New macOS Catalina Features: Shared iCloud Folders And More

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at the new features in macOS Catalina 15.4.

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So yesterday, in addition to a new version of iOS, Apple released a new version of macOS as well.This is a major dot release so with it comes new features. Let's take a look. 

Here I am in macOS Catalina version 10.15.4. The first feature I want to show you is something that has been anticipated since last summer because it was in the beta for Catalina and then removed before the final version of Catalina. Finally it's back. We have shared iCloud folders. So I'm going to go into the Finder here and pick a folder that's already in the iCloud drive. So in this case my Documents folder is stored in iCloud. So any folder here in my Documents folder will do. Otherwise if you're not using Documents in Desktop on iCloud you've got to create a folder or use a folder that's already on your iCloud drive.

You can select that and you can get to the sharing options by Control clicking on it and selecting Share and then Add People. You can also click on the Share button here in the Toolbar at the Finder and you'll see Add People there as well. Select that and you get the options that you need. First you have to choose how to share the link to this folder. So you can send an email, send it over Messages, AirDrop it, or just copy a link and that way you could send it anyway you want. I could add some people here but I don't need to to get things going.

I could look under Share options here and I can set who can access. So I can say Only People I Invite, or Anybody with a link. So if it's Only People I Invite I have to enter Apple ID's up here. Otherwise I can say Anyone with a Link and then that's not necessary. Then I could do Permissions and anybody here can now make changes. They could add files. They could alter the files in there or View Only. So they could just View or Download the files. They can't change them on my iCloud drive. So anyway I set this up I just hit Share and then it will share this folder. It will say Share By Me right there. 

If I go back here to Share you'll see Show People brings the controls up again and this is how I can turn it off and this is also how I can change the options. Notice under Share Options I can also Copy Link if I want. So I can copy and paste or I can send link again using one of these methods. Now you can work on a set of files inside a shared folder with somebody else who also uses iCloud drive. 

Another change is a new section under Screen Time. So go into Screen Time and under here you'll see a new section called Communication. You can set limits to Contacts Only or Everyone. You can have things during downtime. Only allow communication with specific contacts. This is mostly meant for parental controls of course. So you can limit who your child can communicate with at various times. Another thing you should be able to do is to set limits on viewing music videos but I haven't been able to find that control in here yet. 

Speaking of music there's a new feature in the Music app. For a while now iOS and iPadOS have had the ability to show lyrics that advanced as the song plays. Now you can do that on the Mac as well. You have to have Apple Music for this. But you can play a song, I have the volume turned down here all the way so I don't get into trouble, and if I go to View, Show Lyrics I'll see lyrics popup here on the right and the lyrics will advance as the song advances. So you'll see it automatically go to the next line there. Now you could also go and scroll through these lyrics and pick a line and jump to it and it will jump to that part of the song. This also appears in the MiniPlayer. If I click here to bring up the MiniPlayer and then I click on the lyrics button there I'll see the lyrics here and I can scroll through them, I can click on one and it will jump to that part of the song too.

There's a couple new Tab tricks in Safari. You now have the ability to duplicate a tab. So if you're at a specific webpage and you want to have a second tab open to exactly the same location you could do it by going to Window, then Duplicate Tab or Control click on the tab here and choose Duplicate and you get another tab set to the same location. Notice when I Control click here there's also now a feature to close a tab to the right of the current tab. 

Another option is for Importing. When you go to File, Import From and say Goggle Chrome you now have the option to import passwords from Goggle Chrome as well. 

Here's something really cool added under Accessibility. You go to System Preferences and then go to Accessibility, then go to Pointer Control, alternate control methods now include Head Pointer. So I'm going to turn that on and then I look under Options and one of the options there is to choose my camera. So I can choose my Webcam here. No problem with that. Pointer speed, distance to edge, pointer moves relative to head, or when facing screen edges. Some other things. Using Switch to Pause or Resume. I can hit OK and now I can, without my hands, move my cursor using my head. Kind of neat!

There are also a few bug fixes and enterprise improvements with this update. You can take a look at the complete list at the Apple site at this page.