WWDC: What’s new in macOS Sonoma?

While the real truth is that there’s a lot more that’s new in macOS than Apple has revealed in the press release, including powerful improvements for enterprise tech, the company did share some of the more consumer-friendly enhancements in the release. These include things like widgets, screen savers, a great new gaming mode and some very big improvements in Safari.

What Apple said

“macOS is the heart of the Mac, and with Sonoma, we’re making it even more delightful and productive to use,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.

“We think users are going to love macOS Sonoma and the new ways it enables them to personalize with widgets and stunning new screen savers, see new levels of gaming performance, and gain powerful productivity for video conferencing and browsing with Safari.”

Big Safari improvements

One of the biggest improvements in Safari is the capacity to create web apps that behave like normal apps, you can even save the web app in the Dock just like any other app.

You also get a change in Private Browsing. This has been improved with updated tracking and fingerprinting protections to help prevent websites from tracking or identifying the user. Private Browsing windows also lock when users are not using them.

Finally, a new Profiles feature helps keep people organized by offering a way to separate browsing between topics, while also keeping cookies, history, extensions, Tab Groups, and Favorites separate. Users can sign in to the same site with both work and personal accounts — and quickly switch between them — ensuring a smooth browsing experience.

Introducing Interactive Widgets

You can now pop widgets on your Mac desktop and find additional ones to add. Widgets kind of fade out when you are working in an app. You can also install (or at least use) iPhone widgets on your Mac, so long as your phone is to hand. Widgets are also interactive, so you’ll be able to check and uncheck lists, for example.

Video conferencing improved

macOS Sonoma brings enhanced video conferencing features. These include:

• Presenter Overlay, a new video effect that displays the user on top of the content they are sharing.
• Reactions allow users to share how they feel by seamlessly adding balloons, confetti, hearts, and more into the video, which can be triggered with a hand gesture.
• The improved Screen Sharing picker simplifies the process of sharing apps during video calls. Just click the green button in the top-left corner of an app to share it in the call.

New Screen Savers

With a nod to Apple TV, new Mac screen savers featuring slow-motion videos of various locations worldwide, including Hong Kong and, of course, the rolling hills of Sonoma in Northern California. You can explore Landscape, Earth, Underwater, or Cityscape themes, and you’ll find that you now login at the bottom of the screen.

Something for gamers!

To make it easier to port games from other platforms to Mac, Metal introduces a new game porting toolkit, eliminating months of upfront work and enabling developers to see how well their existing game could run on Mac in just a few days. It also dramatically simplifies the process of converting the game’s shaders and graphics code to take full advantage of Apple silicon performance, significantly reducing the total development time.

Also read: WWDC: Apple introduces the 15‑inch MacBook Air

macOS Sonoma also introduces Game Mode, giving players an edge when performance is measured in precious milliseconds. Game Mode delivers an optimized gaming experience with smoother and more consistent frame rates, by ensuring games get the highest priority on the CPU and GPU. Game Mode also makes for much better and more immediate control in games environments using game controllers.

Even more productivity

macOS Sonoma introduces a new high performance mode to the Screen Sharing app. This delivers low-latency audio, high frame rates, and supports up to two virtual displays and the idea behind it is that content creation can be shared and collaborated on with others. It also enables remote color workflows.

Enhanced Accessibility Features

• macOS Sonoma introduces a range of accessibility features:
• Made for iPhone hearing devices can connect to the Mac for calls and media consumption.
• Live Speech can be used to type and vocalize thoughts during calls and conversations.
• For users with physical and motor disabilities, phonetic suggestions appear when dictating and editing text with Voice Control on Mac.
• To assist users with cognitive disabilities, animated images like GIFs can be automatically paused in Messages and Safari.
• Additionally, users who are blind or have low vision can easily customize text size across Mac apps, and utilize Xcode with VoiceOver, Apple’s industry-leading screen reader.

Additional macOS Sonoma updates include:

• Streamlined PDFs: Enhanced PDF functionality allows for quick form-filling with AutoFill, and smart recipient recommendations.

• Inline PDFs in Notes: Notes now displays PDFs and document scans in full width, and with linked notes, users can quickly connect related notes like recipes or homework.

• Siri: Users can choose to say “Siri” to activate Siri.²

• Passwords: Users can now create a group to share a set of passwords. Everyone in a group can add and edit passwords to keep them up to date, and since sharing is through iCloud Keychain, it’s end-to-end encrypted. One-time verification codes received in Mail will now autofill in Safari, making it easy to securely log in without leaving the browser.

• Messages: New stickers, enhancements to features like search, reply, groups, and syncing with Messages in iCloud.

• Reminders: Intelligent grocery lists in Reminders streamline weekly trips to the store. Additionally, users can organize lists into sections and arrange them horizontally using a new column view.

• Keyboard: An all-new autocorrect makes corrections more accurate and easier to fix. Inline completions help users quickly finish sentences, while Dictation brings accuracy improvements through next-level speech recognition.

• Privacy and Safety: Communication Safety expands to AirDrop, the Photos picker, incoming calls, and FaceTime messages, further broadening protections for children. Additionally, Sensitive Content Warning prevents unexpected exposure to sensitive images and videos in AirDrop and Messages, incoming calls, and FaceTime messages, while giving the user the option to block the contact or seek further resources for help.

Availability

The developer beta of macOS Sonoma is available now with a public beta coming next month, Apple declared.

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