Top 10 New Features In macOS Sonoma

Note: macOS Sonoma will be released on September 26.
Check out the best new features you can use once you update to macOS Sonoma. You can add widgets right to the Desktop, create apps from your favorite web sites, link between notes, find your pets in Photos, and much more.

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

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the top ten new features in macOS Sonoma. 
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Now by my count there are more than 175 new features in macOS Sonoma. But here are the ten that I think are the most important. 
First, we've got new Desktop Wallpapers or is it Screen Savers. Well, Apple sometimes calls it one, sometimes the other, and they are kind of linked now. So when you go to System Settings you can see Wallpaper and Screen Saver. Notice that you can have a Screen Saver show as wallpaper and a Wallpaper show as a screen saver. The new ones. the ones everyone is talking about are these arial views here. High resolution videos you'll find familiar if you have an Apple TV. So if you select one of these then it looks like this as your Wallpaper or Screen Saver. What happens is if you use one of these, notice here as a Screen Saver, it's moving. You're moving through the landscape. But if you exit the Screen Saver it slows down and stops at a point and that is now your Wallpaper. Which is really interesting because now you've got a slightly different wallpaper each time you wake your Mac up. As a matter of fact you can use these animations here, like the Sonoma one, in the same way. So here this is going to animate and now when I come out of the Screen Saver it will stop and I have a slightly different wallpaper than any other time. 
I think probably the most useful new feature is going to be the Desktop Widgets. So we've had widgets before in the Notification Center, of course. But now you could actually add the same widgets to your Desktop. So I can Drag one, like let's say drag the Weather here. Let's add another one like, say, Reminders and you can now have these on your Desktop whenever you want. You can move them around. They kind of snap into place. They coexist with the ones in Notification Center and if you bring up another window they will fade to the background, although you have a Setting in System Settings that will allow you to keep them as full color. They are even interactive. So, for instance, in Reminders here I could actually click on one of the items to complete it. You can even use iPhone widgets on your Mac Desktop and Notification Center. As long as you iPhone, of course, is using the same Apple ID and it is nearby you can have the widget from your iPhone appear on your Mac. You don't even have to have that app installed. It is actually taking that exact widget from your iPhone and just showing it on your Mac. So your iPhone is producing the widget and your Mac is actually displaying it. 
Now there is a couple of new tricks in Safari that are really interesting. One is that you can now have multiple profiles. So we go into Safari Settings. We go to Profiles here and you can start using Profiles. Create a new one. So I'll call this one called Work Social and I can set a symbol for it and a color and whether or not is uses the same Bookmarks. Now I've got two windows here. One is in my Personal profile and one is in my Work Social profile. So I can be logged into different sites for both of those. So this one could be my personal social media accounts and this is my work social media accounts. Or you can do this same for shopping or anything else that you need to log into. It is kind of like having a private browsing window but instead of it going away completely when you close the window you could simply open up a new window and resume where you left off. It's like having two or more versions of Safari running at the same time. 
In addition to that you really can have more versions of Safari running using something called Web Apps. Now Web Apps have been available on other browsers for a long time but it is nice to have them in Safari. So, for instance, I could go to a website like this one and I go to File and then Add to Dock and then I could change the name, the icon, and everything. Add it. You can see it is now in the Dock there so I can Quit Safari and I can launch it from the Dock and now it is an app that has the name of that site and the app is just a Safari browser but only for this website and any related websites. If I click on a link to some other site it will open up in Safari like you're clicking on a link in, say, and email or in a document. 
Now in Preview you've got your Markup Tools just like before. But you now have a separate set of tools for filling in forms. So if all you want to do is fill-in a form you just use this instead. It shows you all the fields that you could fill-in provided, of course, the PDF has been created with those fields in it. You can fill them in. You can even check boxes and you can use a few other tools here like Signing. You can even add your own text field in case, maybe, there is some spot you want to write something where there is no field provided. 
In the Notes App there is the ability now to link from Note to Note. So I can create a new note here and if I wanted to create a link to another note I can go to Edit and then Add Link, or Command K. Then I can Link To and just start typing the name of the note, to select it, and then I now have a link to that note. There is even shorthand for doing this. You just do the Greater Than symbol twice, like that, and you can pick from a list of notes to link to. So you can link back and forth in Notes. Even creating your own little personal wiki's in the Notes App. 
The Reminders App also has some new tricks. So if you create a new list here you can now add sections to that list. So I'll just add some items here. I can use this button here to add new sections. I'll just use some test names here. I'll add another section and I can easily add items in there or move my existing items to sections. In addition to that if you were to create a new list and make it of the type Groceries, this type of list allows you to add typical grocery items. It will automatically create sections for them. So you can see what it did there. It just created that section. Creates another section and so on. You can rearrange sections pretty easily as well. 
In the Photos App People is now People & Pets or at least it is if you've added a pet as a person. It now accepts the faces of dogs and cats to be able to add them to your People & Pets section. So you would just go into your Library here. Find a picture that has one of your best friends in it and you could easily add them just as you would any person from before. So I'll find that picture added there and you can go and review more photos. So you can add your pets just like people to this section now. 
When typing now you're going to notice a new type of suggestion, in-line suggestions. So as you type something watch as I see the little gray text appear and then simply press the spacebar to move onto the next word without having to complete typing it. (demonstrating an example.) Sometimes it just suggests finishing your current word but other times it may suggest two or even three words in advance. 
Now there are whole bunch of new features that you can use when video conferencing.  These will work in FaceTime but also some other apps as well, like Zoom. So, for instance, here I'm Face Timing to somebody and I can go up here to the top. Then there is a whole little set of controls that I can use. For instance I can access studio lighting or not and adjust it. I can do reactions like this. I could also Share my screen. I can actually share a window, all the windows of an app, or the whole screen. So I can choose just the window, and I'll choose this Safari window here. Once I do I can now choose from presenter overlay being Off, so they just see my screen and you see the preview right there. I can so Small and you can see I'm in the bottom left hand corner. It even shows that here on my screen. This is what the other person will see. I can also choose Large and I'll see this preview here where it shows whatever it is I'm sharing behind me and I'm simply in front. So this is really great say if you've got a Keynote presentation that is running. You can be in front of it like that. 
So there's a look at some of the best new features you'll be able to use as soon as you update your Mac to macOS Sonoma. I'll be looking in more detail at some of these and covering other new features as well in future video tutorials. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 11 Responses to “Top 10 New Features In macOS Sonoma”

Charles Tutt

1 year ago

Very useful! Can't wait for your new Sonoma course. I intend to make the Apple Eco System the integrated core of my business and personal life. (My OS). You are a major resource in my accomplishment of that.

Mark Holmes

Gary, when I go to gmail.com on the web (on my m1 iMac) and then try to drag it to the dock, I get the following message "You don't have permission to save the file gmail.app in the folder Applications. To view or select the item in the Finder and choose File >Get Info." Well that doesn't work because I don't have anything called gmail or gmail.app in Applications. Thoughts?

Gary Rosenzweig

Mark: Did you try File, Add To Dock instead? Otherwise, I'm not sure what could cause the problem. Are you maybe logged in as a standard user instead of an admin user? Or, maybe you have ScreenTime restrictions of some kind? I'd contact Apple Support if you can't figure it out.

Yes, I used File, Add to Dock. I am logged in as an admin and have no screen time restrictions enabled , so puzzled. I'll try the Apple Forums next.

Thanks Gary!

Charles

Terrific video. Thanks.

Gene

I will now have to downgrade back Ventura as some of my apps randomly crash. No vender help available. Will have to wait for Sonoma to be more stable and compatible. Thanks for video otherwise.

Gene: If an app is crashing, it would be a problem with the app, not with Sonoma being "unstable." Not sure what you mean by "No vender help available" but it sounds like maybe those apps are abandoned and just won't be working moving forward. Find alternatives.

nick

Hey Gary, did you happen to figure out how often wallpaper changes when set to "Continuously"? Doesn't seem to change for me, at least every time I go back after putting Mac to sleep. I don't have Screensaver turned on, if that makes a difference. Thx

nick: Maybe when a video is done it goes to another? So you need to leave the screen saver on for a while for it to finish that video. Probably also matters if you have downloaded more. If you have only downloaded one, then it wouldn't have a second one to go to. Experiment with that.

Jenny

My email link is open, then I open another tab to search for the issue of the screens moving left and right, off the screen. I cannot find a solution to keep them on the screen. I needed to read instructions on one of the screens and it went stage left out of view.

Jenny: Perhaps you are using your browser in Full Screen mode? Or maybe you have Stage Manager turned on?

Comments Closed.

Top 10 New Features In macOS Sonoma

Comments: 11 Responses to “Top 10 New Features In macOS Sonoma”

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