolkit 2. Available for iPad and iPhone this time too, it comes with improved support for Windows games, such as ray-tracing.

macOS is also getting some big new titles including Prince of Persia, Frostpunk 2, World of Warcraft: The War Within, and Control. As announced before WWDC 2024, Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 7 are also coming to Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Everything from iOS 18

Let's not forget — most of what you can do in iOS 18 is also available in macOS Sequoia. From improved features in Messages such as formatting and better tapbacks, to on-device categorization in Mail that can sort your emails into different categories, there's a lot you'll be able to do later this year.

But wait, there's more! An updated Calculator app lets users see previous calculations with history, giving them the ability to see their expressions as they type. Calendar shows events and tasks from Reminders, making it easy to see, edit, or complete tasks throughout the day. An updated Month View also makes it easier to see events and reminders for an entire month at a glance.

The Notes app is getting smarter, allowing you to take detailed and well-written notes. New audio transcription and summarisation features with Apple Intelligence enable a Mac to take notes for the user, letting them stay present in a situation where they need to capture details about what’s happening. If they need to quickly crunch a number, they can just type in an equation to have it solved automatically within the note.

Release date

macOS Sequoia is available to download as a developer beta now, but will be released to the public in the fall. 

Compatibility

macOS Sequoia works with with every Apple silicon device, as well as the 2017 iMac Pro, the 2019 iMac, the 2018 Mac mini, the 2019 Mac Pro, and the 2018 MacBook Pro, all running Intel. 

The full compatible list is as follows:

• M1 MacBook Air
• M1 MacBook Pro
• M2 MacBook Air
• M2 MacBook Pro
• M3 MacBook Air
• M3 MacBook Pro
• M1 iMac
• M2 iMac
• M2 Mac Studio
• iMac Pro (2017)
• iMac (2019)
• Mac mini (2018)
• M1 Mac mini
• M2 Mac mini
• MacBook Pro (2018)
• Mac Pro (2019)
• M2 Mac Pro

Apple Intelligence is real, and it's potentially spectacular. Although, you might have to wait until it's available in your country.

The company's take on AI is coming to certain iPhone, iPad, and Mac models later this year for U.S. English users, with ways to generate emojis, help your writing, and, yes, loaded with new features that finally improve Apple's assistant, Siri, in many ways.

Apple's upcoming service aims to keep as much of your queries and generated data on-device as possible while focusing on privacy when data does go to the cloud. OpenAI has also partnered with Apple too, so you can use ChatGPT within Siri for that extra help.

With all this in mind, here's everything we know so far about Apple Intelligence on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.

ChatGPT integration

Arriving late in the presentation, Apple confirmed it's partnering with OpenAI for ChatGPT 4.0 functionality.

Apple says you'll be notified when data needs to be sent off-device, and that ChatGPT 4.0 will be able to process images you share with it, too, letting you ask questions about documents. You'll also be able to have it write to a brief for you.

Apple says "You control when ChatGPT is used and will be asked before any of your information is shared."

"Anyone can access ChatGPT for free, without creating an account. ChatGPT subscribers can connect accounts to access paid features within these experiences."

Siri

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the AI features rolled out as part of WWDC 2024 is Siri, which will now be much smarter - and sports a lovely new icon that you can see above.

Siri will now let users move between text and voice requests, with a much better awareness of the current context. It'll also be able to remember things you've requested so that when you chain requests together you won't need to start over from scratch.

Siri's functionality has also changed, so there's no more screen overlay. Instead, it'll highlight your screen with a pinkish glow when activated, and if it can return a request without opening an app, it'll do so with a smaller window that slides in from the top of the screen.

Siri will also let you change a request, so you no longer have to cancel a timer to reset it because you got the increment wrong.

In July, Mark Gurman reported that Siri's biggest features (screen recognition and in-app commands) will likely arrive in 2025 with a beta for developers in January.

Genmoji

We're seemingly past Animoji, now, as Apple revealed Generative AI emoji — which it calls Genmoji.

Ensuring you always have an image that you can send for any given situation, these can appear in Sketched, Illustrated, or Animated versions, and you can use the new Image Playground app to create to your heart's content.

They can even use data from Photos as inspiration, but Apple insists this processing is all done on-device. They can be generated right from the keyboard, too, and developers will be able to work with a new Image Playground API.

Photos

Not only has the Photos app been redesigned, but it's also getting natural language support for search - so you can ask for "cat laying on the sofa" and it'll find it for you.

The app will also allow you to edit images with a Siri request like "make this image 'pop' more", while you can now finally use Clean Up to remove an unwanted bystander from your family photo.

You can also create new "Memory Movies" by entering a description. Apple's example is "All the desserts I ate during the summer last year, set to a pop song", which highlights a whole host of sweet treats as well as tying in with Apple Music.

Notes

The Notes app is getting AI features for both text and images. For one, you'll be able to solve mathematic equations on the fly, while also being able to dump text from another app, or generated by Siri, right in there.

For the more visual thinkers, they'll be able to convert rough sketches into AI-generated art that can pull context from the space around it. You can also generate one from scratch if you're not artistically gifted.

Mail

Apple Intelligence will be able to rewrite your emails to fit a different style once you prompt it, letting you amend your text to sound more professional or convert it to a poem, if that's what you're looking for.

It'll also summarize emails to help you catch up on what's in your inbox more quickly and move priority emails to the top of your inbox automatically. The menu looks a fair bit like Notion's options, which is interesting.

Smart Reply will let you quickly respond to emails via prompts, such as confirming attendance to an event using a simple "Yes" or "No" and having the email written by Apple Intelligence.

Notifications

A new Reduce Interruptions Focus Mode will ensure all of your devices only show priority notifications, such as time-sensitive ones or those from selected contacts.

They appear at the top of your notifications stack, but they're also summarized so you can quickly glance at them to know what's going on.

Phone

You'll be able to capture audio recordings within the Phone app, and these will automatically transcribe and have a summary generated.

And don't worry - everyone on the call will get an alert to say it's being recorded.

Privacy

The "elephant in the room" with AI is Apple's steadfast commitment to privacy, and the company is promising that user data and requests aren't stored. Your data is only used for your requests, and as many tasks as possible are handled on-device.

For anything that requires processing by the cloud, Apple uses Private Cloud Compute, which are server-based Apple Silicon machines to power through complex requests.

What devices are getting new AI functionality?

As was rumored before the event, many of these features will require the latest iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, both of which feature the A17 Pro chip.

For Mac and iPad, you'll need one with an Apple silicon chip inside, but this requirement goes right back to the M1. You can reasonably expect newer models to handle these complex tasks more efficiently, though.

As part of Mark Gurman's reporting, the Apple Watch X and Ultra 3 could gain new hardware to "lay the groundwork for some AI enhancements down the road", but Apple Intelligence isn't expected to be a major feature for the Apple Watch.

But wait, what about Machine Learning?

For years, Apple has used the term Machine Learning to describe its own AI technology framework. It’s been working on it for quite some time; Machine Learning is what highlights the Siri Suggestions when you look to use an app or learns the way you type on your iPhone, among others.

Why the company has changed to more plainly refer to it as AI is unclear, but there’s every chance the shift in semantics is down to just how pervasive the term “AI” has become over the last 18 months or so.

As if to underline its seriousness, Apple acquired DarwinAI in 2024, with the startup’s staff joining Apple’s AI effort. DarwinAI is a "visual quality inspection" company based out of Waterloo, Ontario. It has a patented Explainable AI platform that has been adopted by "numerous" Fortune 500 companies. “DarwinAI has developed AI technology for visually inspecting components during the manufacturing process and serves customers in a range of industries,” Mark Gurman reported.

“One of its core technologies is making artificial intelligence systems smaller and faster. That work could be helpful to Apple, which is focused on running AI on devices rather than entirely in the cloud.” According to Betakit, DarwinAI's platform was built "under the guidance of University of Waterloo professor and Canada AI research chair Alexander Wong," who is now employed by Apple as Director of Machine Learning research. The company was founded in 2017 and has been helmed by CEO Sheldon Fernandez since January 2018. 

What's going on with Apple and Google?

While Apple is making its own acquisitions to fuel its AI ambitions (and reportedly moving employees over from the canceled Apple Car project) it's also reportedly been in discussions with Google.

According to Bloomberg, Apple and Google have been working on a “blockbuster agreement that would shake up the AI industry”, with the same reports suggesting Apple is in “active negotiations" to license Google's Gemini AI tools.

This has been corroborated since by the New York Times, which seems to have all but confirmed the two tech giants working together. 

"Apple is in discussions with Google about using the search giant’s generative artificial intelligence model called Gemini for its next iPhone, as the company races to embrace a technology that has upended the tech industry," the New York Times wrote, noting the "exact scope of a potential deal hasn’t been defined".

At WWDC, Apple confirmed its deal with ChatGPT isn't exclusive, and mentioned that Google Gemini could also feature on iPhone at a later date. 

A handy AI glossary

Below you'll find a few key terms that you're likely to see a lot in the coming weeks and months, as well as an explainer of each.

• Chatbot - Used in everything from AI technology to customer service, a chatbot is software that mimics human conversation.
• Generative AI - Technology that can create content, be that images, audio, video, or anything else, by receiving prompts from a user.
• LLM (Large Language Model) - In layman's terms, a computer analyzing human speech and text to respond as a human. 
• Machine Learning - Apple's chosen branding of AI for many years, Machine Learning finds patterns to recommend your next app, or searches your images for pictures of a dog.

For as long as macOS has been an OS that you can use, the way that you organize your windows on screen has been for lack of a better term, an absolute pain. Making them fit exactly where you want them has been a crap shoot, and resizing them properly is more hard work than it's really worth. It's possible, sure, but it's not good.

Windows has had this feature nailed down for a long time now. Windows can pan around the screen, fitting perfectly into gaps and resizing perfectly so that you can get them almost exactly where you want them. Well, it looks like Apple has taken a UI leaf out of Microsoft's book now, as it has added automatically resizing windows into the recently announced version of macOS 15 dubbed 'Sequoia'.

Finally.

Window snapping

Previously, organizing your windows on macOS has been haphazard. You have to resize your windows yourself, so that they fit on your screen just the way that you want them to. I've had to do it, much like you, fellow Mac user, for longer than I care to admit, and, quite frankly, I'm getting sick of it. Thankfully, Apple has seen fit to answer my many blood rituals to Tim Cook, and, after much waiting, I'll be able to automatically resize my windows when I want to change their size or placement on my Mac.

Slide the window to the side, and it fills that half of the screen. Drag the window to the top or bottom corner of the screen, and the window fills that quarter of the display. Simple. Elegant. Nice.

It's not perfect — resizing windows manually is still a bit of a pain, and it's not entirely reliable 100% of the time, but it's a great start in making macOS a more useable OS for a wider range of people.

AKA, people who don't like manually resizing their windows.

RIP dedicated window sizing apps

As is usually the case when it comes to a missing feature on macOS, there are some great third-party apps that fill the gap in Window resizing. Our two favorites, for example, are Rectangle, and Better Touch Tool. Both of them are very good at helping you manage your windows, and both have been summarily killed off by Apple's new window resizing feature.

That's not to say they're totally dead, of course. If you're the owner of a Mac that won't be blessed with the macOS 15 update, then the apps are still a great way to make sure that you can easily rejigger your windows for a more manageable experience — as for users with macOS 15 compatible devices, however, you no longer really need the apps.

They might be slightly stronger in some ways which might give them a little sticking power, but as window resizing in macOS is likely to only improve from now on, it's unlikely that there'll be much more need in the future for them at all.

Let me be clear, window resizing built into macOS is a great thing, but allow me a moment to grieve our dearly departed. 

More from iMore

• macOS 15: Rumored features, supported devices, and more
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• Here are the four biggest changes coming to Mac with macOS 15

Apple's WWDC keynote finally gave us a name for macOS 15 with macOS Sequoia, but one of its killer features leans heavily on iOS 18.

If your iPhone is in your coat pocket or your bag, you'll now be able to wirelessly mirror it to your Mac, and use it as if it was right in front of you.

It's part of a new Continuity feature called iPhone Mirroring, and it shows up just as your physical iPhone would, including your Home Screen layout and apps.

"The keyboard, trackpad, and mouse on Mac also let a user interact with their iPhone, and audio even comes through," Apple's press release explains.

"Users can seamlessly drag and drop between iPhone and Mac, and a user’s iPhone remains locked, so nobody else can access or see what the user is doing."

iPhone Mirroring pairs well with StandBy

If you connect your iPhone to a charger and start using StandBy mode, the phone will stay locked and visible, too, so you can still see your widgets.

Interestingly, notifications even jump to your Mac when you're mirroring your phone, and you can click into them and see your virtual iPhone to respond or take action. Apple demonstrated this with Duolingo, which lets users click the notification to open the app within the virtual iPhone on the screen.

We're covering the WWDC 2024 event as it happens. Follow WWDC 2024 LIVE here. Or check out our roundups for all the latest on the newly announced iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, visionOS 2, and Apple Intelligence.

macOS Sequoia public beta is available to download right now, so if you want to access new features like iPhone Mirroring now instead of September you can.

The next generation of Mac software arrives later this year alongside the beta of Apple Intelligence, but now that the public beta and developer betas are live you can start testing it today.

While we don't recommend using Sequoia public beta on your main computer, the update is reasonably stable and will work on all the best Macs.

Here's how to install the macOS Sequoia beta.

macOS Sequoia is here and you can install it now

Beta software, also referred to as a preview, seed, or release candidate, is a version of software that’s still under development and not yet released to the public. This software is intended only for installation on development devices registered under your Apple Developer Program membership. Registered development devices can be upgraded to future beta releases and the public version of the software. Attempting to install beta software in an unauthorized manner violates Apple policy and could render your device unusable and necessitate an out-of-warranty repair. Make sure to back up your devices before installing beta software and install only on devices and systems that you’re prepared to erase if necessary.

macOS Sequoia brings amazing new additions to your Mac without the need to purchase a new device. From a huge update to Safari, iPhone mirroring, and the arrival of Apple Intelligence, Sequoia is one of the biggest updates to macOS we've seen in years.

How to download and install macOS Sequoia developer beta

Installing macOS Sequoia on the best Macs is incredibly simple. So simple in fact that you can do it in just a few easy steps. 

1. Open Settings
2. Tap General, then Software Update
3. Enable Beta Updates
4. Select macOS Sequoia developer beta 3

It's that simple. You don't need a developer account at all, so anyone who wants to use macOS Sequoia can do so — although we advise waiting until at least the first public beta.

How to download and install macOS Sequoia public beta

The macOS Sequoia public beta is now available and you can download it by following the steps below:

1. Open Settings
2. Tap General, then Software Update
3. Enable Beta Updates
4. Select macOS Sequoia public beta 1

The wonders of macOS Sequoia await

With so many exciting features coming to the Mac this year, there's plenty for everyone to get excited about and we can't wait to try out new features like the ability to control your iPhone on your Mac using iPhone Mirroring.

It's worth noting that despite the availability of these betas, you should never install a macOS beta on your primary device and we advise against doing so. If you're adamant that you want to give the new features ago proceed at your own risk.

The future of Mac software has been revealed at WWDC 2024. macOS 15 has arrived and it will be powering all of the best Macs for the next year or so. The brand new operating system will improve your workflow thanks to Apple's brand new Apple Intelligence which aims to make your Mac even smarter and better equipped to tackle everything you throw at it using AI.

The most important announcement? The name: macOS Sequoia!

macOS 15: The headlines

macOS Sequoia includes many of the new features coming to iPhone and iPad including Math Notes and the changes in the Messages app. There's a new iPhone mirroring feature, as well as iPhone notifications on Mac.  You can access your iPhone directly from your Mac's dock, interacting with it wirelessly, and even using it with your trackpad and keyboard! Your iPhone's audio will even play through your Mac's speakers, and the screen remains locked, even in StandBy mode, making your iPhone the perfect Mac companion. 

macOS Sequoia also lets you move files and projects between your Mac and your iPhone.

There's a new window arranging tool that lets you position them in tiles. 

macOS Sequoia also features a new Passwords app that organizes your security alerts, passwords, and other login credentials. The app is also available on iPad, iPhone, Vision Pro, and Windows.

Safari has been upgraded with a new Highlight feature that picks helpful information from webpages such as directions, music, or a summary of a web page. 

macOS gaming gets a boost with Game Porting Toolkit 2, with improved support for Windows games and more advanced games on Mac. macOS is also getting some big new titles including Frostpunk 2 and Control. Assassin's Creed Shadows is also coming to Mac. 

macOS 15 - best enjoyed on:

We're covering the WWDC 2024 event as it happens. Follow WWDC 2024 LIVE here. Or check out our roundups for all the latest on the newly announced iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, visionOS 2, and Apple Intelligence.

Called “ambitious and compelling” by Apple internally, macOS 15 is expected to be announced next week at WWDC 2024 with some very impressive new features. However, Apple has managed to keep its lips sealed on many of the biggest changes due to launch. 

macOS Sonoma, which was announced at WWDC last year, proved to be a major update, with widgets on the desktop, faster Safari search, browsing profiles, a dedicated Game mode, and so much more. Though we only know a portion of what we are due to expect from macOS 15, it has to follow up a great OS update. Here are four of the most interesting changes we know are coming to macOS 15. 

AI-powered Siri

The biggest one on our list, yet also the most secretive — Siri is set to go through a huge revamp this year and Apple is even hinting at this in its marketing materials. Siri is tipped to receive a super-powered boost of AI, allowing it to more accurately perform tasks and even create its own shortcuts. Recent reports suggest it will be capable of monitoring your behavior and streamlining the work you do with unique functions. 

Eventually, this will roll out to all apps but, initially, these unique functions will only work for Apple’s own suite of applications. Expected to even get a built-in chatbot, you might be able to talk to Siri and request generated emojis, and more. If Apple AI is in line with its competition, this will be the feature worth watching out for. 

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Better Safari search

Tying into the new Siri upgrade, Apple is expected to announce a brand new feature for Safari. Leveraging Apple’s language-learning model (LLM), codenamed Ajax, Safari will be able to spot key phrases and topics on a page and summarize them to a reader, allowing someone to read big sections of text easily. Not only could this cut down reading time but it could be a good accessibility feature for those who require screen readers or have problems reading. 

Naturally, this could end up condensing information too much and getting parts of its translation wrong, but AIs that use LLMs are constantly growing and learning from past uses.

Apple Music

Apple is currently testing some awesome new features for the next update to Apple Music, with perhaps the most interesting being the new crossfade function. You will now be able to set the number of seconds for a fade out and fade in when crossfading between songs, it is reported. This gives you a little more control over the atmosphere of your favorite playlists. 

As well as this, reports are suggesting we will receive a new “Passthrough feature”, which is only available on “supported hardware”. We don’t quite know what this is just yet but it is being rumored to be the rebranding of Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos to a much more simple name. 

Smarter Calculator

Code-named “GreyParrot", the new Calculator revamp is anticipated to make the app so much more useful. You will reportedly be able to use it directly in Notes, and can even access a history of previous sums, which is great for doing taxes, working out budgets, or even playing board games. If you plan on using it with money or ingredients, it is tipped to get the ability to make automatic conversions with up-to-date figures too. 

It’s important to note that this isn’t just setting up the software for a better Calculator app but could allow room to combine Calculator with other apps and functions. It seems that, with the introduction of AI into the device, Shortcuts will become much more popular, and a consistent Calculator app to combine with those actions will make everyday use so much easier. Instead of having to use Siri to Google what a cup is in grams (it’s about 240g by the way), Apple devices could run that search on-device. Though we are expecting a lot more in the next macOS update yet, we know all these smaller changes will make for a better experience overall. 

It looks like macOS 15 will get a glow-up for some of its apps, alongside a small change to Siri on the Menu Bar.

According to Apple Insider, the next major software update for Macs, codenamed ‘GreyParrot’, will feature some user interface improvements. For example, the macOS System Settings app will have its sections reorganized into a priority list, rather than copying the same structure from the iOS Settings app. Other options will be moved into other sections, such as Wallpaper and Screensavers, although the report doesn’t specify exactly where.

As well as an update to System Settings, Siri’s icon in the menu bar will go from being a colored one to monochromatic. This way, it will match the other icons found in this location, rather than sticking out like a sore thumb.

But that’s not all of what could be coming to macOS 15. Brace yourself — a redesigned Calculator app is allegedly coming too. The latest update for Macs is expected to be announced at Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote on June 10. The company is also expected to announce iOS 18, the next major software update for supported iPhones, as well as iPadOS 18 and watchOS 11.

Small changes, with a mammoth name to come?

With iOS 18 reportedly being the headline announcement at WWDC due to the rumored AI features it will bring, such as improvements to Apple Music, we’re not expecting massive changes to macOS this year.

Apple’s macOS operating system has always had a unique name attached to every major update. When it was known as Mac OS X from 1999 to 2013, the naming convention saw each subsequent update named after big cats — Tiger, Leopard, and so on. From 2013 onwards, it switched to Californian landmarks, such as Yosemite and El Capitan.

The latest update, Sonoma, was released in September 2023, with its headline feature being Desktop Widgets. This moved the interactive app snippets from a sidebar to the Desktop. Apple has been known to trademark a bunch of names in advance of future potential releases, such as Mammoth and Diablo. macOS Diablo has a nice ring to it — especially if this upcoming update brings more improvements to gaming on a Mac.

Whatever the case, we’ll likely find out the full name for macOS 15 on June 10, where you can be sure that iMore will be covering everything announced that day.

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Time Machine is one of the most useful features of macOS. Something goes wrong on your MacBook or iMac? Dive into Time Machine and you can reverse that change and it’s like nothing ever happened. It’s a fantastically powerful backup tool that allows you to restore individual files or the whole mirror image of the drive. 

So, why did I go against the grain and perform a fresh install on my MacBook during one quiet Saturday? Call it foolishness or overly bold, but it actually worked out far better than I expected. Here’s a look at how it turned out for me and why I’d recommend others consider doing similar.

I was overly attached to Time Machine. Don't be me.

I’ve been using Macs for over 10 years now. I’m on my third Mac (a MacBook Pro 16-inch M1 Pro) and each new device, I’ve simply restored from a Time Machine backup. It’s been nice not to really think about it after too many years of dealing with Windows and regular reinstalls. 

However, it also made me lazy. Due to my work and curiosity, I installed a lot of apps, and sometimes, things went wrong. There was a strange time when I pressed the wrong button on DropBox (don’t ask) and ended up ‘losing’ ready access to my Documents folder. I still couldn’t explain what happened but I came up with a workaround involving iCloud and moved on. 

Almost as frequently as I introduced new tweaks (hello, right-click, and some neat automator additions), so came through some oddities that, of course, were saved to Time Machine with macOS blindly thinking it was helping.

The final macOS straw

I learned to live with such issues but they grew. A lot. Safari started freezing for no logical reason even after uninstalling as many extensions as possible. Sometimes, a Microsoft Auto Update error would come up and I couldn’t open Microsoft Teams or use my webcam for some reason. This was probably the final straw. I needed my webcam for meetings and for streaming purposes. Having to restart on a daily basis really didn’t feel like the macOS way of doing things. 

My MacBook Pro was starting to feel a little slow too. Was it actually getting too old now? Surely the M1 Pro chip was still competent? It’s only three years old and my work isn’t that demanding.

Doubts started creeping through. I considered spending a day trying to fix each individual issue but some brief research wasn’t exactly coming up with obvious solutions. There was always Time Machine but how far back did I need to go to be in the clear? 

So, I decided to go with the nuclear approach — start afresh.

All the prep, none of the hassle?

Thinking to Windows back in the day, I planned for the worst. I backed up all my documents to an external SSD drive but I also wrote a list of apps that needed to be reinstalled, kept a few links and passwords aside, and backed up my email (because I still use Mozilla Thunderbird). 

I set aside a full Saturday afternoon fearing the worst, grabbed my PS5 controller, and planned on playing Final Fantasy XIV while my laptop slowly reinstalled macOS. 

It took hardly any time. I didn’t time it but I’d guess about 10 minutes from start to finish. From searches, it seems I might have been one of the lucky ones but I was impressed nonetheless. 

Once reinstalled, I entered a few basic details like my country, name, and Apple ID. Access to macOS truly took hardly any time at all. 

Reinstalling apps took longer but I had my trusty list. Many of the apps were on the App Store so I could have just looked through my purchase history instead. 

The fiddlier parts came from realizing that I’d actually tweaked my macOS install more than I remembered. It sounds ridiculous now but I forgot that I had to enable right-click on the trackpad, so I quickly looked up how to do that. I also reversed the scroll wheel direction and changed how folders look. Perhaps weirdly, it was those minor details that felt the most annoying to get back to ‘normal’.

I also opened up Automator for the first time in 10 years so I could add a menu option to convert images to JPG at the touch of a button. Other than that, it was business as usual in a surprisingly fast time and with plenty of my Saturday afternoon left. 

Did it fix everything? Yes! All the issues I mentioned earlier were corrected and even better -- the laptop feels that little bit speedier. It could be a placebo effect but anything that means my two-year-old laptop feels new again is good with me. 

The next day, I had to print something and I was delighted to see macOS do the equivalent of "Ohh, you have this printer on the network. Yup, you got it" meaning it was no effort to print at all. 

One side quirk -- my screen time on my iPhone showed my screen time across all devices before I toggled it back to just my iPhone (I don’t want to know how much time I spend on my laptop).

My stressful Saturday afternoon completely vanquished in under an hour. Not bad at all! In many ways, far more effective than Time Machine.

How to perform a fresh reinstall

If you’d also like to give your Mac a fresh start, here’s what to do.

1. Backup your data! I used an external SSD drive but you can also use a USB stick if you prefer. Have a good think about what needs to be saved and look around your hard drive for inspiration
2. Go to Apple menu > System Settings > General and scroll down to Transfer or Reset.
3. Click Erase All Content and Settings
4. Follow the instructions on Erase Assistant. Select everything possible to be removed and be prepared to agree to it. A lot. You’ll also need to log out of your Apple ID on the system
5. When your MacBook restarts, you’ll see the Startup options appear. Select Reinstall macOS and then be prepared to enter your Wi-Fi password, your Apple ID, and so forth
6. Give it less time than you’d think (usually) and you’re all set

If you're looking for an app to manage your Gmail account, then Mimestream might be just what you're looking for.

Sadly, the app is currently exclusive to Google's email platform, while also being stuck on the Mac - but the latter is changing soon.

While Mimestream has had an iOS app on its long-term roadmap since it was in beta, the company is now actively building an iPhone and iPad version, as per the latest newsletter from founder Neil Jhaveri.

Jhaveri previously worked at Apple for seven years, working on Mail and Notes for Mac and iPad, so his expertise in the field makes an iOS version of Mimestream an exciting prospect.

"The highest priority enhancement we’re working on is bringing Mimestream to iOS, so you can have the same Mimestream experience on your iPhone and iPad! Mimestream for iOS will be just as fast, capable, and full of features as the macOS version," the newsletter says.

"This is our most ambitious project yet, and we’re taking advantage of several new technologies from Apple that we’re confident will make Mimestream even more powerful, stable, and faster in its next chapter as a multi-platform app."

When will Mimestream come to iOS?

Jhaveri notes that "great progress" has been made so far, but "there are still many important parts left to build".

The company is planning a TestFlight beta of up to 10,000 users before launch, and Jhaveri notes that users will be invited "based on the date that they purchased a subscription, with the earliest customers getting invited first".

On a personal level, I've been using Mimestream to manage a Gmail account for a couple of years, and it's about the only native Mac app for the service that feels close to offering the speed of the web-based version.

That's because it uses Google's Gmail API for speed and things like Gmail keyboard shortcuts, labels, filters, and more. It's also the only email app I've ever used where the search functionality is almost instant.

The app's roadmap can be found here, and also includes support for IMAP and JMAP email protocols under the "Considering" section. This would allow Mimestream to handle iCloud, Yahoo, or Fastmail accounts.

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It looks like Apple is going to update the Calculator app for all the best Macs. A new report from AppleInsider suggests that the macOS 15 Calculator is going to get a redesign to look more like the version from iOS 17, and also revamped with smarter abilities.

Code-named "GreyParrot," this isn't just a superficial nip and tuck. Apple's Calculator app in macOS is slated to become more advanced than ever. For starters, you'll be able to scribble down your maths whims directly into the new Math Notes feature, merging the best of the Calculator and Notes apps. And for anyone who’s ever lost the plot in a sea of numbers, the new history tape will be a game-changer. The app is likely to include a new sidebar showing all your past number-crunching antics, accessible with a simple click.

Unit conversion is also getting a much-needed revamp. Gone are the days of separate steps for mundane conversions. With the updated app, conversions and calculations coexist in harmony. And let’s not forget the currency conversions, relying on real-time internet data for those on-the-go financial decisions.

Design-wise, the app is shedding its square edges for a rounder, more iOS-like aesthetic, which is long overdue. And if you've ever been frustrated by the static window size, fret no more. The new adjustable window sizes and shape-shifting buttons mean your calculator can now be as big or as small as your heart (or screen) desires.

Part of a wider macOS overhaul

Of course, this new Calculator app is not confirmed by Apple. And, by the sounds of things, it's still in the testing phase. Not everything makes it through Apple's pearly gates. But should these features survive the cut, they're set to debut at WWDC 2024 on June 10. But this new app is set to be part of a wider macOS overhaul.

We don't know much about the upcoming macOS 15 just yet, but we do know it's in the pipeline and Apple's ready to unleash its AI capabilities not only for macOS but also for iOS 18. Things are also going to look different. Unfortunately, it isn't clear what might be changing, although leaker Mark Gurman points to "major new features and designs." We're expecting something the blends the look of iOS and visionOS – as that's set to be the direction for the next iPhone software.

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Ask most people what they think of macOS’s Stage Manager feature and they’ll probably tell you it’s a case of sadly unfulfilled potential. The desktop-management tool lets you group apps and windows together in a sidebar on your Mac desktop. Click one group and it swaps in for whatever windows you had open before, with the idea that it lets you organise your windows by task and bring a bit of order to the usual desktop chaos.

That’s the idea anyway, but Stage Manager has always felt a little half-baked. Got more than a handful of app groups open? One of them will simply disappear from the sidebar until you make room for it. Moving windows between Stage Manager groups is difficult and unintuitive. And there’s no sign of things improving.

In other words, Stage Manager is crying out for help. Intriguingly, an app called Stage View might be just what Stage Manager needs. It offers little window previews when you hover over a Stage Manager group, similar to what you get in Windows when you mouse over an app in the taskbar. But is it any good? Let’s find out.

Stage View: Price and availability

Stage View charges a $29.99/£24.75 one-off fee for lifetime access or $14.99/£12.40 for a one-year subscription. You can buy it from the developer’s website at noteifyapp.com/stage-view.

Stage View: What I love

Stage View’s previews are particularly handy if you have a Stage Manager group packed with apps and windows, as Apple’s small previews make it tricky to see what each group contains. With Stage View, you move your mouse pointer over the group and up pop little boxes for each window. At a glance, you know exactly what’s in each group.

Better yet, you can click a window in the preview pane and its group will be opened with your chosen window in focus, even if it was originally in the background. Stage View also lets you close or maximize windows right from the preview pane using the familiar traffic light buttons (although the minimize button didn’t work at all in my testing). These features can save you clicks that add up over time.

There are also a few helpful customization options. You can change the window preview size and appearance, adjust the interval between hovering over a group and its preview appearing, configure the app so that previews only show when you hold the Command key, and more. I found that using one of the latter two options was a good way to avoid cluttering my desktop with previews when I accidentally moused over a sidebar group.

Stage View: What I don’t love

Unfortunately, Stage View has its glitches. You need to ensure Stage Manager is enabled in macOS’s settings before you open Stage View, otherwise the app gets stuck and won’t load. Sometimes, you get a gray box with a loading icon that sits on top of all other windows and can’t be closed, requiring you to close Stage View entirely.

The previews can also break. They’re meant to show a flat, front-on view of each window, but often one or more previews will show an angled window of the type you see in the vanilla Stage Manager sidebar. Clicking the window in question, switching to a different group, then previewing the broken group again seems to (temporarily) fix the issue.

Elsewhere, there are a few features I’d love to see in Stage View. Right now, you can’t drag windows from a preview into other Stage Manager groups. I’m not sure how feasible implementing that is, but it would be great if it could be done.

Stage View also only shows up to three window previews per group, even if you have more apps and windows active. Like Stage Manager, this can mean you end up “losing” windows that are hidden from view.

Its price also means it’s not an instant buy considering its problems. I do appreciate the lifetime purchase option, though.

Ultimately, Stage View hasn’t quite restored my faith in Stage Manager. It does a decent job of enhancing it in one specific way, and it’s better than just going it alone with Stage Manager. But it has a few glitches that need to be fixed and a couple of features I’d love to see realized. If it can do that, I’d be able to recommend it more fully.

Stage View: Competition

I’m not aware of other apps that work exactly like Stage View, but some others have degrees of similarity. BetterTouchTool is a superb all-round utility for macOS gestures, mouse button tweaks and more, and it has some Stage Manager features. It costs $10 (about £8) for a two-year license. Another option is window-management app Rectangle, which is more limited than BetterTouchTool but also works with Stage Manager. It’ll set you back $9.99 (about £8).

Stage View: Should you buy it?

You should buy this if…

• You want to see previews of your Stage Manager groups’ contents
• You’re keen to give Stage Manager another chance
• You’d like to close or maximize windows from the Stage Manager sidebar

You shouldn’t buy this if…

• You get easily peeved by app glitches
• You’ve already long since given up on Stage Manager
• You want a more wide-ranging Stage Manager enhancement app

Stage View: Verdict

Stage view is a handy utility that attempts to fix up Stage Manager’s sidebar. It works well enough, but needs a little more love to make it a must-have app.

Finder is the bedrock on which macOS is built, and it has some great features. You can view Finder windows as icons, lists, in columns, and more. There’s the Launchpad for launching apps, Mission Control for taking command of your Desktop, and newer features like Desktop Widgets and Stage Manager too.

But there are some features for which Finder in the upcoming macOS 15 update is crying out. Things we’d all find useful when using our desktop or notebook Mac, but which simply aren’t there. With our help, you can download and install four great third-party apps that give you exciting features that really should be included in Finder when the next macOS is revealed at WWDC on June 10.

More space for Menulets

Are you frustrated by not having enough room in your Desktop’s menu bar for all your app and feature icons? This isn’t often a problem with a 24-inch iMac or a similarly-sized monitor, but if you use a current M3 MacBook Air, with its space-hogging notch around the camera, you’re likely to run out of space. That’s where BarTender comes in.

Bartender 5 lets you take control of your menu bar, the strip above the desktop on your Mac’s main screen, cramming in more Menulets (as the menu bar icons are known) than would otherwise be possible. This is achieved through a BarTender icon in the menu bar. Click it for a sub-menu showing the other available icons. It’s highly configurable; you can choose whether a Menulet sits in the main menu bar or the hidden menu bar, and you can even stylize the bar itself too.

How to use Bartender

Click on the BarTender icon to see the currently hidden Menulets. Right-click on it for a menu that gives access to its Settings, among other things. You can search your Menulets here; great if you’ve forgotten what it looks like.

In BarTender’s Settings, you can choose which Menulets are always visible, which are hidden until you click the BarTender icon and, if there are Menulets you never need, you can add them to the Always Hidden list.

You can even set up ‘Triggers’, which display a set of menu bar items when certain conditions are met such as when on battery power or charging, when connected to or disconnected from WiFi and more. Make your own too.

Off-Screen Shelf Space

However big your screen, your desk space is limited. It soon gets cluttered with files, folders and other such icons. Wouldn’t it be great if you could store some off your Desktop, on an off-screen shelf that appeared when summoned but disappeared when you want to get on with something? Unclutter might be just what you’re looking for.

Unclutter lets you keep selected icons on such a shelf, which is revealed when you drag your pointer to the top of the screen and do a two-fingered swipe down. You can keep apps, data, and folders there, and also aliases in case you don’t want to move an item out of its current location. Clicking on an icon in Unclutter opens or launches its app, just as if it were on your Desktop, and you can use Quick Look on Unclutter icons too.

As well as being a great shelf for icons, Unclutter stores your last ten clipboard copy-and-pastes too. Click on one of them to restore it to your clipboard. You can even edit and favorite items in this Clipboard History. It also has a great Notes section, where you can make and save a short note without having to open your Notes App. Unclutter Notes can be searched, listed, and deleted.

How to use Unclutter

Open Unclutter by moving your pointer to the top of the screen and swiping down with two fingers. It also has a Menulet you can use to show and hide the Unclutter window, open the Preferences and more.

With Unclutter’s Preferences, you can change the way you summon the window, set where items stored in Unclutter are kept on your Mac, exclude apps from the Clipboard History to keep sensitive data private and more.

You can drag the dividing lines between Unclutter’s three sections to change their respective sizes. Also, when the window is open, you can hover over the tab at the bottom and click the cog that’s revealed for an options menu.

Keep Your Mac From Sleeping

When your Mac has been idle for a while, it goes to sleep to save energy. In Sleep Mode the screen is turned off, the processor goes into power-saving mode, Bluetooth is deactivated and various other functions are suspended. But what if you want to keep it awake while you’re away from your keyboard? There’s a quick and easy way to do just that.

Amphetamine sits in your menu bar, out of the way until you click it. When you do, you get a menu that lets you start a new session, preventing your Mac from going to sleep. You can have this last until you switch it off, for a set time, or until a chosen app is quit.

How to use Amphetamine

You can set Amphetamine to keep your Mac awake until you switch this off manually, for a set number of minutes or hours, or until a running app is quit. This is useful if you have a background app you don’t want to be interrupted.

Using Amphetamine’s settings, you can set up or switch off Notifications to tell you when an Amphetamine session starts or ends, set sounds for the beginning and end of a session, set reminders for ongoing sessions, and more.

When Amphetamine is active, the horizontal line on its Menulet icon turns vertical. Click on it for a menu that lets you turn it off, and set whether the current session allows the display to go to sleep or not.

Snatch That Text

It’s not difficult to copy text to your clipboard these days. If it’s in an editable document, there’s no problem at all. You can snatch text from a PDF easily enough, and even from a photograph using Live Text. But what about those places where you can’t highlight or copy text?

With TextSniper, you can copy text from anywhere on the screen. If you can read it, you can copy it. This includes places from where you wouldn’t usually be able to copy, such as YouTube videos, images, online courses, screencasts, presentations, webpages, video tutorials and more. You just press SHIFT-CMD-2 on your keyboard, and pointer turns into a cursor. Click and hold the mouse button and drag the cursor over this text and it’s copied to your clipboard. Simple!

How to snipe text

As well as using a keyboard command, you can also activate TextSniper from the menu bar. Look for the Menulet icon that looks like a rifle sight’s crosshairs, and click on it. You can also open the Settings from here.

Using TextSniper’s Settings, you can have the app launch at login, set its primary language, set up custom words the app might otherwise have trouble recognizing, customize its keyboard shortcuts, and more.

You can also use TextSniper to read text using text-to-speech. Choose the option from the Menulet’s menu. You can also use it to read barcodes and QR codes, again from the menu found by clicking on the Menulet.

The Trash can is an overlooked feature of macOS, but it’s a pretty key element of any Mac. After all, if you end up losing a bunch of vital files because you forgot to take them out of the Trash, you’ll know how important understanding it is.

Using it is straightforward. You can drag a file onto the Trash can icon, right-click an item and pick Move to Trash, or select the file and press Cmd-Del. You can then empty the Trash when you’re ready. But there are plenty of extra features and little-known tricks that can save you a bunch of time and hassle in the long run. Mastering them can be an excellent way to use your Mac more efficiently.

Empty the Trash

It’s easy to just dump unwanted files into the Trash and forget about them, but just like an overflowing trash can in real life, this isn’t exactly an ideal situation. If your Mac’s Trash is full of very large files, it can seriously eat into your computer’s storage, so emptying it frees up valuable space for things you actually want to use.

To empty the Trash:

1. Right-click the Trash icon in your Mac’s Dock
2. Select Empty Trash, then click Empty Trash on the confirmation box
3. Alternatively, open the Trash and click the Empty button in the top right
4. Or open Finder and choose Finder > Empty Trash
5. The above steps will remove everything in the Trash. To just delete a handful of items, open the Trash, select one or more items, then right-click them and pick Delete Immediately > Delete

Doing this manually can be a hassle, especially if you don’t remember to do it very often. Instead, you can set your Mac to handle everything for you:

1. Open Finder
2. In your Mac’s menu bar, select Finder > Settings, then choose the Advanced tab
3. Tick the “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days” checkbox

Now, anything in your Trash will automatically be deleted after 30 days, without you having to lift a finger.

Restore files sent to the Trash

Once a file is in your Trash, it’s not the end of the road – you can restore it back to where it was if you change your mind.

1. Open the Trash, right-click the file you want to save, then select Put Back from the menu (or select it and go to File > Put Back in the menu bar)
2. Alternatively, drag and drop your chosen file(s) from the Trash to your desktop or into a different folder
3. Or select the file in the Trash and press Cmd-Del. Although it might seem like this would permanently delete it, this shortcut will actually put the file back to wherever it was before you deleted it
4. If you’ve only just dragged a file to the Trash and have done nothing since, just press Cmd-Z to put the file back where it was before you moved it to the Trash

More shortcuts and ideas

There’s a lot more you can do with the Trash in macOS. For instance, there are a bunch of helpful keyboard shortcuts that can speed the whole process up:

1. Select a file or files and press Cmd-Del to move them to the Trash
2. Shift-Cmd-Del will empty the trash, with a confirmation dialog box asking if you’re sure
3. Opt-Shift-Cmd-Del, meanwhile, will empty the trash without asking for your confirmation first

There are other ways to skip the confirmation pop-up window:

1. Similar to the third step above, if you right-click the Trash and hold Opt when you select Empty Trash, you won’t see the confirmation box.
2. The previous step requires you to hold Opt every time. If you want to automatically skip the confirmation without needing to hold Opt, open Finder and go to Finder > Settings in the menu bar, then select the Advanced tab. Here, untick the “Show warning before emptying the Trash” checkbox

One more thing: You can’t open a file in the Trash without restoring it first, but you can preview it. Select the file, then press the Space bar to bring up Quick Look. That might help you work out if you want to restore it or if it’s safe to be permanently deleted.

The M3 MacBook Air is a fantastic laptop (we said so in our review) that's easily worth picking up for the majority of Mac users who don't need the power or significant heft of the MacBook Pro lineup.

And yet, as with prior models of Apple laptops that featured the M2 chip, the MacBook Air is getting pretty hot. How hot, you ask? Well, 114 degrees Celsius.

That comes via the team at Max Tech, testing whether the fanless design can keep up with the power of the M3. After all, no fan in the chassis means quieter running and one less thing to drain the battery.

On the other hand, we saw with the M2 how it would build up heat and then throttle performance since it wasn't able to cool itself with an active cooling solution.

Max Tech's 15-inch M3 MacBook Air's core temperature reached that staggering figure of 114 degrees Celsius via a 3DMark benchmarking test, with 46 degrees Celsius on the chassis.

You can see the video below.

What are the risks of thermal throttling?

The good news is that the Mac will naturally bring its temperature down to avoid causing damage to itself (and others). It dropped to around 100 degrees Celsius, which is about what you'd expect from similar devices, but doing so can cause a performance drop in tougher workloads.

In our review, our reviewer said "[the fanless design] can lead to some thermal throttling under extreme load, but I never noticed anything to the detriment of my work. And that silence is golden."

Should you be worried about the M3 MacBook Air being a danger to use, though? It's unlikely, but the Pro is usually a better option for sustained performance across tasks like video editing and conversion.

We'll keep an eye on further developments in any case, but it's something to consider when finding the best MacBook for you.

More from iMore

• The 10 best Mac tips and tricks you need to know about
• Don't expect a folding iPhone any time soon — 20-inch foldable MacBook is the only product with a "clear development schedule" according to top insider
• Your brand new M3 MacBook Air will receive a macOS update the moment it gets through the door

Apple’s macOS operating system is full of clever tips and tricks that you might never have heard of. Master a few of them, though, and you’ll be able to ramp up your productivity and save yourself a bunch of time.

With that in mind, we’ve put together our favorite Mac tips and tricks to help you get more from macOS. Here are our top picks.

That's it; our favorite Mac tips and tricks on macOS Sonoma will help you save some time, make your life easier, and give you a new outlook on the way you use your Apple devices. Using these tips and tricks will make even the best Macs better.

Apple certainly loves its widgets these days. After years of keeping them confined to the Dashboard and Notification Centre on macOS, they've made it to the big time on the desktop after appearances on iPhone and iPad.

They're more powerful than ever before, too, able to be arranged just about anywhere and much more open than they've ever been to developers. Whether it's a to-do list always a glance away, tracking the battery life of your peripherals, or adding some calming white noise, you may be surprised at how many widgets you have access to.

Here are my favorite macOS Sonoma widgets, and how to add them.

AirBuddy

In all honesty, I'd hoped I wouldn't need to add AirBuddy to my Mac anymore, but since Apple's own AirPods-switching technology is still not quite as reliable as I'd like, it stays - and rightly so. 

It's a great little app that adds additional support like keyboard shortcuts for instantly pairing with your favorite AirPods or Beats, and the menu for connecting to them is customizable so you can see it anywhere on your screen.

It'll also let you know the battery life of your other devices, as seen in the example here where it shows my iPhone, iPad, and AirPods.

Be Focused

A recent addition to this list, Be Focused comes with just one widget - a handy "timer start" button for kicking off a Pomodoro timer.

By default, it's set for 25 minutes, which is enough to get a task done and then take a short break. I've been using it more regularly and having it just a click away makes me much more inclined to trigger it before starting a task.

Dark Noise

One of the best-looking and similarly simplest apps on this list, Dark Noise is packed with a variety of white noise options that range from coffee shop ambiance to the hum of a starship engine.

Not only is the app meticulously designed, but there are plenty of widgets on offer that have been given the same attention to detail.

Select sounds with a single click, or just hit play/pause from your desktop. You can add multiple sounds at once, too, letting you create the perfect soundscape to relax or get work done.

Drafts

Drafts might need little introduction to longtime Mac users. It's the place "where text starts", and it's hard to argue with that description, lofty as it may sound.

It's a plain text editor that offers a whole host of customizable 'actions' that can send that text just about anywhere you need it to, or it's just a great note-taking app that syncs across devices.

I use Drafts to kickstart article ideas and jot down notes, and that makes having a widget on my screen to quickly start writing or dictating a godsend on a busy day. Add to that a place to find your recent drafts, or search your existing ones, and there's little else you can ask for from a widget.

Parcel

If you send or receive parcels or tracked mail with any regularity, Parcel is a fantastic utility that makes tracking items a breeze. With notifications, auto-courier switching, and even automatic integration with Amazon, it's a great service on all Apple platforms (there's even a web-based version).

If you're expecting a deluge of deliveries, the Parcel widget can let you know at a glance where they are, meaning you don't have to dive into individual courier sites and input multiple tracking numbers. It's not the sort of thing everyone will find a need for, but if you do, it may just be worth a look.

Things 3

What can I say about Things 3 that hasn't been said already? An app that helped me launch my business, and one that ensures I get what I need to done every day, Things is a to-do list that's constantly pinned to the side of my screen.

It covers multiple projects, ranging from picking my son up from school, to work, to wedding planning, and having it there, and with a series of options for what it shows, it is a great way to help stay focused.

Weather

There are some fantastic weather apps in the Apple ecosystem, but I use the stock one from Apple and it's served me well across all my devices.

There are plenty of Forecast widget options, and sunrise and sunset, but I just like having the temperature visible in the corner of my screen.

You can also set multiple widgets, with one for each location. I travel regularly for work, so it's nice to see what I have coming up so I can prepare for it.

How to add widgets in macOS Sonoma

Adding widgets is easy in macOS Sonoma, but there's more granularity than you may expect.

Right-click the desktop and select "Edit Widgets..." to bring up the gallery, complete with recommendations. Once you've selected, just drag the widget to the part of the screen you want it to go to.

It's also worth noting that under System Settings, you can find additional Widget options in the Desktop & Dock section.

Here you can adjust the color of them (my examples here are in Monochrome), as well as toggle iPhone widgets on and off.

iPhone widgets, at least in my experience, don't feel quite as easy to use, often requiring multiple attempts to load. As a Spotify user, that's a shame, but hopefully it gets a native Mac widget soon.

Just one week after someone managed to get a Game Boy emulator running on Apple Vision Pro, another Apple fan has managed to get classic macOS on their Nintendo DS. This is how they did it.

Originally spotted by Michael MJD, all you need is a Nintendo DS, an SD card, an R4 ROM-reading card, and some downloadable data. Ironically, the tutorial shows you what to do on a Windows PC, but the basic steps are the same. First, you need to download Mini vMac DS, which is Mac OS formatted for DS. You have to move this to the card, then hunt down a few more bits of data. 

From here, grab a Macintosh Plus ROM file and disk images — vMac DS will have text files showing you where to place them in the folder. As pointed out by MJD, you shouldn’t attempt to run 7.5.5 or later as it runs poorly on a Nintendo DS and 6.0.8 is the best version of the software for it right now. You can find the video below for a full run down of how to get the software working and the small changes you have to make to your root file to get it running. 

Does macOS run well on Nintendo DS?

As warned above, macOS 7.5.5 runs poorly, with slow movement and awkward navigation. It does have some cool control shortcuts like being able to operate the top bar with the directional pad but the Nintendo DS’s hardware is just not powerful enough to get the most out of the software. System 6.0.8 is a significantly slicker experience, with much quicker navigation and general use. 

In MJD’s video, he shows off that you can even play MacPong (a simple tennis game), Sokoban (a puzzle game about moving boxes), and MacPaint. Though users will likely try this out for its novelty and nostalgia rather than do any kind of proper computing, it seems to work surprisingly well given it’s on a 20-year-old piece of portable gaming hardware. If you’re nostalgic for older Mac devices, this seems like a fun way to kill an afternoon. 

More from iMore

• Game Boy games now working on Apple Vision Pro, with intuitive gyro controls
• Original Game Boy gets torn down by iFixit on 30th anniversary
• macOS Sonoma review: Top new features ranked

An audio bug in macOS hasn’t been fixed in 21 years, despite Apple being aware of it, and users posting their frustrations with the bug throughout the years.

According to developer Fabian on X, this bug causes the audio balance on a Mac to shift to the left or right channel of a speaker. There are two temporary fixes — install Balance Lock from the App Store, or manually shift the balance to the center by going to System Settings > Sound > Output > Audio Balance.

It was originally thought that this was a recent bug, but it turns out that this audio issue first appeared in 2003 in Mac OS X 10.2, as confirmed by Apple from one of its (now archived) Support pages.

Other users on X have since commented about how they were worried that their own hearing was to blame. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment to find out if this 21-year-old bug will be fixed in a future update of macOS Sonoma.

Don’t hold your breath on this bug being fixed soon

There’s hope here for an eventual fix: Apple has been in a similar situation before with bugs being fixed after a long period of time. 

According to TechCrunch, when iOS 17.1 came out in October 2023, this fixed a privacy issue that had been present since iOS 14, released in 2020. The feature prevents wireless routers and access points from learning your iPhone’s ‘MAC address’ by creating a dummy address — this is a unique ID that identifies your device and can be used to track your iPhone if needed. Despite the good intent of this useful feature, it wouldn’t create a dummy address, which would put your iPhone at risk. It was an important bug that had to be fixed, and after three years, Apple did. 

Yet an audio bug is clearly a low priority for the company, as it’s 21 years since this bug was discovered. This does, however, go against another attribute that Apple is proud to be passionate about, as well as privacy — its focus on user experience. Having this audio bug occur at random moments is a big frustration to many users who have experienced it throughout the years, and can hinder their enjoyment of using a Mac as they try to listen to their content.

To note, Apple offers a Bounty program for developers to let the company know about any security or privacy vulnerabilities. If a submitted issue is discovered by Apple to be something that the company needs to fix, a monetary reward is sent to those who found it. Clearly, Apple has different priorities for certain bugs — but as this audio issue is detrimental to how a Mac is used for listening to movies, music, and more, it should be resolved, especially so long after it first being discovered.

Until we hear back from Apple, the two temporary fixes — installing Balance Lock or going to Sound in System Settings on your Mac, will have to do for now.

More from iMore

• How to place and edit widgets on your Mac's desktop with macOS Sonoma
• Listen to The iMore Show
• How to turn on Apple Music Lossless Audio and Dolby Atmos on Mac

The public beta of macOS Sonoma 14.3 has arrived — but don’t expect anything new. Compared to 14.2, which brought new features such as iMessage Key Verification, there’s little to see here.

For those unaware, Apple’s beta program allows any user to install an upcoming update that’s currently being tested. These may bring new features, such as new emojis in macOS Ventura 13.3, or new apps like Journal in iOS 17.2.

Sometimes, however, a new update simply brings bug fixes — and that’s exactly what you’ll find with macOS Sonoma 14.3. Looking at the release notes, it seems to be a very small update that resolves an issue with transactions on the Mac App Store.

Regardless of how minor this update is though, we always recommend updating to the latest version if you’re running the beta. Once this is released to everyone running macOS Sonoma, you go to the Apple logo in the Menu Bar > System Settings > Software Update, where 14.3 will be available to download and install.

For 14.4, could widgets on the desktop be fixed please? — iMore’s take

I’ve been enjoying macOS Sonoma since it came out in September 2023 — mainly thanks to desktop widgets. For the first couple of months, they worked well and proved how useful they were. I was able to look at my to-do list in a Things 3 widget, or have a huge Photos widget of my dog, Jolly, which changes every hour.

Since installing the 14.1 update, however, some widgets simply refuse to load. So instead, I’ll have a square widget with nothing in it — or I’ll have a desktop with no widgets at all. It dampens the excitement I had for widgets, ever since they were showcased back at WWDC 2023.

Apple, if these can be fixed in the inevitable 14.4 update, all will be forgiven. I’ll finally go back to checking off my to-do list from a widget without having to launch Things 3 from my dock.

More from iMore

• macOS Sonoma review: Top new features ranked
• How to (finally) place and edit widgets on your Mac's desktop with macOS Sonoma
• Best Mac apps in 2024 so far

If you’ve missed the skeuomorphic design that went away in 2013 with macOS Yosemite, this app brings some of that back to the Menu Bar, and more.

Called Lickable Menu Bar, you can download the app for free from the Mac App Store, which gives you the option to transform the Menu Bar into how it looked in three previous macOS versions. Furthermore, you can have the app launch once you log in, so the look of the MenuBar will stay that way without having to prompt it.

Mavericks gives it a shadow, Catalina enables a flat style, and Glossy transforms the Menu Bar into a skeuomorphic look from 2004, much like Mac OS X Tiger. For those unfamiliar with Skeuomorphic, this design mimics real-world objects with depth and colors in a digital interface and was used heavily by Apple before 2013.

Lickable performs a simple task, but it does it well — however, it does make us wonder if the design tropes from macOS Tiger, such as skeuomorphism, should come back in some way.

Something old, something new — iMore’s Take

Trying out Lickable on my MacBook Pro, it took 30 seconds to change the look of my MenuBar to one that looks like 10.4 Tiger from 2004. Incidentally, that was the first version of Mac OS X that I ever used with my Intel Core Duo iMac, back in 2006 — so I was hit with a wave of nostalgia once Lickable did its thing.

I’ve always had a soft spot for skeuomorphism — mainly due to how good the design looked on my iPhone 4 in 2010. Granted, the flat design that came in iOS 7 and macOS Yosemite was needed, but it felt like some of the charm went away. That real-world look, especially when it came to the Calendar and Notes apps, really popped out on a Retina display — more so when the Retina MacBook Pro arrived in 2012, and all those textures looked crystal-clear on its 16-inch display.

Yet having an app like Lickable can help to bring some of that back to my Mac, as Apple is likely never bring that iconic look back. It does what it says on the tin — so if you’re curious to bring some shade to the MenuBar, try it out and see what you think.

More from iMore

• 16-inch M3 MacBook Pro review
• Why Things 3, MacWhisper, and Whisky are my best Mac apps of 2023
• The best of iMore 2023

For the past few years, I’ve tested countless apps on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Recently, however, I’ve noticed that there’s been a resurgence in Mac apps.

This could be down to a few factors — the move to Apple silicon for the Mac, which uses similar Apple-produced chips to the current iPhone and iPad models, allows developers to focus on multiple platforms with the same chips, making development far more streamlined. 

And there’s also the rise of OpenAI and ChatGPT. The AI platform exploded in 2023, and has led to a boon of apps — so much so that macOS has been inundated with new apps powered by AI.

With this in mind, there are three apps that I’ve kept coming back to throughout 2023, which I simply need to talk about and explain why they’re my favorite macOS apps of the year.

Things 3

Until 2023, Cultured Code’s to-do app was solely on my iPhone, and it was great. Being able to quickly create short tasks, group a bunch of them into a project, and then check them off in the app or on a widget on the home screen, was fantastic. Its user interface and features are consistently simple but powerful — it’s a trait that more apps should take note of.

So when I decided that it’d be easier to view these tasks on my Mac, it was almost like rediscovering Things 3 all over again. macOS Sonoma only supercharged this, thanks to widgets on the desktop.

I love Things 3 on my iPhone, so having Things 3 on my Mac, and all of the tasks appearing across my devices thanks to iCloud sync was very helpful.

I can also create other projects for the weekend, such as ones that revolve around my newborn son’s bedroom. I can now tweak, add, and remove all the decorating tasks for his room on my Mac.

I’m not sure what a Things 4 could entail or how it could further improve my productivity — but rediscovering an app just by using it on another device is rare. So, whatever Cultured Code may be planning, I can’t wait to see what could be coming over the horizon.

MacWhisper

I’ve written about Jordi Bruin’s app a few times this year, and for good reason. For those unaware, this macOS app uses OpenAI’s Whisper transcription model to take audio files and translate them into a text file. So if you host a podcast, for example, and you want a readable copy of what was said for someone who may be hearing impaired, MacWhisper makes it easy.

I’ve used it for The iMore Show and for projects I’m working on at weekends, and it’s been a savior for me. When writing my book in 2020, I spent countless hours transcribing Zoom interviews. I did try to use some transcription services, but it was more miss than hit when they would send me a text file with gibberish.

Yet since the first version of MacWhisper was released in February (now on its sixth version), its transcription results have been very impressive. At the time of writing, you can select multiple audio files and throw them into the app, where all of them will be transcribed. If you use an Apple silicon Mac, the app can use the GPU so that transcriptions are between two to three times faster than before.

It’s an app that only gets better every month, with every minor and major release. I’m looking forward to what MacWhisper 10 may bring this time next year — but for now, it’s an app that’s simply become essential in my workflow.

Whisky

Gaming on the Mac has always intrigued me. Granted, for years now, Apple has consistently promised that it’s serious about gaming. I remember being in awe back in 2010 when I could play ports of Half-Life 2 and Portal, thanks to Steam coming to the Mac. Yet in recent years, I’ve had to use Windows, either through Boot Camp on an Intel Mac or through Parallels Desktop on my Apple silicon MacBook Pro, to play some games that aren’t on macOS.

So when Apple announced its ‘Game Porting Kit’ for macOS Sonoma in June, which essentially converts a game to the Mac, I was very intrigued. Soon after, a free app called Whisky was released, which packages this into an easy-to-use interface where you can easily boot up your games from a Steam library and play as normal.

The results are no less than stunning. After plugging in an external mouse, I was playing Resident Evil 3 at full speed, avoiding the Nemesis monster with ease. All of the graphic options were set to high, too — and I only experienced some slowdown when the game changed to a cutscene.

Even a demo of TEKKEN 8, released on December 21, runs at full speed with everything set to Medium.

The app is still being updated, allowing you to ‘pin’ certain games to the home screen of Whisky, so you’ve got easy access to load up Unreal Tournament 2004 or something else.

Unofficially, thanks to Whisky, gaming on the Mac hasn’t been this good in years.

Well folks, they did it — the Apple silicon transition that kicked off with the M1 back in 2020 is finally complete. Apple’s chips are now powering every desktop, all-in-one, laptop, and Pro-level machine in the lineup.

Yes, it was a big year for Apple’s Mac hardware, and the platform many once feared was winding down has seen new life. This year saw the debut of seven new Mac models, including M2 models that were superseded by M3 ones within months of release.

That shows how quickly Apple is moving with its Apple silicon advances, and while the software side with macOS Sonoma was a little less exciting, it still brought plenty of long-awaited features.

Here’s our rundown of the year 2023 for the Mac platform.

Back to the Max

It struck me as strange that the M2 chipset introduced in 2022, came to the iPad Pro before it arrived on the Mac mini.

Thankfully, Apple rectified that in January with the release of the M2 Mac mini, alongside the M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pro models.

The latter was then overhauled again in November as Apple unveiled three chips at once, with the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max all being made available in MacBook Pros. That’s a pretty quick upgrade, and while you may be salty if you picked up an M2 model at the start of the year, you’ll no doubt still be enjoying the performance on offer.

June also saw the arrival of three new machines. The 15-inch MacBook Air M2 and the Mac Studio M2 were welcome arrivals: the 15-inch Air M2 is an easy laptop to recommend for just about anyone, while the M2 Mac Studio fixes the noise and Bluetooth connectivity issues that some users had with the M1 version, while providing tons of power.

The third new model to join that lineup was the Mac Pro, which certainly divided opinion. It’s still pricey, and 99% of users likely have no need for such power, but I was hoping for a fresh industrial design. Many potential customers were put off by the change to the available build specs, though, meaning RAM is now capped at 192GB rather than the wild 1.5TB available in the 2019 model.

Those are still astronomical RAM amounts (with prices to match), but if you need that sheer brute strength it’s something to think about. You also can’t upgrade the new Mac Pro’s memory after the fact, and benchmarks don’t put it too far ahead of the much smaller, and much more affordable, Mac Studio.

Still, as I alluded to earlier, Apple finished the year strongly with the M3 reveal. Alongside the aforementioned MacBook Pro models, there was a new M3 iMac, and while it’s not changed anything from the M1 version other than the new chip, Apple did confirm there are no plans for anything larger. Pour one out for the dream of a 27-inch iMac, I guess.

The ‘Scary Fast’ event also saw the Grim Reaper come for the 13-inch MacBook Pro, finally removing the Touch Bar from the Mac lineup. RIP.

Widgets, widgets everywhere

On the software side, it feels strange that the macOS Sonoma feature I’ve enjoyed the most since the update arrived is its screensavers — but they look beautiful.

Elsewhere, Apple reeled off a list of solid features that aren’t exactly headliners. Features such as the ability to have multiple Safari users, being able to add web apps to the dock, and improved search within Messages are welcome, but they’re unlikely to convince a Windows user to jump the fence.

Game Mode, combined with the M3’s focus on ray tracing, could be a sizeable step towards making the Mac a gaming platform to be reckoned with, but that remains to be seen.

Speaking of things to look forward to, Apple rolled out Sonoma 14.2 in early December, which added the new PDF autofill feature. Whether it’ll rival third-party options like PDF Expert it’s hard to say, but as someone that signs a fair amount of NDAs in the Preview app, I’m excited to see if it stacks up.

One of the features I was most looking forward to with macOS Sonoma was the new Desktop Widgets tool, but the feature still doesn’t feel ready. It’s not always clear which apps are from your phone, which apps are native, and which are interactive. Here’s hoping this gets better in time.

I’m much more positive about the video conferencing features that stack nicely onto the Continuity Camera so I can use my iPhone’s excellent camera instead of the MacBook’s built-in one. While triggering fireworks with two thumbs up is a novelty the first few times and is quickly forgotten about, the presenter mode for screen-sharing is a delight.

A strong year for Mac

It was not only a good year for the Mac platform, but a busy one. While the Mac Pro was underwhelming, the arrival of new M2 and M3 devices, including the fantastic 15-inch M2 MacBook Air certainly made up for it.

And while macOS Sonoma isn’t the most exciting update we’ve seen in years, it further evolves the Mac ecosystem in small but welcome ways.

macOS is Apple's oldest platform, but that doesn't mean it's not able to spring plenty of surprises.

In recent years, we've seen Apple lean heavily on features from around its product ecosystem to improve the Mac experience, taking inspiration from iOS and watchOS software, and iPhone and Apple Watch hardware, to push what a modern Mac can do. That's led to the arrival of things like unlocking a Mac with an Apple Watch, Continuity Camera with an iPhone, and so much more. 

But is there anything left that Apple steal for macOS now? I'd argue there's not much, but there are certainly some ideas for what could feature in the follow up to macOS Sonoma. 

With this in mind, here is my macOS 15 wishlist as we head into 2024.

App Library

I've set up my Applications folder in a way that it always shows in my Dock, and that's fine for the most part. I also try and do my best to keep many macOS tools (see our list of the best macOS utility apps for inspiration) in a separate folder to avoid clutter. 

The idea is that I can see my apps with a single click, without needing to open Launchpad and see a whole host of apps that otherwise lack an easy way of filing them. 

An App Library has been a huge help on my iPhone, letting me instantly track down something I've just installed, categorize everything I have on my device, and just keep areas like my Home Screen tidy. 

I'd love for something similar on my Mac so I can easily find what I need. For now, I'll have to make do with third-party solutions like Alfred to launch them.

Revised window management

The macOS operating system we all use has been around since 2000, so it makes sense for window management to take a step forward. 

It's long been the Mac's Achilles heel, and while I use Magnet to wrangle my apps, I'm desperate for a first-party option because, as much as Stage Manager has improved on iPad, Stage Manager for Mac feels lackluster.

It's not that it's bad, it just takes up too much screen real estate, and it's much clunkier than the keyboard shortcuts I've conditioned myself to use instead. 

Will Apple ever relent and offer a built-in window management system that isn't reliant on a whole new workflow? It's closer than it's ever been with Shortcuts letting us use custom layouts, but something where we can drag windows into shape a la Windows Snap, would be amazing.

A password app

OK, this may not sound that exciting, but have you tried to dig out your passwords from iCloud Keychain on Mac recently? It's a little bit of a nightmare. 

Much of that is likely down to how long it's been baked into the OS, pushed deeper and deeper by every subsequent layer. It's not all that intuitive, especially from a privacy and security-focused company that loves to tell you "It just works". 

While this is easily rectified by using a third-party service like 1Password (seriously, it's so well integrated into the OS on all of Apple's platforms it's become a must-have app), Apple still hasn't seen fit to add its own take on a password manager app. 

While the company wanted to shy away from passwords entirely with Passkeys, most of us still need our traditional logins — so come on, Apple, let us get to them a bit more easily. 

Five More Things...

While there are plenty of features I want from macOS in the future, not all of them are major enough to warrant an entry above. 

With this in mind, here's a short list of smaller features I'd still love to see:

• Make it easier to manage pictures without using the Photos app
• Improve automatic AirPods switching between devices
• Make Stage Manager more useful by ensuring the left-hand bar takes up less of the screen
• Give us a native Health app that makes data easily shareable from the Mac so we can attach reports to our Doctors etc.
• Please, Apple, just fix the memory leaks.

Is there anything from macOS you've been wanting to see? Let me know in the iMore Forums if there's something I've missed!

Apple unveiled macOS Sonoma back in June of this year and then released it to the world in September alongside other updates to the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV software. It's been steadily improving the Mac's software ever since, and the latest update is now available for download after going through its own weeks-long beta program.

That new software is macOS Sonoma 14.2 and it's ready for download on all compatible Macs now via the usual System Settings software update mechanism. The size of the download will vary depending on the version of macOS that you're currently running, but once you download and install macOS Sonoma 14.2 there are a number of improvements that you can look forward to.

In this release, Apple has focused on a few key areas for improvement, although there are tweaks to other aspects of the macOS software as well. The main areas to have benefited include the Weather, Clock, and Messages apps as well as tweaks to the way PDFs are handled.

Four key areas

Starting with those PDFs, Apple's new update now features an enhanced AutoFill feature that "identifies fields in PDFs and other forms enabling you to populate them with information such as names and addresses from your contact." That will make it much easier and quicker to fill out a PDF for example, and is sure to be a feature that people might not use often but will be thankful for every time they do.

Moving onto the Messages app, Apple has improved matters in a number of ways. Contact Key Verification "provides automatic alerts and Contact Verification Codes to help verify people facing extraordinary digital threats are messaging only with the people they intend," adding an extra layer of security. Users can now also add stickers directly to a chat bubble, while a "catch-up arrow lets you easily jump to your first unread message in a conversation by clicking the arrow visible in the top-right corner."

Next up, the Weather app has three main additions this time out. The first enables the app to display precipitation amounts over the next ten days, while new widgets show information for "next-hour precipitation, daily forecast, sunrise and sunset times, and current conditions such as Air Quality, Feels Like, and wind speed." Finally, the wind map snapshot is designed to help people quickly see wind patterns and then access an animated wind map overlay for the next 24 hours.

Finally, the Clock app now supports multiple timers and then add a name for each one, while the timer presets "help you quickly start a timer with a range of preset options." The last addition shows recently used timers so that they can be more easily restarted.

And everything else

Apple also made some other tweaks to the macOS experience including new keyboard layouts for seven additional Sámi languages, support for Shazam music recognition even when wearing AirPods, and the ability to disable Apple Music listening history based on the active Focus mode. A new Favorite Songs Playlist has also been added to Apple Music.

Apple also says that there are a number of security updates in macOS Sonoma 14.2. For that reason, we'd suggest downloading and installing this latest version even if none of the new features have anything of interest to you. It's always a good idea to run the latest security patches, and this release has more than its fair share across various aspects of the software including accounts, accessibility, and more.

More from iMore

• macOS Sonoma review: Top new features ranked
• How to download macOS Sonoma
• How to turn off macOS Sonoma 'click to reveal desktop'

Sure you can use your Mac's mouse or trackpad to get around and there are buttons that do all kinds of things in macOS Sonoma. But moving a pointer around the screen isn't always the most economical way to get things done, especially if you have a large monitor where moving from one corner to the next can take some work.

That's where using keyboard shortcuts can come in so handy. A couple of keypresses can be all it takes to activate some of the most common functions on your Mac, whether that's maximizing a window, opening Control Center, or something else entirely. And there are plenty of app-specific keyboard shortcuts to learn as well.

The problem is that there are only so many modifier keys to go around on one keyboard, and the result can be a confusing mess of keypresses that requires people to be double-jointed just to reach. But did you know that the humble fn key might be the answer? It turns out that there are a ton of special shortcuts available that require just the press of the fn key and (usually) one other to make magic happen. They often replace more convoluted shortcuts that few can actually pull off without straining something.

An fn for everything

The collection of new fn keyboard shortcuts was spotted by Adam Engst over at TidBits and there are plenty to choose from.

"Along with the options exposed in System Settings, Apple’s engineers have slipped in a bunch of additional hard-coded shortcuts," Engst explains. "Here are all of those I’ve found, many of which aren’t documented in Apple’s list of keyboard shortcuts."

What follows is a list of 15 different fn-based keyboard shortcuts including Fn-N for opening Notification Center, Fn-H for hiding all current windows to reveal the Desktop, and Fn-Q to open a new Quick Note in the Notes app. Some may be familiar with that last one, but the rest are likely to be a big surprise. For example, Fn-Up Arrow scrolls up a page, perfect for keyboards that don't have a Page Up key. Who knew? Finally, Fn-M selects the Apple menu and you can then use the arrow keys to navigate through the menu options — how cool is that? But that's just the start. Head on over to TidBits for the full list and prepare to have your time — and your fingers — saved.

During WWDC 2023 back in June, Apple dropped a Mac gaming bombshell. An excited Jeremy Sandmel (Apple’s Senior Director of GPU Software) announced Game Mode.

Available for Apple silicon Macs running macOS Sonoma, this new under-the-hood feature, he said, would, "..give gamers an edge when performance is measured in precious milliseconds." 

Fast forward to September 26 when Sonoma came out, making the feature available to everyone who could use the latest update for a bunch of Macs. You may have already seen Game Mode appear as a notification, letting you know that it's enabled as you're about to play something.

So what is Game Mode, and how does it work? Most importantly though, how does it help you and your Mac?

Game Mode in Action

When you’re playing a game on your Mac, Game Mode makes sure it runs at optimal speeds by prioritizing the game on your Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).

Any tasks you’re running in the background or other apps you might have open are reduced in priority, so they don’t slow down the game by making demands on your processors. The result? ‘An optimized gaming experience with even smoother and more consistent frame rates.’

Another benefit of Game Mode is it dramatically lowers latency between your Mac and its peripherals by doubling the Bluetooth sampling rate. If you’re listening to the game on your AirPods as you play, the audio action is much better synced, so there’s no lag between an on-screen event and its sound effect.

Even better is the increased performance regarding inputs from Bluetooth controllers. This makes the game far more responsive, giving you the edge you need when battling the baddies or putting together a sporting move in your favorite title.

What games can be used in this mode?

According to Apple, Game Mode works with almost any game. This includes recent and forthcoming titles such as SnowRunner, No Man’s Sky, World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, and Resident Evil 4.

The upgrade is all under the hood, and is automatic; developers don’t have to modify or patch existing games for them to run with Game Mode. In a nutshell, if a game runs on your Apple silicon Mac under macOS Sonoma, it very likely runs in Game Mode. 

How to use Game Mode

To activate macOS Sonoma’s Game Mode, you have to do – nothing. That’s right, nothing. As long as you’re playing your game in full-screen, Game Mode activates automatically.

You can tell when it’s on too, as you get a notification telling you Game Mode is on as soon as your game launches in full-screen mode. If it launches in a window, click the green icon in the top-left window to make it full screen.

Drag your pointer to the top of the screen, and in the menu bar, you'll see an icon in the shape of a game controller. Click on it for a drop-down menu with the option to turn Game Mode off. Doing so will keep it off for that particular game until you turn it on again using this menu. This setting stays put even if you quit and reopen the game.

While it will rarely prove necessary to turn Game Mode off, if you have a background task running that you don’t want to slow down, it might be prudent to do so. Just don’t forget to switch it on again afterward.

Any other Sonoma boosts for gamers?

Sonoma also brings some new tools for game developers. The new Game Porting Toolkit makes it easier for them to port their games to the Mac from other platforms. It’s now much easier to evaluate how a game will run on the Mac; what used to take months can now be done in days. Converting the game’s code to macOS is quicker and simpler too.

Shortening the development time means porting games to the Mac is cheaper, and therefore publishers need to sell fewer of them to make a profit. Now Mac gaming is less financially risky, maybe we’ll see more titles ported to the platform.

A Word of Caution

It seems churlish to end on a cynical note in an article about something as great as Game Mode, but we have to ask, will it really revolutionize Mac gaming? Developer tools for gaming titles on the Mac have been improving for a few years now, but the flood of Mac titles we’re so often promised never seems to arrive and the Mac continues to lag when it comes to new releases. 

At this year’s WWDC for example, we were shown Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding. It looked great, but it was released on the PlayStation 4 in 2019. A recent high-profile Mac release was No Man’s Sky, released on June 1, 2023, a day before the WWDC keynote.

It’s a welcome arrival, but the game came out in August 2016 on the PS4 and Windows, followed by other consoles in subsequent years. Once more, the Mac is years behind the zeitgeist.

Game Mode is undoubtedly an exciting feature for gamers, as is Game Porting Toolkit for developers and publishers. But whether they see the Mac arrive as a serious games machine, only time will tell.

It's an unfortunate fact of life that some people will buy themselves a shiny new Mac, like the excellent 15-inch MacBook Air for example, and then almost immediately break it by pouring some sort of liquid into it. They don't do it on purpose, of course. But that's what makes it all the more tragic.

However, some of those people might be tempted to take their new Mac back to the Apple Store and claim that it simply stopped working. And they might get away with it — assuming they don't have macOS Sonoma 14.1 installed, that is.

That's because the latest version of macOS appears to have a new feature that collects information on the moisture found within a Mac's USB-C ports just ready to snitch on anyone whose computer gets wet.

Finger-pointing software

This is all according to a 9to5Mac report which notes that "macOS Sonoma 14.1 includes a new system daemon named 'liquiddetectiond,' which, as the name suggests, can identify when the computer has been exposed to liquids."

That daemon runs in the background and monitors to see whether any liquid is detected inside a USB-C port in the Mac on which it's running. It's apparently described as a “Liquid Detection and Corrosion Mitigation Daemon” which is similar to something already present in other Apple devices. The iPhone 15, taking just one example, has technology that can detect when its USB-C port is wet so as to warn the user not to plug a cable in. We've seen that in older iPhones as well — including my iPhone 13 Pro Max after making the ill-fated decision to take some underwater videos during a Spanish vacation last year. Spoiler — it didn't seem to like it and never reliably charged via Lightning again, but we digress.

In the case of the Mac, it doesn't seem that Apple intends to warn people in the same way as it does with the iPhone which means that the daemon does little more than collect information and then store it for later use. But where could it be used?

No warranty for you

The most obvious use for information on whether a Mac got wet is at an Apple Store or repair center. If a user sends a Mac back for repair claiming the infamous "it just stopped working" and the machine knows it once found itself under attack from a misplaced bottle of Pepsi, that's the kind of information Apple might want to know.

I might be doing Apple a disservice here, and this information might not be used for anything of the sort. But frankly, if it isn't, it probably should be. Apple already has Liquid Contact Indicators, or LCI, inside Macs and other devices that do much the same thing. But that information is nowhere near as complete as something like this daemon could collect. Apple will know exactly which part of the Mac got wet, and more importantly, when. I also suspect it could log when it stopped detecting liquid as well.

If some people do miss out on warranty repairs they shouldn't have had, so be it. My iPhone 13 Pro Max's water damage was my own fault — although I did get some great shots of my kids, so I'd argue it was worth it — and I owned it.

Although I can imagine someone might feel differently if they have to go and buy a new Mac because they knocked their favorite beverage into it one day, completely by accident. The lesson of the story? Don't keep liquids near your Mac.

Do as I say, not as I do!

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Have you ever logged onto your favorite website, and wished it was available as an app instead? Maybe you’d prefer a stand-alone eBay app like you get in iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. Perhaps you’d like Google’s apps such as Docs and Mail to function outside your web browser, or you’d rather read and post on your favorite forums using an app. In macOS Sonoma, you can.

In the latest version of Apple’s Mac operating system, you can add any website to the Dock and launch it like an app. From there, you can use the site as if it was an application. It opens in its own window, with a simplified toolbar and an all-round app-like experience.

Long-term Mac users might argue there’s nothing new about this. Remember Web Clips, a feature that let you select a portion of a web page and have it appear as a Dashboard widget? It was a useful but limited way of accessing information on a website. Sonoma’s Web Apps is far more sophisticated, versatile and flexible. Hopefully, it will last longer too.

Using Sonoma’s Web Apps

To use Web Apps, you must be running macOS 14: Sonoma. 

1. First of all, launch the Safari app and open the page you want to add to the Dock as a Web App. Here we’re using iMore, because who wouldn’t want to have this site in its own application?

2. In the File menu in the top bar, select the option Add to Dock. It’s found towards the bottom of the menu.

3. A window appears in the middle of the screen. Here you can edit the name of the site (which will be used as the name of the Web App) and also its URL if you wish. We suggest you choose something fairly short for the name, so it can be displayed in full on the Web App. When you’re ready, click the Add button.

4. Close the web browser, and drag your pointer to the Dock. As you can see, the Web App we just made from the website is now found here. Its icon is that of the website used to make the Web App, and its app name is that which you decided on in the previous step.

5. Click on the Web App’s icon in the Dock to open the Web App. It opens in its own window, not a Safari tab. It still functions like the website, with working links, forward/back buttons for navigation (top left) and a Share icon (top right). Other Safari controls, such as the URL bar and tab options, are missing; as mentioned before, the controls are greatly simplified.

6. If you navigate away from the page you saved as a Web App and then quit the app, when you open it again it opens on the page you last looked at, not the one you initially saved. If you click on a link that takes you to another site, this opens in a new Web App window.

7. Click the top bar menu bearing the name of the Web App and select Settings, and you can edit the name, URL and icon used for the app. You can also show and hide the navigation controls and choose whether the top bar takes on the main colour used for the web page. Under the Privacy tab, you can access Privacy & Security Settings and clear the website data if you wish.

8. As well as in the Dock, you can also find your Web App in the Launchpad and the Users > [Name] > Applications folder. You can also use Spotlight to launch the app too; just open the Spotlight window and type its name.

9. Right-click on the Web App in your Dock and you can access the same options you get with a regular app. You can remove it from the Dock without deleting it (you can still launch it from the Launchpad, Applications folder or Spotlight), assign it to desktops, have it open at launch and more.

10. If you want to delete a Web App, simply drag it from the Launchpad into the bin. You get a pop-up window asking if you want to remove the app. Click on the Remove app and it’s deleted. You can add it again later if you wish.

One more thing... Web Apps rule

It’s been argued Safari is getting too complicated for its own good, with features piled on features leading to a confused user experience. But there’s no danger of Web Apps adding to this alleged confusion. If you choose not to use this new feature, it won’t get in the way. It just sits as an unused option in Safari’s File menu.

But unlike some other new Safari features, I suspect Web Apps will prove very popular with the Apple faithful. We've been able to add websites to our iPhone and iPad Home screens for years (that’s how I play Wordle, for example), and Web Apps could prove more useful still. We’ll know for sure when Sonoma has been out for a while, and the new feature has become a regular part of the way we use Safari.

Apple released the big macOS Sonoma update to the world in September after a months-long beta program that kicked off in June. It's so far proven to be one of the better macOS updates, bringing with it new features like the ability to put your widgets right on the Mac's desktop. But there's always something new around the corner and in the case of the Mac's software, that was macOS 14.1.

Apple started beta testing that last month and it's now available for the public to download. It arrived alongside other updates like iOS 17.1, and while it does have some improvements, there isn't nearly as much to get excited about here.

Apple's macOS 14.1 release notes simply outline two improvements and a couple of bug fixes, so here's everything new in macOS 14.1.

Apple Music Favoriting and playlists

Fans of the Apple Music app now have a new way to tell it that they like a particular song, album, or artist by making it a favorite. The same can also be done with playlists, too.

When one of those things is marked as a favorite it is automatically added to the library and all favorited songs can be seen under a new filter as well. The system replaces the "Love" option and is also available on Apple's other devices as part of this latest round of software updates.

New warranty status screen

Those with macOS Sonoma installed will notice a new warranty section in the System Settings app. There, the AppleCare and AppleCare Plus status of the Mac and any connected AirPods and Beats headphones or earbuds will be displayed.

This new screen could come in handy for quick and easy checking of the current warranty status of your devices when using your Mac.

Everything else of note

It's probably fair to say that this macOS Sonoma 14.1 update isn't a huge one in terms of new features. But there are two bug fixes that will be of interest to people who have suffered from the problems that these particular bugs caused.

One of the fixes relates to a particularly problematic privacy option while the other prevented certain external drives from being mounted. There are also a number of security fixes that have gone into this release, too.

• A Location Services fix — Apple says that the macOS 14.1 update puts paid to "an issue where the System Services settings within Location Services may reset" That ensures that your Location Services settings will remain the way you set them from here on out.
• A fix for external drives — Notice that your encrypted external drive wouldn't mount when you wanted it to? Apple says that should now be fixed as part of the macOS 14.1 update.
• Numerous security fixes — Apple also outlined a fairly large number of security fixes in this macOS 14.1 update. You can learn more about all of them over on Apple's security fix webpage.

It remains to be seen whether this is the last major update to macOS Sonoma before the end of the year, but it seems likely. Looking for more software updates? Make sure to install the recent software releases for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV, too.

As for macOS 14.1, we'd suggest that it is worthwhile installing for all of those security fixes alone. It's free to download, after all, and it's always important to make sure that you're running the most secure software available.

macOS Sonoma has been out for a while now but I still get readers reaching out asking how to stop application windows disappearing to the sides of your display.

Luckily, it's actually a useful new feature in Sonoma called click to reveal desktop, but it's only useful if you know how to use it so you don't accidentally make your applications disappear.

Whether you love this new feature or you never want to use it again, you can easily switch it off and on so you don't need to constantly clammer to find your applications when your windows disappear.

Here's how to use click to reveal desktop in macOS Sonoma.

How to turn off click to reveal desktop on macOS Sonoma

You’ve just accidentally thrown all your Mac applications to the edges of your desktop and don’t understand how. Well, on macOS Sonoma, clicking any portion of your exposed wallpaper will reveal your desktop by hurtling all of your open applications to the edges of your display. Don’t want this to happen? Here’s the quick and easy fix:

1. Open Settings
2. Select Desktop & Dock
3. Scroll down to Desktop & Stage Manager
4. You’ll see click wallpaper to reveal desktop. Change this setting to Only in Stage Manager

Changing these settings will fix your aggrievances with the new macOS Sonoma feature. Unfortunately, if you love Stage Manager, you’ll need to manually change this setting whenever you want to use a different desktop setup.

One more thing… Should you use click to reveal desktop on macOS Sonoma?

So you’ve now figured out how to turn off click to reveal desktop and no longer need to wonder why your applications keep disappearing. But should you turn it off? Often, these annoyances with new features in operating systems are more grievances due to the lack of knowledge they exist rather than the feature itself.

When I started to use multiple displays for work, I absolutely hated the way my dock on macOS moved between displays randomly, but now that I know how to control my dock position, it’s a handy feature that I actually use daily.

In terms of click to reveal desktop, at first glance, it might appear useless, but now that macOS Sonoma has desktop widgets like iOS 17, the ability to quickly see your desktop with a click is actually pretty great.

Bulk up your desktop widgets on macOS Sonoma and give click to reveal desktop a second chance. You never know you might learn to love it. 

Apple's macOS Sonoma software update has been on Macs around the world for a few weeks now, and it's been largely well received thanks to new features like improved widget support and some gorgeous new live wallpapers. But even those live wallpapers aren't perfect.

There's no denying that the wallpapers look great, with options for all kinds of settings including cityscapes and images from space. But because of the sheer size of these things Apple doesn't install them all by default. Which would be fine, if installing them wasn't a manual job of doing it one by one, every time you want to test one out.

Thankfully, there is now a way around all of that and it's a simple script that you can download for free and run on your own Mac to batch download those wallpapers. And by all accounts, it works well.

Downloading en masse

The new tool was posted to GitHub by Mike Swanson and you can download it right now. Swanson explains that the script was created for the same reason you probably want it — they wanted a way to download all of the macOS Sonoma wallpapers at once without doing it by selecting each one individually and then waiting for the download to complete.

"I love the live wallpaper videos in macOS Sonoma, but I don't like that I have to download each video individually," Swanson explains. "So, until Apple adds a "download all" button to their Wallpaper settings, you can use this script."

It's easy to see why Apple chose not to preinstall the wallpapers, though. Swanson says that this script "allows you to download just one wallpaper category (e.g. 'Earth') at a time, or you can choose to download all categories at once (which currently results in 134 video files and ~65 GB of data)." That's a lot of SSD space, especially on Macs with just 128GB of storage.

Running the script is easy once you've got it and you'll find the instructions in the GitHub repository's ReadMef file to help you get started, too. Now the only real question is which wallpaper to choose once you have them all.

What goes around, comes around. It was back in 2005 that Apple gave us Dashboard Widgets for the Mac, but in 2019, it took them away again. Four years later, in the Autumn of 2023, they’ve returned – sort of.

macOS Sonoma finally lets you put widgets on your desktop, a feature that has much in common with the Dashboard Widgets of old. Similar to widgets in iOS and iPadOS, you can place as many as you can fit on your desktop, and you can interact with them.

From podcasts to weather, there's plenty you can add now. But back in 2005, widgets were a tentpole feature of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and I loved them.

So with this in mind, here's a history of using widgets on a Mac, and what you could do almost 20 years ago.

Do it yourself

Widgets would sit on a dashboard, which took up the whole screen and was opened using the Dock, Launchpad, Spotlight, or a hotkey. They gave speedy access to instant functionality without having to open an app.

There were four by default; Calculator, Clock, Weather, and Calendar. You could customize the dashboard by opening a Dock-like bottom bar, from where you could add new widgets and close existing ones you didn’t use. Additional Widgets included a Dictionary, iTunes controller, Address Book, Stickies, and a Stocks ticker. By dragging open widgets around on the screen you could arrange them exactly how you wanted them.

Anyone with sufficient skills could create a widget and share it with the Mac community. There was a page on the Apple website where you could download new widgets, and third-party sites like the now-closed DashboardWidgets sprang up too.

All sorts of widgets for all sorts of tasks could be downloaded and installed. There was an eBay widget that let you keep tabs on your auctions. PCalc released a full scientific calculator widget to accompany the app, online comic strips were offered in a widget, there were mini-apps for translations and currency exchange, and more. Most were free, but there were also a few paid-for Widgets.

The introduction of Dashboard wasn’t without controversy. As some users pointed out, it bore more than a passing resemblance to Konfabulator, a third-party application that had similar functionality. This also called its mini-apps ‘widgets’ and allowed users to create their own. It could be further argued that Konfabulator was itself a ‘tribute’ to Apple’s own Desk Accessories released with the first Macintosh in 1984, but such objections are wide of the mark.

Desk Accessories was basically a means of running trivial applications like a calculator or alarm clock without shutting down the app you were using at the time (there was no multitasking in those days), and while Konfabulator was released long after Desk Accessories ceased to be a thing, Dashboard came out while Konfabulator was at its peak.

A case of neglect

Dashboard got little love from Apple over the years. There were a few upgrades. In Mac OS X Lion, released in 2011, you could configure your Dashboard as a desktop space so you could swipe to it, instead of opening it like an application.

But this was the only major update the feature enjoyed. With the release of macOS Yosemite in 2014 it was disabled by default, and had to be enabled in the Mission Control System Preferences, and macOS Catalina in 2019 killed it completely. The only widgets you could use after then would be in the Notification Center, which was handy, but not as versatile.

Fast forward to 2023, and widgets have returned in macOS 14 Sonoma once more. Not in a designated space like the post-Lion Dashboard, but actually on the regular Finder desktop. Setting up your desktop widgets couldn’t be simpler.

You can click on the clock in your menu bar to open the Notification Center and drag a widget into place from there. Alternatively, right-click on your Mac’s desktop and select ‘Edit Widgets’ to open the widget picker. From there you can drag widgets anywhere on the desktop, but if you want to keep things neat and tidy, guides appear to help you snap your widgets to a grid.

This new widgets feature accompanies rather than replaces the old one. You can still find widgets in the Notification Center.

Widgets, widgets everywhere...

As well as the existing widgets from your Mac, you can also use those from your iPhone as desktop widgets. As long as you’re signed into the same Apple ID on both devices, just bring your iPhone close to your Mac and open the widget picker. Your iPhone’s widgets are there, available for selection. 

When in place, your desktop widgets are always visible. When not in use they blend into the background by adopting the colors used by that area of your desktop, sitting discreetly and not getting in the way.

Click on the desktop or spread with four fingers and your open windows are pushed off the screen, your widgets to the fore. Click on one to open its parent app. Widgets are shown on every currently open desktop space, so if you swipe between spaces, you still have your widgets.

As always, the prime purpose of widgets is to display a small amount of information from their parent applications; a Clock widget shows the time, a Weather widget gives you a short-term forecast, and so on. But now, widgets are also interactive. Control your smart home devices through the Home widget, tick off to-dos in the Reminders widget, and so on.

You can add more widgets whenever you like, rearrange them on the desktop, and delete them by right-clicking on the widget to edit or remove it or opening the widget picker and clicking on the minus sign in a widget’s top-left corner.

Second time lucky?

Can desktop widgets succeed where Dashboard failed? Are widgets more useful on the desktop than they were in a separate space all those years ago? Initial signs are good so far since Sonoma's release.

Widgets in general are a far more integrated part of home computing and smartphone use than they were back in Dashboard’s day, and desktop widgets are easier to get to while you’re working (not that they were very hard before).

The feature will take time to reach its full potential as developers work on interactive widgets for their own apps, but with the existing library comprising both Mac widgets and the iPhone, they’re already off to a great start. Let’s just hope that desktop widgets get more love from Apple than what Dashboard was given in it short life.

macOS Sonoma is finally here, and it’s honestly hard to believe we’re a year on from Ventura. In a lot of ways, the two are pretty similar, with Sonoma following its predecessor’s lead with a whole host of nice-to-haves, rather than any sizeable must-haves.

That’s perhaps no bad thing, though - if you use a Mac regularly, the last thing you’re likely to want is to have to relearn how to work it, and many of the improvements are small but appreciated.

Whether they add up to a must-download is immaterial - provided your Mac is compatible, you’ll almost certainly be installing Sonoma anyway, but it’s still worth giving credit where it’s due. Sonoma is another small step for Mac, but if the Game Mode functionality makes it easier to port titles to the platform, it could be an important one for its future.

macOS Sonoma: Availability and compatibility

You can download macOS Sonoma right now through your Mac's Software Update option in the System Settings menu.

You'll need one of the following Macs to be able to install it:

• MacBook Pro: 2018 and later
• MacBook Air: 2018 and later
• Mac mini: 2018 and later
• iMac: 2019 and later
• iMac Pro: 2017
• Mac Studio: 2022 and later
• Mac Pro: 2019 and later

macOS Sonoma: Top features

Game Mode

There’s arguably no better place to start than with Game Mode because this could secretly be one of macOS Sonoma’s biggest introductions. 

The Mac has never been a true gaming platform in the way Windows has for PC (check out our interview with the team at Feral Interactive about the differences between the two), but the reveal of Game Mode suggests that’s something Apple is looking to change.

By dedicating more resources to a game, your Mac can prioritize resolution, frame rate, and controller or AirPod latency. That may seem like a small step, but after Apple revealed that the iPhone 15 Pro models will be able to run the likes of Resident Evil 4: Remake and Assassin’s Creed: Unity, the potential to bring big releases to the platform (perhaps even with cross-platform compatibility between iPhone, iPad and Mac), could be huge.

Safari Profiles

I’ll be honest, despite its resource-hogging reputation, I use Chrome when browsing the web on all of my Apple devices - my MacBook included.

A big part of that, and one that may have just shifted with macOS Sonoma, is the option to use specific profiles. When I’m researching birthday presents for my partner, or catching up on football (soccer, sigh) scores, I don’t want my work research and other things surfacing. On Chrome, it’s always been easier to switch between Google accounts, but Safari’s new Profiles make it easy to switch between various sections of my life.

It’s not quite the Arc browser shift, but it’s certainly a big step that closes the gap with Google’s effort.

Messages filtering

If you’re like me and often find yourself digging through old messages for something someone said, but you don’t know what it was or who it was, then Messages filtering is a small, but very welcome, improvement to the Messages experience on Mac.

Now that you can set multiple filters, you can dig through things in record time. And if you find something interesting that needs a response, you can now swipe to reply as well thanks to macOS Sonoma’s easier inline messaging.

PDFs and links in Notes

Notes has gained a few new features in recent years, and this is another huge step for the app.

While collating PDFs in Notes won’t appeal to everyone (and there are excellent research apps like Obsidian out there that do much, much more with them), if you’ve got travel itineraries, scanned documents, or even just a copy of your ID in case you need it, you can drop it into a note and have it handy at a moment’s notice.

Better yet, you can now clip various notes together with links, letting you create your own Wikis and share them with collaborators - ideal for training tools for work.

Screen Savers (yes, really)

Yes, I know screen savers are nothing new, and yes, I know the Apple TV has had similar before, but the new slow-motion ones in macOS Sonoma are particularly gorgeous when viewed on a display like the MacBook Pro 16-inch.

Not only that but it’s also led to a revamped lock screen with a more visible clock. It’s a much nicer view than what we had before, and I’ve found myself turning off Apple Watch unlocks so I can enjoy it just a little bit longer (maybe I need to get out more).

AirPods Muting

Again, it’s a small thing, but being able to mute my AirPods mic when on a call with a single press of the stem is a huge help - and means I don’t accidentally resume my Spotify playlist instead.

Presenter Overlay

That brings us nicely to one of macOS Sonoma’s killer features - Presenter Overlay. If you’ve ever fancied yourself as a TV meteorologist, or a game show host, this is for you.

All joking aside, it’s likely to be crucial for important pitches that require a more personal touch than walking someone through a deck of slides, letting you add a little character.

If that pitch is successful, you can even trigger fireworks with a thumbs-up gesture, or confetti. It’s goofy, it’s totally unnecessary, but it’s that quirky side of Apple that keeps me coming back.

Desktop Widgets

After years of pretty much ignoring they exist (rest in peace, Dashboard), Apple has gone widget crazy in the last few years.

There are widgets on iPhone, iPad, the Apple Watch, and now the Mac, too. They look great, with a universal design language based on compatibility across platforms.

That’s a double-edged sword, though, notably for Spotify users. While I was able to install the Spotify widget, it’s essentially an extension of the iPhone app - so there’s little I could do with it without having my phone open, with Spotify open, which then led to some awkward auto-AirPods switching.

Outside of those edge use cases, however, it’s a fantastic addition - and one you don’t have to engage with should you prefer a clean desktop. I still have a weather and Parcel widget on my slide-over notification panel, for example, but I’ve also got a truncated version of my Things 3 to-do list on my desktop.

It’s an extra tool for users who want to plaster widgets everywhere, but it’s no longer mandatory here as it is on the iPhone or iPad.

macOS Sonoma: Other features

Aside from the features above, there are plenty of additional updates to macOS that are coming with Sonoma.

With privacy and safety front of mind with Apple, new sensitive content warnings on videos and photos will appear in Messages and third-party apps.

Autocorrect also gets an upgrade, letting you skip ahead by using the space bar to finish words. It’s not always perfect, but it’s much closer to similar functions in Google Docs and the like.

It’s also been a long time coming, but PDFs will get AutoFill functionality “later this year”. Apple’s efforts in this space have paled compared to third-party efforts, but we’re hopeful it’ll improve the document signing experience.

I know many scoffed at the idea of adding web apps to the Dock, but I can see it being pretty useful if you use anything web-based pretty regularly - like a CMS or sign-up form.

Room for Improvement?

There’s little I can complain about with Sonoma because it’s got some great features that build on top of macOS nicely without overcomplicating anything.

And yet, it feels like it’s missing that big “headline feature” that makes it a must-download, although I’m not entirely sure what it needs right now.

While some may argue that’s the addition of desktop widgets, it’s a little too inconsistent on third-party options to guarantee it’ll be a success - although here’s hoping now that it’s out of beta we’ll see more developers adopt it (looking at you, Spotify).

macOS Sonoma: Verdict

The fact that one of my favorite features of macOS Sonoma is its lock screen wallpapers should hammer home that macOS is at the point of maturity where it doesn't need huge new upgrades year over year.

Still, it'd be fair to say there's not quite as much to get excited about here as there is on, say, iOS 17 or watchOS 10, but there are plenty of small quality-of-life updates that make daily Mac use even more delightful.