10 macOS Sequoia Tips

Here are some new features in macOS Sequoia that you may have missed. Customize the title bar click, plan urban hiking routes, force Reader View in Safari, bring up the context menu with a keyboard shortcut, and much more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are ten tips for macOS Sequoia. 
Now macOS Sequoia has been out for a little while but there are so many new features that here are some you may have missed. 
First, when window tiling you may want to split your screen between two different windows. But you may not want them to be 50/50. You can easily adjust the windows after you assign one to the left and one to the right. So, for instance, you can select a window and go to Window Move & Resize and then left, or use the keyboard shortcut or you can drag it over, I like to use the Option Key to easily drag it to the right side. Now I've got two windows split on the screen 50/50. But if you move your pointer right in the middle here, it has to be in the middle. A little too high or too low it won't appear. You get this little handle that you can drag to the left or right and it will resize both windows. So you can give one more space than the other. 
When you double click the Title Bar of a window, this area up here, by default what it will do is something called Zoom. I'll do it here and you can see how it zooms this window up, but it doesn't fill the screen. What it is actually doing is enlarging the window but only to the size needed to show all the content. In this case there is now extra space needed to display everything in the window. The same is also true in Pages. If you double-click here you can see it actually shrinks this window but it has everything perfectly fitting in. Making this window any larger doesn't actually do anything extra for you. But despite that you may want to have the window actually fill the screen. You can do that with the new Window Tiling feature. For instance I can drag this up to the top here and you see it fills the screen. There also, under Window, Fill. But you can change how double-clicking the Title Bar works by going to System Settings and then go to Desktop & Dock. Then look for Double-click the Windows Title Bar to and do as the default will make it work as it always has in macOS. But you can change it now to Fill. So double-clicking the Title Bar will actually Fill the screen. You can also change it to Minimize or Do Nothing if you find you've accidentally double-clicked the Title Bar every once in a while. 
Now hopefully you're already using the new Passwords App. It is just a convenient way to access your Passwords and the Password's Manager has actually been in macOS for a while now. But there is another way to get to your Passwords besides launching the App. If you go into the Passwords App, into Settings there is a checkbox here to Show Passwords in the Menu Bar. Check that and you get this little Menu Bar item here. You can Authenticate and access your Passwords here, in the Menu Bar, without ever having to launch the app. It is handy for situations like getting your Passwords for entering them into apps or for using browsers other than Safari. 
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There are a lot of new features in the Messages App that people have been focusing on. For instance, the ability to send a message later. But you can also now style text in a message. You have to be talking to somebody else that is using Apple's iMessage System. But if you are you can select text and just like with most other apps you can use Command B for bold, Command i for italics, and Command U for underline. If you Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on a trackpad you'll see these here at the top. There is also another one that doesn't have a keyboard shortcut that's Strikethrough. You can also access these in the Format Menu. 
The Maps App has a great new feature that allows you to plan routes on trails so you can use them while walking or hiking or backpacking. But you can also use this feature in urban settings. All you need to do is click and hold on a spot where you want to start. Then it will bring up this window here. Now if you click Plan a Route that is going to plan a driving or regular walking route where you give it two points and it will give you a route to follow. Instead of doing that click the three dots here and then choose Create a Custom Route. Now you can see here you've entered into the Trails Mode. Now you can click on various spots. So I'll just click here and you can see it links the two spots. I'll click on a spot far away, like this. It will plan a route. I'll click on another spot, like right here, and it will route to that. You can even click on the original spot again and it will ask you if you want to Reverse the Route, do Out and Back, or Close the Loop. Now I've got this handy guide here. You've got now your altitude chart here. You've got Time and Total Distance. You can save this. You can easily access this custom made urban trail on your iPhone and use it to direct you while you're going and show you how much distance and time you've got left. 
A big new feature of macOS Sequoia is Math Notes where you can type expression in the Notes App and then it will give you the result. But here's the thing. You can do this almost anywhere you can type text. For instance, here I am in TextEdit. If I type 2+2 and then =, even though this is a Plain Text document you will see the result there. Pressing Return will add the result in. It doesn't have all the advanced functionality of the Notes App, like using variables, but you can do basic math expressions like this. Here it is in Pages. I can even use X instead of the asterisk for multiplication. You can even do it here in the Messages App, like this, and you can see it gives you the result there right in the Message. 
You probably already know about Reader View in Safari. You can get to it by clicking on this button here at the top. Then it will say Show Reader. You'll get an indication usually saying Reader View available if you go to a page that has an article on it. But sometimes you're at a page and it doesn't tell you there's a Reader View version available. You click here and there's no Reader View available. People have been saying, well Reader View doesn't work on a webpages now. But in fact both of those indicators here in the Address Bar and here in the Controls are just trying to advise you as to whether or not it seems like Reader View could be used on this page. You can actually still use it even if I doesn't show up here. If you go to View, you'll see Show Reader still active and you can use the keyboard shortcut, Shift Command R, and you get Reader View for that page. Now it may not work great on that page. After all Safari itself didn't think it was a good candidate for Reader View, but you can force it to Reader View if you like. Once you've in it you can use all the different controls to make it easier for you to read. 
Now in iCloud Settings in System Settings, if you go to iCloud Drive you may or may not have Optimize Mac Storage turned on. Having it turned on allows you to actually have more files in iCloud Drive than you have space for on your Mac. So a lot of people use this if they have smaller hard drives, but a lot of files. If you have this turned On some files you may have available cached locally, like these here. Where others like the ones with this indicator show that the file isn't cached locally and available on iCloud. If you have a connection that is usually no problem. But if you're offline you can't access these until you're back online and you can download and cache that file. Previously there was no way to ensure that you had a file offline if you were using Optimize Mac Storage. Now you can. Control click, right click, or two-finger click on a file, like this one, and select Keep Downloaded. Now to make sure that this file isn't removed from your local cache so the next time you're offline you can be assured to have this file, or even an entire folder full of files, available to you.
Another new feature of macOS Sequoia is the ability to bring up the Context Menu without using your mouse or trackpad. Typically you would either Control Click on an item like this file, or you would right click on a mouse, or two-finger click on a trackpad and it brings up the Context Menu. But now you can do it completely with just the keyboard. Using Control and Return. That brings up the Context Menu for what is selected. Now it is important to note that it is what is selected not what's under the pointer. So if I move my pointer down here, for instance, Control Clicking, right clicking, or two-finger clicking here will bring up the Context Menu for the Desktop since that is what the pointer is over. But, using Control Return will bring up the Context Menu for what is selected which is this file. You can use this in apps anywhere you select something. So if you select a word, for instance, in Pages you can Control Return and it brings up the Context Menu for that word. Then of course you can use the Down and Up Arrows to select something and Return to activate it. Here I am in Photos and I can use the Arrow Keys to select a photo, then Control Return to bring up the Context Menu, then the arrow keys to select something, Return to activate it. If this is not working for you go to System Settings, Keyboard, and then Keyboard Shortcuts. Then go to the Keyboard subsection here and look for Show Contextual Menu. This is where you set where the keyboard shortcut is and this is where you can turn it On or Off. 
Now before in FaceTime you could certainly share your screen. But now you've got the ability to share specific windows. As a matter of fact you can share all the windows on one app or even windows across different apps. So, for instance, I've got FactTime active here with my iPhone. Let's go ahead and Share this window. I could go here to the Controls for the Camera. Click here to get Window Sharing Control. I can click on the window I want to share. That's one way to do it. Let's share this window but you also see I can share all application windows for Pages. So now this is what I'm currently sharing. I can go into this window here and click this button and you could see how I could stop sharing it. I could also go to another window here and instead of using this control, I can go to the Green Button, just hover over it, and see how I can share this window as well. Now take a look at what I've got. I've got two windows here. The Pages window and this Finder window. Both of them are being shared. I'll bring the Pages window to the front. You can use these controls on FaceTime but also in other apps. Anything that uses these standard controls here.
So there are a bunch of different things you may not yet have tried with macOS Sequoia. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 12 Responses to “10 macOS Sequoia Tips”

Sheldon

3 weeks ago

Thanks bunches

Paul

2 weeks ago

I am running 15.1.1. Tip number 1 does not work for me. Only one of the windows changes in size. I carefully went to the middle. Tried many times. Any ideas?

Gary Rosenzweig

Paul: Make sure you first use one of the window tiling options to put one window on the left, and the other on the right. It doesn't work if you just manually position the windows. Then make sure you move your pointer to the middle of the screen vertically and look for the handle to appear as I show in the video. If you just grab the left or right side of a window it will just move that one window.

Hi Gary. I did all that in multiple trials. I see the handle. It just doesn't work. Tried on two separate Macs. Do you see this documented anywhere, or did you just discover it? Thanks, Paul

Paul: If you see the handle, it should work. Not sure why it isn't working for you, sorry.

Eric

My experience is the same as Paul's. No matter where the pointer is on the vertical line between the two windows then a small double-headed arrow appears. Dragging the pointer adjusts one window but does not cause the other window to be re-sized.

Mmmm .. I thought this might have been a clash with inherent macOS window sizing/positioning vs Magnet but quitting Magnet made no difference. Perhaps a restart with Magnet disabled is required.

Eric---good idea. I use Magnet too, so I will try. Gary--I wonder if possibly you are getting a feature not of the OS, but of some other software you are running. That's why I asked about documentation for this as a MacOS feature.

Paul: no, this is definitely a macOS feature. But there are probably cases where it isn’t there, like if resolution is too low or apps don’t work well at smaller sizes, etc. just a matter of experimenting.

After removing Magnet from the start at log-in list of apps and restarting the window repositioning functions as described in Gary's video works.

LIZ GUILLE

I'm running on Sequoia 15.1.1 and when trying the Maps app to create a custom route, there's no such option in my list. Thoughts? Great videos Gary, you're so good at what you do!! Thank you for all of the tips.

Liz: Language and Region? Try different areas?

10 macOS Sequoia Tips

Comments: 12 Responses to “10 macOS Sequoia Tips”

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