10 Hidden Features In macOS Sequoia

In addition to the major new feature of macOS Sequoia, you can also now trigger the context menu with the keyboard, trigger Shortcuts with a voice command, hide what's behind you when recording video, and much more.
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Video Transcript: This is Gary with MacMost. Let's take a look at some macOS Sequoia hidden features. 
No doubt you've heard about all the great new features in macOS Sequoia like iPhone mirroring and Window Tiling. But there are a lot of features to get excited about that people aren't talking about. Here's one that I rarely heard anybody mention. If you go to System Settings and then go to Keyboard and then go to Keyboard Shortcuts look in the Keyboard Section. You're going to find a new item. Show Contextual Menu. You make sure that is On, the default is Control and Return. Then you can activate the Context Menu using just the keyboard. But it only works in some situations. Typically it works when there is a selection. So, for instance, I'll arrow down here to a file like this one. Of course I can use my pointer and Control Click, right click or two-finger click on a trackpad and bring up the Context Menu. But I can do that now with the Keyboard. With the selected item, not what's under the pointer, you can use Control and Return and it brings up the Context Menu and it is for the selected item, not what is under the Pointer. It works in a variety of other situations. For instance in Calendar I can use my arrow keys to go to an event and use Control and Return and bring up the Context Menu for that. I can then continue with the Down Arrow to select an item there using Return. 
Using it in Mail though shows its weakness. It won't really work with Text Selection. So if I Down Arrow here to a message, like this one, I can Control Return and bring up the Context Menu for the message. But if I happen to have something selected in Mail, like this, and use Control Return it doesn't do anything. If I go to Pages here and I select some text I can use Control Return and it actually types the Return character. It doesn't bring up the Context Menu. 
But there's hopes that apps may be updated in the future to use this more universally. For instance in TextEdit I can select some text. I'm just going to do it with the keyboard here. If I use Control Return here it actually  works to bring up the Context Menu for the text selection. So maybe that will happen in Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and other apps in the future. 
Now another hidden feature is found in System Settings Accessibility. If you scroll to the bottom there's a new section here called Vocal Shortcuts. So you can add voice commands to do various things mostly trigger shortcuts that you create in the Shortcuts App which then can do just about anything. So let's set one up here. The first thing it asked you to do is to choose a shortcut. I'm going to choose this one I created a long time ago. Add File to Reminders. But you can choose any shortcut you've created or create new ones just for this. So I'm going to continue and now I have to type what the command is. Now that it has done this I have to train Voice Recognition, so I'll speak it three times. So then the action is ready. Now to use it all I need to do is to speak that command. So let's go to the Finder here. I'll select a file and I'll speak the command. Add this file to Reminders. You can see it indicated that it ran there and if we go to Reminders here we can see there's the reminder it created, just as if I had triggered the shortcut some other way. 
Now here's another new feature that involves Files. In particular if you use iCloud Drive with Files. If you have the Optimized Feature turned on not all of your files are going to be downloaded to your Mac. This is a great way to save space on your Mac. But what if you're off line. If the file isn't downloaded you can't access it until you connect to the internet. Now you can actually indicate for files and folders that a file is so important  you want it to be always downloaded. So you go to Select A File like this. You bring up the Context Menu and you can select Keep Downloaded. When you do this file will always stay downloaded just as if you had optimized turned Off. So use this for your most important files and folders. You can go back to the Context Menu and turn off Keep Downloaded if something becomes less important in the future. 
By the way, if you find value in my videos you can join the more than 2000 others that support MacMost at Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it right here. 
Now you may have heard about this feature particularly as it applies to FaceTime or using an app like Zoom. When you've got your webcam in use you go up here in the Menu Bar and you can turn on Background. It replaces your background with something else. You can choose a gradient color, like this. You can choose one of Apple's pictures, like this or you can choose one of your own photos if you want and add new photos to this list. But what is kind of hidden is that you can use this for other webcam uses. It's not just for video conferencing. So here I am in Quick Time Player. I can create a new movie recording and I can go up here, just like if I was in FaceTime. Turn on Background and use a color, use a picture background in Quick Time Player and record myself. It even works in iMovie. When you go to File, and then Import Media, you can instead of a file select your FaceTime Camera. So the camera on your MacBook or iMac. Then you can go up here and you can turn on Background and then use those same backgrounds to record yourself. So you can insert yourself easily in iMovie projects without worrying about what's actually behind you on the wall. 
Another video feature involves watching videos. When you're looking at a webpage that has a video on it there is Video Viewer, which is like Reader View but for pages that are from early video. So YouTube page or any page that is primarily a video that is playing. So you can use the same button that you use for Reader View here and now you can select Video Viewer. You should see that there for any page that has a video, but of course it depends a little bit on how the page is constructed. You can also go to View and Enter Video Viewer and notice the keyboard shortcut is the same as Reader View. So it kind of replaces that for video pages. When you do it gets rid of everything else and the controls are the native macOS controls rather than whatever video player that page has. This button allows you to AirPlay and you also have the option here to go picture-in-picture. 
Now you may already know that there is a new app called Passwords. This replaces the System Settings Section called Passwords. So it is in its own App now. So it feels more like a regular Password's Manager. But one of the cool new features here is when you add a new password you can add a website, an app, or just a label. So in the past if you wanted to store some information, like say a padlock or door code or something like that, you can now actually do that by just skipping the website name. So you can name it something like this and then use the password field to record whatever it is and Save it. This takes us one step closer to actually having secure notes inside of Passwords. The only reason you can't do it is because you have to have the password field filled out. If you put, you know, something here notice the Save button isn't active. But you could always just put anything you want there and then Save this note with whatever label you want and the secure information in the Notes section. Or you can put the most important part of that secure information in the Password field if you like. 
The Password's App has a Menu Bar shortcut. Go to Passwords, Settings, and then turn on Show Passwords in Menu Bar. You get it up here and now you can access Passwords right here in the Menu Bar without even launching the app. 
A new feature of Voice Memos and Notes is the ability to have Transcriptions of recorded audio. So you can record here and then you would see the Voice Memo and a transcription. But a hidden feature here is that you can import audio into the Voice Memos app and it will transcribe that too. So here I've got a file that's an M4A file and I can drag that into Voice Memos. When I select it I can see this little button up here and I can click that. Then I see the transcription. So it's not just for Voice Memos you are recording in the Voice Memos App. You can actually import things in here. Then you can jump around in the audio by clicking on different words and you can see how it jumps there or you can move the audio around and it will use Bold for the word that it's currently on. 
Now the Voice Memos App is really picky about the File type. M4A seems to be the only thing it accepts. But Notes isn't as picky. So you can also do this in Notes. I can drag and drop this into a Note and then I get this Audio Bit here. I can double click it and I can see it right there. Eventually I'll see this transcript button right here and it will transcribe it. This, for instance, works with MP3 files whereas the Voice Memos App doesn't seem to want to take them. 
Let's go back into System Settings and take a look at some things that have changed here. The first thing you may notice is that General is what is selected when you choose System Settings. It is just the Default Section now. Next you may notice that if you go to your Apple Account here and then go to iCloud it looks different. It has all been rearranged and looks much nicer. But you don't need to go into your Apple Account anymore to see your iCloud's Settings because it's now a separate category down here. You can just jump right to this. I'm definitely going to welcome this as it is sometimes hard to describe where to go when you have to click on your name up here to first go to iCloud. 
While we're in System Settings another new setting here that some people are talking about is under Wi-Fi you can go into Details for your Wi-Fi network and there is a new private Wi-Fi address option. Previously this was just fixed. That was the only option. Only On or Off. That meant that your Mac address looked different across different Wi-Fi networks. So it made it harder for, say, the advertisers to track you. But now you can actually set it to Rotating which means that it will change the Mac address even on the same network. But be careful when using this because on some networks when you sign into it and agree to their terms and stuff it maybe then using your Mac address to give you access. If it changes because you have Rotating turned on then you may be kicked off and have to go back on again. So switching to this does give you a little more privacy but if you're having trouble with Wi-Fi networks you may have to go back to Fixed or turn it Off. 
Now the Calculator App is all new and it matches the iPhone and new calculator app on the iPad. But it also includes some new hidden functionality that is not being talked about. One of the things is that in the basic calculator instead of working like a regular calculator where you may only see one number and the operations are hidden from you, it actually spells out the equation. So if you do something like this notice you see the whole thing right there at the top. You don't just see one number at a time and no real indication that you hit the Plus button. If you press Equals you still see the equation up there and the answer under it and you can click on the equation to go back and add more. Furthermore, you can now use parentheses here. There are no parentheses buttons. But if you're typing on a keyboard you've got parentheses. So you can do something like this, and then use parentheses by typing Shift and 9 and zero and now you get this formula here. Something you normally couldn't do on a regular simple calculator like this. You'll get the correct answer. Also, like before, you could see your history in the calculator. But instead of it being called Paper tape and under window, it is now called Your History and it is under View. It brings up the history here. You can click to bring this back to continue to work with these. So I can click here. I can see the answer. I can click in here and then add more to it and have a new entry here in the history. 
So there are a whole bunch of new things in macOS Sequoia. We will have even more in version .1 and .2 with Apple Intelligence. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
Comments: 2 Responses to “10 Hidden Features In macOS Sequoia”

Paul
6 months ago
The Keep Downloaded feature is a game-changer. But they need it in iOS. And they need it for Music and Photos.
Gary Rosenzweig
Paul: It IS in iOS 18. The Music app Download option tends to be pretty permanent, I find. But yes, it would be useful in Photos too.
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10 Hidden Features In macOS Sequoia

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