17 Hidden New Features In macOS Ventura

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at some lesser talked about new features in macOS Ventura.

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So while Stage Manager and the new System Settings app are getting the most attention with macOS Ventura there are some lesser known features of Ventura that are also very useful. Let's talk with on that I haven't heard anybody else talk about. This is a new feature in Messages that simply allows you to select multiple conversations. Keep in mind what you see here over here on the right, these are messages. On the left these are conversations. A lot of times people ask me how do I delete multiple messages. What they really mean is how do you delete multiple conversations. Before Ventura you could only select one at a time. Then you can Control Click on that and delete that entire conversation. But now with Ventura you can use the Command key to select multiple conversations or you could use the Shift key to select a range. Once you have all of those selected you can Control click, two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse, and then delete the conversations that are selected. 

So in Ventura we get two new apps, Clock and Weather. One of the most useful things about having the Clock App on your Mac is the ability to set timers. But you don't have to bring up the Clock App and have this big window open here to have the Timer. You can do it without even opening the Clock App. One way is to use Spotlight. So, Command Space and you can type Timer and one of the options you get here is Start Timer. Use that and you get this little control here and you can set it for something like 15 minutes and start the Timer. Then the Timer appears here in the Menu Bar. Now when you click it it does bring up the Clock App and that's where you would click Done or Pause. But you could also do this with Siri. (Voice - Start a 5 minute timer. 5 minutes counting down.) Then you could Pause it as well.  Pause my Timer. Restart Timer. Stop my Timer. So you could see you could do it all with Siri without ever launching the Clock App. 

Also note in the Shortcuts App we now can program the Timer and other Clock options in Shortcuts. You see you can get alarms, create alarms, toggle alarms, and you can start timers all here in Shortcuts.

Now while Photos has some big new features like being able to find duplicates and lift the subject out of a photo, you also have the ability to Lock your hidden photos and your recently deleted Photo's albums behind your account password. You could see how they are locked here. If I tried to view it's going to ask me to enter the password. But, of course, for most of us that's just going to mean Touch ID to get to it. This is a setting in Photos Settings here. You could see under Privacy, Use Touch ID or Password. 

Likewise Notes has this ability as well. Previously you lock a note by creating a new password that is specific to Notes. Now a lot of people had problems with this because they would forget that password. But now in Notes, Settings, you can set it for Lock Notes. Choose a custom password or use your login password and then whether or not Touch ID can be used as well. 

Notes also has expanded Smart Folder capability. So you go to create a new Smart Folder. Before you could just add some Tags. But now you've got ability that looks a lot like Finder Smart Folders. You see how you can select some criteria here and what it matches. You could add more and you can set it to All or Any for these. So you can create really complex Smart Folders in Notes. 

Another thing you can do in Notes is you can now collaborate using a Shared Note that is just a link. So I could Share this note, like this, and I could set it for Collaboration. But I could set it here so that anyone with a link could make changes or I could publish a Note to View Only so only I could change it but anybody with a Link could actually see it. Obviously anybody with a Link could actually change the Note. It's not very secure. So you shouldn't use it for secure things. But it could be great to use for collaborative notes in meetings and other casual situations.

Previously when you got updates from macOS you had to install the update and restart. Well, some security updates can now be installed without a Restart. This is called Rapid Security Response. It allows Apple to actually deploy a security update without much hassle to you. So, if you go into System Settings and then go to General and then Software Update, go into Automatic Updates here and you'll see Install Security Responses and System Files. You have that turned on then anything that Apple deploys as a Rapid Security update will automatically quickly and silently update on your Mac without requiring you to stop working.

One of the problems with using USB is there could be a security issue. If you just use your own USB devices it is not a problem. But if you're in a job where you need to take somebody else's USB device and connect it it's nice to at least be prompted to know that you're actually inserting a USB device and give it permission to work with your system. So if I plugin a USB device to my Mac you'll see this little prompt come up. I can Allow or Not Allow. 

A new useful feature in FaceTime is the ability that if you're talking to somebody using another device, like say your iPhone, you can actually switch to FaceTime on your Mac. If you click up here in the Menu Bar you'll see the call come up and you can click the Switch button and it switches the call to your Mac. 

Another new feature in the Photos App is if you go to a memory, like this one, you've got the memory there and it will play the video and you can do all sorts of things with it. But you also have this button here that you can click on and it will just take you to all the different photos that are part of that memory. You can select them and drag them and do various things with them just like they were part of an album. 

Now before we had the ability to SharePlay in FaceTime so you could play music with somebody while you're chatting over FaceTime or actually watch something in the TV app and all of that. Now you can actually do that in Messages though I find it's really tricky to work on the Mac. There doesn't seem to be a way yet to actually get that to start on the Mac. But if the person on the other end is using an iPhone it's relatively easy for them to take a piece of music say and then you SharePlay over Messages and you'll see it appear here and then you can click this Join button and then it should start although I haven't had much success with it. 

Spotlight has a couple more new tricks. There's a lot more that you can trigger with Spotlight now. For instance you can run any shortcut that you created. So before you either had to go up here to the Pin Shortcuts List or you had to run something from the Shortcuts App or as a Quick Action. But now you can just go into the Spotlight Menu and type the name of the shortcut. You'll see it appear here and you can trigger it right from the Shortcut's App. So this gives you a whole other way to run a shortcut.  

You could also do this for Focus modes. So just type the name of a Focus mode and you can turn on that Focus mode here from Spotlight. 

A lot of new features in the Mail App but one not mentioned much is the ability to Share a Rich Link. So you can type a link like this and then it will appear there as a link. But notice the little button there. I can click that and choose Show Link Preview and then you'll see it like this. Then you can always click here and convert it back to a regular link. 

In Safari under Settings you've got Website Settings and you can customize all these different settings according to different websites. But now we have the ability here to Share across devices. If this is checked and say you have two Macs then anything you set, like say the Reader Mode for a site, will now be shared across both those devices. 

Another new thing you could do with Shortcuts is you could set a shortcut up to show in Share Sheet. Now before that only worked on the iPhone and iPad. But now it works on the Mac too. So, for instance, here I am on a webpage. I click Share. I notice I have Shortcuts as an option. This brings up a list of any shortcuts that have Show in Share Sheet available. I can select it and what this will do is add the URL here for this page to a Note so I can check the note and there it added it. 

I started with one that I really haven't seen anybody else talk about and I'll end with one that I haven't seen anybody else talk about. If you go into System Settings and then you go to General you've got Login Items which you have before in System Preferences. The difference now it in addition to Login Items it also shows you any other apps that are scheduled to launch in the background by another method. Before you actually had to look in specific folders in your library or use the Terminal to access this. Now you actually get a list of third party apps usually that will launch in the background and you can turn them off. There's going to be a period of adjustment here because what you see here now is the name of the developer. In a lot of cases people don't know the names of the developers of their apps. So things might look a little suspect here until you connect the name of the developer to the app that you're probably very familiar with. 

There's a look at some of the lesser known new features of macOS Ventura. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.