10 Recent New Mac Features You May Have Missed

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some new features to macOS that were added over the last few years that a lot of people still don't know about. 

With every new version of macOS new features are added. So many, in fact, that a lot of people miss ones that could be useful to them. Sometimes I mention these new features and people are surprised to find that it has been there for a little while. 

For instance, the biggest example of this is Clipboard History. Previously with macOS if you wanted to access previous contents of the Clipboard you needed to use a third party app. But you can do it now with built-in system functionality. To do this just bring up Spotlight. You can use Command Space to do that. The fourth option here is Clipboard or you can just use Command 4 to get there. Then you're going to see things you've previously copied to the Clipboard and you can bring them back to the current Clipboard or just paste them in the app you're using right now. You can even Search if you've got a lot of items here. In System Settings and then go to Spotlight you can setup how this works here at the bottom turning it On and setting how long items are remembered. 

A new feature added back in macOS Sequoia is the ability to view reminders with a due date set in the Calendar. So you no longer have to choose whether something is in Reminders or in the Calendar. You can add it as a reminder and then view it in both places. So, for instance, I'm going to set the time for this item here to next week and then I'll see it appear here in Calendar. Make sure you've got Scheduled Reminders turned on under Other in the Calendar. Also note that when you create a new event in the Calendar you can just create a new Reminder here instead without even launching the Reminders App. 

A new option added in the Finder for Column View, that's Column View not List or Icon View, is the ability to have columns automatically resize to fit the folder and file names. So, if you're in Column View, like this, you can go to View and then Show View Options. Then turn on Resize Columns to Fit File Names and then the column width will snap to fit what's there and remain like that as you move around in the different folders. 

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Previous to macOS Tahoe you had one Control Center in the Menu Bar here and you could bring up and customize what controls are set there. But now you can go to Edit Controls and in addition to customizing this Control Center you can also use the Plus button here and add a second or third or fourth Control Center and add more buttons and controls to that. So now you can have more functions available through the Menu Bar Control Centers and customize what each one does. This is particularly handy for Shortcuts. If you've got a lot of Shortcuts create additional Control Centers and add each Shortcut to it. So you can have these custom menus that allow you to do all sorts of things. 

A big new features of macOS Tahoe that still people don't realize is there is the ability to have colors and special icons for folders in the Finder. So, you can select a folder, like this, Control Click, right click or two-finger click it and choose Customize Folder. Here you can set a folder color. It's got to be one of these and it basically is adding a Tag with that color to it. Whether or not you choose a color you can also choose an Icon to add right to the folder like this. In addition to these regular symbols here you can also just click the Emoji Button and simply use an emoji character as the symbol on the folder as well. 

Now Spotlight had a complete overhaul in macOS Tahoe. But one feature that a lot of people don't know was there is a Search History. So I'm going to use Command Space to bring up Spotlight and then you have to click on the Files Button here. So now you're searching for Files. But you can also use the Up Arrow and it will show you your last search and continue to use the Up Arrow to see searches before that. So you can see all of the things that you've searched for in the past. So if you did a complex search earlier in the day it's usually easier to find it by looking at your History rather than typing it again from scratch. 

In macOS Sequoia version 15.2 Apple added a handy feature for the Menu Bar. You can now go and display the weather there. So go into System Settings and then go to Menu Bar. Then here one of the options you'll see is Weather. So you can add Weather here to the Menu Bar, like this, click on it and you get some detail weather and the ability to open up the Weather App. You even get some of the cities that you've added to the Weather App shown here as well. 

Now for users of iCloud Drive you probably know that you've got two main options here. If you go to iCloud Drive you have the ability to optimize Mac storage or have that turned Off. If it is Off then all of your files are always cached locally. You have access to everything even when you're offline. But you may not have enough room on your internal drive for that so you've got Optimize Mac Storage turned On. But even with it turned On you can customize how each folder behaves. So, for instance, if you want to have the Desktop Folder always available offline, even while other folders are not, you can Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on it and select Keep Downloaded and this folder will act as if optimize is turned Off even while the others obey the System Settings. 

Now a big new feature added back in macOS Sequoia was Window Tiling. But I find a lot of people still think there's no Window Tiling in macOS even though it has been there for awhile now. If you go to the Window Menu you can see all of these. You've got Move & Resize and you can go to the left, right, top, or bottom. So, for instance, I can move this Finder window to take the left half. You also have the ability to use quarters or arrange multiple windows, like the top two windows, left and right for instance. You hold the Option Key down you get even more options. You have the ability to Center any window or have it fill the available space without going to Full Screen Mode. In fact in System Settings you can go to Desktop & Dock and there's an option called Window Titlebar Double Click Action, and you could set that to Fill as well. So if you've got a window and you want to quickly have it fill the screen, just double click anywhere here in the top where there's not another button, like maybe just to the right of the green button here, and it will fill the entire space. 

A really cool feature that Apple added with macOS Sequoia is the ability to do math calculations in the Notes App. So, for instance, in the Notes App you can type 6*7 and then equals and it will give you the answer there. Press Return and the answer sticks there. You can even do some pretty advanced stuff like A=8, B=9 and then do A+B= and you get the result. If you update one of these numbers like this you can see it updates it there as well. That event stuff's just for Notes, but the basic stuff works just about anywhere you type text. So, for instance, here in the Mail App you can type a number and say add like that equals. You can see it gives you the result right there. 

Here's one last one. This was also added back in macOS Sequoia. In Safari you can get rid of items that you see on the page. Usually these will be ads but they could be anything. So, for instance, if I want to get rid of this banner here, I just click on the button here in the Address Bar and choose Hide Distracting Item. Now I can click on any item I want to get rid of. So I can click on this banner and whoosh, it's gone. I click the checkmark here and now even when I reload the page it will remember to get rid of that item. In the Menu Bar you can find this under Edit and Distraction Control. 

So, I hope you didn't miss any of these new and useful features of macOS from the last few years. But if you did now you know about them. Thanks for watching.