The biggest change in Catalina is something that many Mac user's won't even notice. The dedicated system volume will put macOS on a read-only partition of your hard drive that will make it very difficult for malware and other annoyances to cause harm. It will even help prevent misbehaving poorly-written software from messing things up.
If you want to know what other people are search for in the Mac App Store, just go to the Search box at the top left. Click in it but don’t type anything. You’ll see a list of trending keywords appear. You can also click on Categories and then select a category to see top app sales and free apps in that category.
When macOS Catalina is released in the fall, it will come with a new TV app. This app takes over the movie and TV show purchasing and rental features from the old iTunes app. You will also use it to access your own video you store in your TV app library, such as ripped DVDs. An important aspect of the TV app will be giving Mac users access to the new Apple TV+ service coming later this year, as well as the ability to subscribe to channels such as HBO, Showtime and CBS through a subscription.
Most Mac users never take the time to customize their login screen. But there are several options there you will want to change to increase security or have the login screen better fit your needs. There is one very easy change that every user should make, to include a message on the login screen in case you lose your Mac and want to increase the chances that it will be returned to you.
One of the most powerful tools in Preview is the Smart Lasso. You can use that to quickly cut out part of an image to create a new one with a transparent background, or insert an object from one image into another. While Preview lacks a lot of the image editing tools found in more powerful apps, the Smart Lasso is probably easier to use than similar features in expensive apps.
You should be very careful when installing apps on your Mac and try to stick only to the Mac App Store or sites you fully trust. When you want to uninstall an app, you can usually do it through LaunchPad. However, for some apps you'll need to look for uninstall instructions at the developer's site. If needed, you can uninstall an app manually if you know where to look for its files.
iCloud email allows you to freely add some text to your regular email address to create unqiue addresses that you can use on an as-needed basis. So you can use a slightly different email address when you sign up for a service and easily identify if that service is sending you spam or seling your information. You can also use this to organize legitimate email by filtering into groups that use the same address. However, there are some downsides too.
You can quickly look something up on the web without even starting in the browser. Use Command+Space to bring up Spotlight, then type a word or phrase. Then Use Command+B to instantly jump to a web search for that term. You can also use Command+L to jump to the dictionary definition of a word in Spotlight. Pressing Return immediately after Command+L will open the Dictionary app.
If you want to trim some video from the beginning or end of a movie file, you don't need to use a video editing app. You can do it right in QuickTime Player. Trimming is lossless and can be done with precision. You can also cut sections out of the middle of your video and export a new copy. You can trim in the Photos app as well, though the original full-length video is always available if you wish to revert.
In the thumbnails to my videos now, I'm including an icon for the app or part of macOS that I'm talking about. I get those app icon graphics using a technique that I'm sure most Mac users don't know about. Take a look.
If you use the Find function in the Finder you can perform file searches that are much more complex than using Spotlight. You can add many pieces of criteria to the search other than a single search term. If you know how, you can use logic to combine search criteria and add very specific options. Then you can save your searches so you don't have to recreate them from scratch later.
A new feature in macOS Catalina will be the ability to share entire folders in iCloud Drive with others. Any files you place in the folder will be available to others that you specify, or anyone with a link of you wish. All with access to the folder can modify, add and delete files. This collaborative feature has been a part of other cloud soltuions for a while, so it is nice to finally have it as part of iCloud. You can also do this with iOS 13.
Many Mac users ignore the Go menu in the Finder, but there are some useful shortcuts there. You can access some of the most most used folders on your drive with this menu and see keyboard shortcuts for them. You can also access your Librray folder and Startup Disk through the Go menu if you know how. The Go to Folder function lets you move around by typing, which is preferred by many pro users.
With standard Mac apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote, you can revert to a previously saved version of the file to retrieve text or items you may have deleted or changed. You can completely revert to the old version, or copy and paste some text from an old version. This also works with TextEdit and some third-party apps.
In macOS Mojave you can change some of the basic colors used throughout the system. Find a color that works better for you or fits your mood for the day. Go to System Preferences, General and play around with Accent Color and Highlight Color.
One of the biggest changes that will come with macOS Catalina is the replacement of the iTunes app. The new Music app will take over management of your existing iTunes music library and it has pretty much all of the functions that iTunes had. Preview what it looks like and see what the Mac Music app can do. Catalina will be released in the fall.
