9/16/24
9:00 am

What's New In macOS Sequoia

macOS Sequoia packs in a lot of new features even before Apple Intelligence is added. You have a ton of window tiling commands, a new Passwords app, Math Notes, audio transcriptions, iPhone Mirroring and more.

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

Video Transcript: What's new in macOS Sequoia? Let's take a look.
So macOS Sequoia, version 15 is going to rollout in stages. 15.0 won't have most of the Apple Intelligence features that people have been talking about. But 15.1 and 15.2 coming later this year will have more and more of those features. Let's focus on what's new in the initial release 15.0 of macOS Sequoia. 
So I think the Tiling features are what most people will be talking about. This allows you to quickly position Windows around the screen. So here I've got a bunch of different windows and of course I can drag them wherever I want. Resize them however I want. Just like before. But in the Window Menu there are now a bunch of different tools, like Fill to fill the entire space or Center to center the window. Also under Move and Resize you're going to see a variety of things like going to the left, the right, the top, filling the top left corner, and all of that. You'll be able to arrange all of the windows in quarters or in other arrangements. Hold the Option Key and you get more. Notice all the Keyboard Shortcuts for doing this quickly as well. You can also access these with the Green Button here. Just hover over it and you get access to a lot of those options. The Option Key gets you even more. Plus you can Drag & Drop to do it. I can drag this window to the left and it will snap into half the screen. I'll drag this window to the right and it will snap as well. The cool thing is as you drag away and you can see how it returns to its normal size. You can also snap up and use the corners as well. So a lot of people are really going to love how you can tile the windows and you still have access to Full Screen and Split View just as before. 
Now a new iCloud Drive feature, that I think a lot of people have been waiting for, is the ability to take a file like this one and say you have the Optimize Feature turned on. Now if you go off-line you can never be 100% sure that this file is going to be available to you. But in Sequoia you can bring up the Context Menu and one of the options is Keep Downloading. So it will make sure that that file is always on your Mac and available even when you're off-line and using the Optimize Feature of iCloud Drive. 
So a new feature that you can use in FaceTime is to control how you look. Right now you see exactly what's behind me, which is a green screen. But for you it is probably a bookcase or a wall or door or window or whatever. So you can now go to the Camera controls here in the top and go to Background. You can swap out the background and you can choose a solid color, it's a gradient really. You can choose one of Apple's backgrounds like this or you can add one of your own photos to this collection here and use one of your own photos for it. So this works in FaceTime but also in other apps where you are using your Camera. 
Now for a while macOS has had a built-in password manager. But it is kind of awkward to access this. You have to go into System Settings to get to it or in Safari Settings. Now finally it has got its own App. So you can just run this Password's App and that is where you have access to all of your passwords. It works more like a third party password manager having this independent app here. There's even a cool function where you could go into settings and you can turn on Show Passwords in Menu Bar and then you get this little key up here and you can access your passwords without even having to the Password's App open. 
By the way if you find my video is valuable you may want to consider joining the more than 2000 others that support MacMost at Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it here. 
Messages has a few new features. One is that you can now use TapBack as before. But instead of just being restricted to these 6 different icons you could actually use any Emoji that you want. So you can choose all these different symbols as something you would tap back with. You can also use Stickers. You create those on the iPhone and you can grab one of your stickers here. This is from a photo and it can be animated or not. So the tap back options have greatly expanded. 
There are also a few new Message Effects that you can use. You can see here the list got a little bit longer and there's a few new things that you can do. 
When you go to send a message now in addition to just sending it you can now Send Later. So you can choose a date and time and have the message sent then instead of right now, which is what you would get if you just normally pressed return. 
Now the Calculator App has changed. There's actually now a Universal Calculator App that's on the iPhone, the Mac, and on the iPad. You still have all of the different modes here. So you've got your Basic Mode. your Scientific Mode, and your Programmer Mode. But even in Basic Mode you can type out a formula and you can see the whole formula, like that. Then you press equals and it even remains there at the top. This is really handy when you go to Scientific Calculator because you can see the left and right parentheses really clearly, like that. As a matter of fact even though it is not shown here you could actually type the parentheses and use them in Basic Mode for the calculator. In addition, conversions look different. They work in a really clever way. You just go to view and turn on Convert and now it converts whatever answer there is to the calculation you're performing from one thing to another. So you can change what it is. For instance I can convert temperatures. I can do Celsius and I can go to Fahrenheit and now whatever I type here I see the conversion happen automatically. You can do this with all sorts of units but you can also do it with currency as well. 
Now the Notes App also gets into calculating. You can type something like this and put an equals there and it will calculate the answer. You press Return and it will stay there. If you go back up and change a number the answer updates. You can use parentheses and some functions. You can even use variables. So like I could do something like this, and something like this and then I can have formulas, like this, and you can see it calculates the answer. I can so another formula. Let's multiply these and I get that answer. Now if I change this variable here you could see it updates the results. 
Another trick that Notes has now is you can record and it will give you transcripts. So I'll start a recording and I'll begin recording like this. It will get everything that I'm saying. I'll stop it and click Done and you can see I've got the transcript here. If I double click it it brings it up here and I can jump to a part of the recording by clicking on words or I can select and Copy & Paste. This will be really useful in meetings and classes. 
Also, in regular Notes now if you have Headings you can now collapse those headings and it collapses everything under it. A great way to have a longer notes and just see the section you want. Plus, we can now do Highlighting. So you can select text like this, you click on the Font tool there, and click this button and it will highlight it and you can select from a few different colors. 
The Voice Memo app, by the way, also allows you to get transcripts. You can do recordings with this and when you're done you can see this little symbol here saying it has a transcript. You click here and it will bring up the transcript.
Now if you're like me you've got your iPhone sitting next to you when you're using your Mac. There are certain apps that are only available on the iPhone that you have to use. You get Notifications on it and everything like that. But now you can keep your iPhone in your pocket because you can access it on your Mac. So, you've got this new App called iPhone Mirroring and you turn that On and you've just got your iPhone with you, it's locked, but now you'll see the screen right here as a little window on your Mac that you can move around. You can go Home, you can go to different apps, you can even go in and Copy & Paste from an app on your iPhone to an app on your Mac and vice versa.  In the future we will be able to Drag & Drop. You can use your Mac's keyboard to type right into your iPhone. In addition there is something in System Settings, under Notifications, that allows you now to have Notifications from your iPhone appear on your Mac's screen. So no more grabbing your iPhone out of your pocket to see what the notification is. It will now appear on your Mac. When you click it it will even use iPhone Mirroring to give you access to whatever that notification was referring to. 
If you always thought it was strange that you could set a reminder in the Reminders App and have it set for a certain time and then look at your Calendar and then not even see it. Well, that has changed now because Reminders and Calendars are linked. So you can see I've got a work meeting and it appears here in the Calendar App. There's a little calendar here that just shows me all of my reminders. Plus, when you go to create a new event it allows you to create event like before but you could also say, Oh instead create a reminder for the Reminders App. 
Safari has some new features too. They use Apple Intelligence. So you may or may not get them depending on your Mac model and which version of macOS you've got. But here you can see if I go to a page where the Reader View button was before there's now this button that gives you even more options. You can click it and it gives you a summary if there is an article there, or something that can be summarized. You can go to Reader View, if you want. As a matter of fact if you go to Reader View for this it will not only give me Reader View but it will give me the summary and a Table of Contents on the right so I can jump to different sections of the article. 
There's also the option here to Hide Distracting Items. You can select that and then you can click on any part of the page you want, like this, and it will go away. It will be hidden. So you can trim down what is shown on the screen. Really useful perhaps for giving presentations when you want to show a webpage but you don't want to show the ads on the webpage at your work meeting. 
Also there's a feature when you're playing a video on a webpage you can click here and then use the Video Viewer. It enlarges the video and gives you native macOS controls for playing the video. 
The Maps App has really been improved when it comes to showing things like parks. If you go to, say, a National Park or wilderness area it will show you trailheads and will also show you topographic lines. You can even create a custom route. I click this from this trailhead here and I can now go and pick my destination, like that, and it will figure out the route along the trail. Even show me elevation here. I can Save this route and this will be really useful in iOS 18 where you have your iPhone probably with you on a hike like this. But useful for planning definitely on your Mac. 
There's some minor changes in the Photos App. A lot of things like People and Memories are grouped under Collections now. In addition you have new Collection types like days and trips. So more tools to help you organize things automatically.
Freeform has an interesting new feature that makes it a little bit more like a presentation tool. You can create a board, like this, and let's say you want to give a presentation where you show each one of these things. You can zoom in on an area and make this into a scene. I've created a bunch of different scenes here including this first one. So a scene is basically a location and a zoom amount. You can jump to any other other scene or just use these arrows here to go between each one. So you can give a presentation. You can do the presentation over like a video meeting or you can use the collaboration tools in Freeform to give the presentation. 
Every new version of macOS seems to come with some new screensavers and wallpapers and this is no exception. In fact there's a really cool one called Macintosh. When you use this it looks like the original Macintosh system in a kind of 2½ D view. So you're going to see all sorts of different controls and interfaces pop-up. Sometimes you'll even things like the date and time. It will actually be correct. It's a really cool screensaver or desktop background to have. 
Now I know a lot of you are curious as to whether or not your Mac can run macOS Sequoia. All you need to do to figure that out is to go to Apple's site and go to their page on Sequoia. This is the Preview page but by the time you see this it will be just the regular Sequoia page. Scroll down there and you'll see the section near the bottom that tells you exactly which Mac models are capable of running macOS Sequoia. Not only that, sometimes various features only work on certain Macs or using certain languages or region settings. You can find Footnotes on that at the bottom of this page. So you look at the feature at the top of the page and if there is a Footnote you go down here and you see information about where this feature is available. So if something isn't working for you or looks different than what I'm showing you may want to check this. Now, of course, in the near future I'll have more detailed videos on some of these. As Apple releases new versions that include more Apple Intelligence features I'll do videos on those as well. Until then, I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 21 Responses to “What's New In macOS Sequoia”

Brian Foster

6 months ago

1) We could move windows using QuicKeys way back in the 1990s and System 7
2) We have had backgrounds on video calls with Zoom for years now
3) Microsoft Excel had the new Calculator functionality since the 1980s
4) iPhone mirroring has been available from X-Mirage
5) Maps is perpetually trying to catch up to Google Maps

How about bringing back functionality that followed Apple's Human Interface Guidelines? Double-clicking a folder should open a new overlapping window, not replace one.

Gary Rosenzweig

6 months ago

Brian: The new background removal function is system-wide, not just something in one third-party app. Excel is a spreadsheet app, not sure how that relates to what you are referring to. I think that app was just an AirPlay receiver. You can do that with macOS too without any app, but iPhone Mirroring is more than that as you can control your iPhone, copy and paste, etc. In some ways Apple Maps has surpassed Google Maps now. You can Command+double-click a folder to open it in a new window/tab. But I think most of the time, most of the users want to dive down, not have a new window/tab.

Sheldon

6 months ago

Thanks bunches

Joel Anderson

6 months ago

Extra Safari reader-view functionality not available on an M1 Mac?

Gary Rosenzweig

6 months ago

Joel: It should be. But it depends heavily on the site and how well it is constructed.

Joel Anderson

6 months ago

Gary, I followed your example with Wikipedia, where it doesn't highlights/summary don't work for me. Tried a couple other sites, too...nothing.

Gary Rosenzweig

6 months ago

Joel: Perhaps dependent on a few things. This worked in the beta of 18.0 so it should work in 18.0. But perhaps they changed that?

Joel Anderson

6 months ago

Hmmm...it's covered in the Tips app for What's New in macOS.

Joel Anderson

6 months ago

I finally found a web site that it works on. It's https://www.wired.com/story/apple-macos-sequoia-features/. Strange that it wouldn't work on Wikipedia. BTW, it isn't available from a separate button on the toolbar, but instead from the Reader button at the right edge of the address bar.

Clay

6 months ago

iPhone Mirroring to Macs is in portrait view. Often we need the landscape view but the Phone Mirroring wouldn't go to the landscape view. Did I miss something?

Gary Rosenzweig

6 months ago

Clay: Is it not working for you? For me, if an app is in landscape view, it switches automatically. Maybe something going on with the particular app you are trying?

Michael Linenberger

6 months ago

Hi Gary, Patreon member here with question about upgrading to Sequoia: I am pretty sure you use ScreenFlow for video creation, and ScreenFlow is an absolutely critical app for me. Have you seen any showstopper issues with ScreeFlow used in Sequoia? I will hold off upgrading if you have. But if it's fine I'll upgrade (and buy your course too). ScreenFlow website does not mention Sequoia as being compatible or not. I use a Mac Studio M1 Max and am still on Ventura by the way. Thank you!! Michael

Gary Rosenzweig

6 months ago

Michael: I haven't had any issues. You can see that because of all of the Sequoia videos I have done. I even did some with the very first beta back in June.

Jonathan Liss

6 months ago

How often will Sequoia now ask for permission for screen capture? 2 weeks? 1 month? Is there a work around? I suspect a few of my keyboard maestro middle of the night scripts will fail as a result if reaffirmation is required to allow screen recording.

Gary Rosenzweig

6 months ago

Jonathan: The prompt says it is per month.

Stacey

6 months ago

Great video/tutorial Gary. I'm not able to use the iPhone mirroring. iPhone is iOS 18 (iPhone XR) and Mac just updated to Sequoia. Keep getting the message "Unable to Connect to iPhone". Any suggestions?

Gary Rosenzweig

6 months ago

Stacey: Check to make sure the XR is supported. If it is, try restarting both and see if it works then.

jun

6 months ago

as usual amazing video and Thanks a lot like always! Ofcourse, I am also very excited about new features. But, a lot of times I feel like it gets too much highlights even for basic and TOO late coming features. Example, I can put app icon on my 100$ android phone purchased almost 8 years ago, wherever I want, and iOS18 presents its like some groundbreaking feature. lol. Thanks again anyway.

Charles

6 months ago

Terrific Video. Thanks.

nick

6 months ago

Gary, just upgraded my Mac Mini but the only option available on the camera icon when using FaceTime is the microphone. I realize some of the other features have additional system requirements, but I thought the background remover would be available. Thoughts? thx

Gary Rosenzweig

6 months ago

Nick: The Mac mini doesn’t have an Apple
webcam. So you probably have an external USB camera, right? It won’t work with those.