What's New In macOS Big Sur 11.3

This update to Big Sur brings new Emoji characters and new features in Reminders, Safari, News, Podcasts, Music and more. On M1 Macs you have new options for using iOS and iPadOS apps.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Apple just released version 11.3 of Big Sur. Let's take a look at what's new. 
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So while the new version of Big Sur includes a lot of different bug fixes and security updates there are actually some interesting little features that you should be aware of. Let's start off by going to System Preferences. Under Siri there are new voices. Here I've got it set to be American and now I see there are four voice variations. There's original Siri. (Hi, I'm Siri, choose the voice you'd like me to use). There are also three others. 
Now let's go to the Reminders App. I'm really excited about the new things here. As you can see, Enhanced Sorting, Print Your Lists, but that's not all. The sorting is here in Today. If I control click on it, right click or two-finger click on a trackpad, you can see I can sort the Today List various different ways. But what's really exciting is I can go to a list like this and now, finally, we can Print. So you could print it out or, of course, save it as a PDF or open it in Preview as a PDF. Yes, this does mean that once it's saved as a PDF you can now Copy and Paste the text from a Reminders List which got me thinking maybe you could actually Copy and Paste like normal now. It turns out you can! They fixed that. So I can select the first item here, select maybe down to here, now I can go to Edit, Copy and then in another app like TextEdit I can Paste and there we go! The text from the Reminders List can now be copied and pasted. That's going to make it much easier to export your list for backup or other uses. 
Apple also added a bunch of new things to Safari. Most of it involves different API's for developers of extensions. So you may see some more interesting extensions coming up in the future. Also, a few new types of web video are now supported. But in addition to that you have one thing you could actually see and play with now. That's here on the Start Page. The controls for the Start Page can now be organized. So, for instance, if I wanted to drag the Privacy Report here to the bottom and the Reading List to the top I can. 
There are a couple of new things in the Music App if you have Apple Music. One is now in Playlists there's this little control here to make an infinite playlist out of a regular playlist. What basically happens is it will go through your playlist and when it gets to the end it will continue to play songs to match the ones that are in that playlist. So it will just keep going on. Also there's a new feature where you can see Top 25 Lists for different cities around the world. 
The Podcast App also has some enhancements although I don't use it enough to really recognize what they are. Supposedly here in Top Charts there are some more charts that you can view and they go deeper perhaps. Also when you go to individual shows there's some extra things like perhaps, I think, these buttons might be a little bit different here. I'm not really sure what's new but they list a bunch of new features to kind of make it easier to just download individual episodes and store them in your library. 
In Apple News you can now more clearly see what's available in News + if you're a subscriber to that. Searching is now enhanced as well to help you find different things like Topics, Channels, and Stories based on whatever it is you searched for. 
Now what a lot of people are going to focus on is the fact that there are new emoji available in both iOS version 14.5 and macOS version 11.3. So, for instance, we can search for and find Face Exhaling here. Another one is Face Clouds and also Face Spiral Eyes. You can see those three they can be used for anything that you want although I think a lot of times they are going to be used in relation to cannabis. There are also two new Hearts. There's a mending heart, this one, and also a heart on fire. There are also three new beard emoji. Before we had a beard emoji that looked something like this. You could choose the style there and now they have moved that. That's the regular emoji. But there are now two new ones. There are Man and Woman. This one isn't new but it's updated. If you do Syringe now you'll get one that has some fluid in it, not red fluid. So I guess before they were thinking blood but, you know, the pandemic happened and a lot of people wanted to use this to represent vaccines. So now you have a syringe that's kind of more generic and can be used for that. You also have a bunch of variations of the kiss and couple with heart. So we can do Kiss here and you could see these. There are now four of them combining both sexes and you can pick the style for each side, one and then the other. So this is a new interface here. You can still use the generic original emoji for each of these. So you could do that with either the kisses or the couple with hearts like that. 
So what else is new. If you go to About This Mac now there is a Service tap here that gives you information about your AppleCare warrantee. You'll supposed to be able to update to use the new annual AppleCare+ Plan. But I don't see that here yet. Maybe it's going to appear here at the webpage that clicking Details will take you to.
Now let's switch to my M1 MacBook Pro because I need the M1 processor to show you the specific things you need to do for using iOS and iPad apps on your Mac. There are new features that help you with window sizing. So now you could resize windows and in full screen mode. You can also choose to go with the highest resolution there. In addition to that there are options for gaming. You can use the Mac's keyboard as a gaming controller. So a lot of iOS apps allow you to use a gaming controller. Now you can simulate that using the Mac's keyboard. Even if you don't use a game controller for your iOS apps you may actually tilt the iPhone or iPad to play some of the games. Now you can use keys on the keyboard for that. 
In general, on the Mac, there's more support now for controllers for regular Mac games. So new X-Box and PS5 controllers have been added and supported. 
There's some other minor things and bug fixes as well. If you want to see the complete list of everything that is new here is the URL to go to at Apple site.

Comments: 6 Responses to “What's New In macOS Big Sur 11.3”

Dara Hogan

2 years ago

Living in hope that Apple will one day restore to Reminders the earlier facility to start a Reminder from within a Contact using the Share icon. This used to insert a link to the Contact in Reminders e.g. “Ring Jim re overdue payment”. Any thoughts on why this feature disappeared - it was very useful? Thanks for MacMost!

Gary Rosenzweig

Dara: No idea. I don't know of any way to link a Contact to a Reminder like that, sorry.

Margarose

Thank you Gary. I have only just upgraded from Mojave! to Big Sur. That was not a happy experience of 12 hours. Under the date, I see clocks. Can I set them to places I care about, like Newcastle Upon Tyne, Perth and Amsterdam?

Margarose: See https://macmost.com/learn-how-to-use-notification-center-widgets-in-macos-big-sur.html

Adam

Thank You sir, well done!

Thank you. Got it. Another helpful lesson.

Comments Closed.

What's New In macOS Big Sur 11.3

Comments: 6 Responses to “What's New In macOS Big Sur 11.3”

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