15 New Features Coming To macOS Monterey

With more than 100 new features coming to macOS 12, it is hard to talk about them all, especially so early in the beta test cycle. So here are 15 new features that I think will be interesting and useful.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: 
 
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at some of the new features coming
to macOS Monterey. MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great
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more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So I tried to make a list of all of the new features coming to macOS version 12. But the
list was more than a hundred items long so instead of trying to go and look at each one
I'm going to take a look here at some of the ones I find are the most interesting. Over
the coming months as we get near the release of macOS Monterey I'm going to be taking a
closer look at a lot of these different features. But for now here's a general overview of what
you can expect. Keep in mind we're only at developer beta one. So things could change.
There are a lot of new features in Face Time and Messages but we're probably going to have
to wait until we get closer to release to really see how these will work. In Safari
though we can already see a major change right at the top of the Safari window. The Address
Field and Tabs are now merged. So instead of having a URL in the Address Field and then
the title of that page repeated in the Tab it's all just one thing now. Every Tab has
its own address and search field. So this makes things a lot more compact and I really
like how this kind of looks and works. It feels really good. In addition to that you
can create something called Tab Groups. So say you create three tabs that are related
to each other. You could save that as a Tab Group and then create a new Tab Group and
create five different tabs and save that as a Tab Group.
Switching between Tab Groups is instant. So you could jump between a group that say is
related to a project you're working on and another group that is maybe news sites that
you look at. This is a much better alternative than having like fifty tabs open and trying
to figure out where everything is.
Notes, of course, looks basically the same at first but the big new feature is Quick
Notes. Now Quick Notes sure they let you create a note very quickly. But the main feature
of Quick Notes is the fact that they're tied to content. So, for instance, if you start
a Quick Note while you're viewing a webpage, then you go back to that webpage later, you
could easily bring back that Quick Note. It's related to that webpage. So it's like taking
notes on webpages and you could have as many of these as you want. This is going to be
great for anybody that has to do any kind of research online. In addition, Notes has
Tags now. So you can add these little hashtags into your notes. Just do them as you naturally
would in other apps. Then those tags will appear on the left sidebar. So you can select
a tag and see all the notes that have that tag in it. It even works with multiple tags.
So you can select two tags and see the notes that have both of those tags in them.
Now there are two new features in Photos that I want to point out. Live Text is a big new
feature. There are a lot of aspects to this. I'm hoping that you'll be able to search using
Live Text. I'm sure you'll be able to but right now it doesn't seem to work in the developer
beta. But you can definitely select and copy text that you see in images. It works seamlessly.
So you just move your cursor over text and you get a text cursor. You can drag to select
it just like you would in a text editing app. Then you can copy and paste it into another
app. It works!
But another big new feature that is going to solve another problems for people is you
can import photos from other photo libraries. So the import option now allows you to select
a Photos Library. It will show you which photos you already have and which ones are new. This
is going to be really useful for photographers that like to keep different libraries for
different things but probably have their main library and every once in a while need to
bring a photo in. You don't have to export the photo out and import it in now. You could
just use this new import feature.
Of course a huge new feature is the Shortcuts App. It looks and feels a lot like a Shortcut's
App in iOS particularly on the larger screen of the iPad. But, of course, using on the
Mac with all the Mac functionality means it's even more powerful. So there's a lot of different
things you could do with it. I've just started exploring all the different commands. It crashes
a lot right now probably because, you know, it's the first developer beta of this brand
new app. I don't expect it to be very stable for a few more versions. But I think this
is going to be really powerful. What's really exciting is it does allow you to have AppleScript,
shell Scripts and JavaScript in it. So many of the more complex things that we do in Automator
now should be able to work in Shortcuts if it supports these three different ways to
program it just like Automator does. While Automator isn't going anywhere if Shortcuts
is powerful enough it will pretty soon supplant Automator as the main way to do automations
on your Mac.
I really like how the new Universal Translation feature works. If you go to a webpage you
don't have to translate the entire webpage. You could select text, bring up the context
menu and then have this little translation shown over to the side. Very useful If there's
just a bit of text you want to translate. If you're doing it in an app where you're
actually working with text you can have it actually replace the text that you type with
the translation.
With every new version of macOS there are new Accessibility features. But one I think
a lot of people are going to use is the ability to change the color of the cursor. You can
change the color of the outline and the color of the fill. So that, in line with the fact
that you can make the cursor larger as well, means you could pretty much customize the
cursor. The shape is going to be the same. But those that have trouble seeing the cursor
are going to be able to make it much easier to find on the screen.
Now this may seem like a minor change but I think it's a pretty big deal. The Go To
Folder functionality in the Finder is something most people don't use but some people do and
those that do use it a lot. This is the first update I've seen to Go To Folder in a long
time. It looks different now but the best part is it does Autocomplete really well.
Just type a few letters and it figures out where you want to go. So you don't have to
type the full paths anymore. Typing something like document really quickly gets you to the
Documents Folder, for instance.
Now there are two new changes to how passwords are stored on your Mac. I like them both.
One is that you can access the password's database in System Preferences. Before you
could only access it in Safari or in the very complex keychain access. But now the same
functionality you find in Safari is also in System Preferences so you don't have to open
up Safari to find a password. The other thing that you could do now is you
can import and export passwords. So for those that want to backup all their passwords they
can export them to this simple CSV format and it includes all the information so then
you can save that somewhere to an archive, put it on a USB stick and store it away somewhere
to have a backup of your passwords.
Finally, there are three new features of Mission Control that I think are really important.
One is the ability, when you're in Split View, to replace one half of the screen. So instead
of having to kill Split View and kind of recreate it using one of the apps and then a different
app for the second half you can click on the Green Button and now choose to replace that
half of the screen with another app. You could also opt to break a Split View into two full
screen apps which again makes a common thing a lot easier instead of having to exit Split
View and then go into Full Screen View for both those apps. You can do it in one move.
Finally there is now the ability to have the Menu Bar available to you in Full Screen View
at all times. Right now, of course, it's only available if you move your cursor to the top.
A lot of people complained that they would love to see the Menu Bar while in Full Screen
View. It doesn't take up that much space and we all use the Menu Bar a lot. So now you
have that option built into System Preferences. It's there along side the Option to Remove
the Menu Bar in the regular windowed Desktop.
So there is a look at a bunch of the different things that I really think are interesting
in macOS Monterey. As we all explore these new features over the course of the beta as
the release approaches I'll do videos on various different things that I think will be important
and used by a lot of people. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “15 New Features Coming To macOS Monterey”

Robert`

3 years ago

Looking at the Wikipedia site, there is no mention of any update in Contacts app. With all the fixes they could make in Contacts, they probably never will fix the app. Maybe other users are using third party address books or just living with the app as it is. They did change a some things to Contacts a few years ago but stopped short of complete overhaul. Thank You for letting me comment.

John Murdin

Any idea if they’ll let you change the metadata of audiobooks that you create - I record a lot but since they took audiobooks out of iTunes - utter chaos!

Gary Rosenzweig

John: It doesn't look like there is any advanced functionality added to the Books app, if that is what you mean. But it is just the first developer beta so things can change.

Charles Stanford

As always, terrific review. Thanks.

Jasper

Could you assign Keyboard Shortcuts to Shortcuts, as you can with Automator, or make them run on Folder contents or be date-actuated?

It would be great to have Smart Search in Notes, to operate on its new tags, like in Finder. Esp if you could save the search as a Smart Folder too.

Odd that we now have 3 types of tags: Finder, Photos and Notes. I’d like it if you could have tags that were specific to the Focus feature, which looks interesting. AFAIK, it controls which apps show up and DND

Jasper: Yes. There is even a built-in keyboard shortcut assignment function in Shortcuts. No Folder actions yet. No time-based automations yet.

Comments Closed.

15 New Features Coming To macOS Monterey

Comments: 6 Responses to “15 New Features Coming To macOS Monterey”

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