Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the top ten new features in macOS Sonoma.
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Now by my count there are more than 175 new features in macOS
Sonoma. But here are the ten that I think are the most important.
First, we've got new Desktop Wallpapers or is it Screen Savers. Well, Apple sometimes calls it one,
sometimes the other, and they are kind of linked now. So when you go to System Settings you can
see Wallpaper and Screen Saver. Notice that you can have a Screen Saver show as wallpaper and
a Wallpaper show as a screen saver. The new ones. the ones everyone is talking about are
these arial views here. High resolution videos you'll find familiar if you have an Apple TV.
So if you select one of these then it looks like this as your Wallpaper or Screen Saver.
What happens is if you use one of these, notice here as a Screen Saver, it's moving. You're moving
through the landscape. But if you exit the Screen Saver it slows down and stops at a point and that
is now your Wallpaper. Which is really interesting because now you've got a slightly different
wallpaper each time you wake your Mac up. As a matter of fact you can use these animations here,
like the Sonoma one, in the same way. So here this is going to animate and now when I come
out of the Screen Saver it will stop and I have a slightly different wallpaper than any other time.
I think probably the most useful new feature is going to be the Desktop Widgets. So we've
had widgets before in the Notification Center, of course. But now you could actually add the same
widgets to your Desktop. So I can Drag one, like let's say drag the Weather here. Let's add another
one like, say, Reminders and you can now have these on your Desktop whenever you want. You can
move them around. They kind of snap into place. They coexist with the ones in Notification Center
and if you bring up another window they will fade to the background, although you have a Setting in
System Settings that will allow you to keep them as full color. They are even interactive. So,
for instance, in Reminders here I could actually click on one of the items to complete it. You
can even use iPhone widgets on your Mac Desktop and Notification Center. As long as you iPhone,
of course, is using the same Apple ID and it is nearby you can have the widget from your
iPhone appear on your Mac. You don't even have to have that app installed.
It is actually taking that exact widget from your iPhone and just showing it on your Mac.
So your iPhone is producing the widget and your Mac is actually displaying it.
Now there is a couple of new tricks in Safari that are really interesting. One is that you can now
have multiple profiles. So we go into Safari Settings. We go to Profiles here and you can
start using Profiles. Create a new one. So I'll call this one called Work Social and I can set
a symbol for it and a color and whether or not is uses the same Bookmarks. Now I've got two windows
here. One is in my Personal profile and one is in my Work Social profile. So I can be logged into
different sites for both of those. So this one could be my personal social media accounts and
this is my work social media accounts. Or you can do this same for shopping or anything else
that you need to log into. It is kind of like having a private browsing window but instead
of it going away completely when you close the window you could simply open up a new window and
resume where you left off. It's like having two or more versions of Safari running at the same time.
In addition to that you really can have more versions of Safari running using something
called Web Apps. Now Web Apps have been available on other browsers for a long time but it is nice
to have them in Safari. So, for instance, I could go to a website like this one and I go to File and
then Add to Dock and then I could change the name, the icon, and everything. Add it. You
can see it is now in the Dock there so I can Quit Safari and I can launch it from the Dock
and now it is an app that has the name of that site and the app is just a Safari browser but
only for this website and any related websites. If I click on a link to some other site it will
open up in Safari like you're clicking on a link in, say, and email or in a document.
Now in Preview you've got your Markup Tools just like before. But you now have a separate
set of tools for filling in forms. So if all you want to do is fill-in a form you just use
this instead. It shows you all the fields that you could fill-in provided, of course,
the PDF has been created with those fields in it. You can fill them in. You can even check boxes and
you can use a few other tools here like Signing. You can even add your own text field in case,
maybe, there is some spot you want to write something where there is no field provided.
In the Notes App there is the ability now to link from Note to Note. So I can create a new
note here and if I wanted to create a link to another note I can go to Edit and then Add Link,
or Command K. Then I can Link To and just start typing the name of the note, to select it,
and then I now have a link to that note. There is even shorthand for doing this. You just do
the Greater Than symbol twice, like that, and you can pick from a list of notes to link to. So you
can link back and forth in Notes. Even creating your own little personal wiki's in the Notes App.
The Reminders App also has some new tricks. So if you create a new list here you can now
add sections to that list. So I'll just add some items here. I can use this button here
to add new sections. I'll just use some test names here. I'll add another section
and I can easily add items in there or move my existing items to sections.
In addition to that if you were to create a new list and make it of the type Groceries,
this type of list allows you to add typical grocery items. It will automatically create
sections for them. So you can see what it did there. It just created that section.
Creates another section and so on. You can rearrange sections pretty easily as well.
In the Photos App People is now People & Pets or at least it is if you've added a
pet as a person. It now accepts the faces of dogs and cats to be able to add them to your
People & Pets section. So you would just go into your Library here. Find a picture
that has one of your best friends in it and you could easily add them just as you would
any person from before. So I'll find that picture added there and you can go
and review more photos. So you can add your pets just like people to this section now.
When typing now you're going to notice a new type of suggestion, in-line suggestions. So as
you type something watch as I see the little gray text appear and then simply press the
spacebar to move onto the next word without having to complete typing it. (demonstrating an example.)
Sometimes it just suggests finishing your current
word but other times it may suggest two or even three words in advance.
Now there are whole bunch of new features that you can use when video conferencing. These will
work in FaceTime but also some other apps as well, like Zoom. So, for instance, here I'm Face Timing
to somebody and I can go up here to the top. Then there is a whole little set of controls that I can
use. For instance I can access studio lighting or not and adjust it. I can do reactions like this.
I could also Share my screen. I can actually share a window, all the windows of an app,
or the whole screen. So I can choose just the window, and I'll choose this
Safari window here. Once I do I can now choose from presenter overlay being Off,
so they just see my screen and you see the preview right there. I can so Small and you
can see I'm in the bottom left hand corner. It even shows that here on my screen. This is what
the other person will see. I can also choose Large and I'll see this preview here where it
shows whatever it is I'm sharing behind me and I'm simply in front. So this is really great say
if you've got a Keynote presentation that is running. You can be in front of it like that.
So there's a look at some of the best new features you'll be able to use as soon as you update your
Mac to macOS Sonoma. I'll be looking in more detail at some of these and covering other
new features as well in future video tutorials. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.