Apple Unveiled macOS Sonoma With New Customisation Options

Jun 6

Jun 6 Apple Unveiled macOS Sonoma With New Customisation Options

Apple today previewed macOS Sonoma, the upcoming version its popular desktop operating system, bringing a rich set of features that aim at improving your Mac experience. New beautiful screen savers and powerful widgets unlock an entirely new way to personalize your Mac. Users can now place widgets right on the desktop, interact with them with just a click, and through Continuity, access the extensive ecosystem of iPhone widgets on their Mac.

In macOS Sonoma, video conferencing also gets more engaging with great new features to help users present remotely, like Presenter Overlay, which places a presenter on top of the content being shared, and Reactions, which enables fun gesture-triggered video effects in cinematic quality. Significant updates come to Safari, as well. Profiles keep browsing separate between multiple topics or projects, and web apps provide faster access to favorite sites. Gaming gets even better, with the introduction of Game Mode, exciting new titles, and a new game porting toolkit that will make it even easier for developers to bring more games to Mac. Apple’s computers are definitely capable but the gaming industry does not take gaming on the Mac so seriously.

Interactive Widgets

Widgets are now even more powerful and personal on Mac. Users can place widgets right on the desktop and conveniently access the widget gallery to find the ones they know and love. Widgets blend seamlessly with the wallpaper while users work in apps, so they can stay focused on the task at hand. Through the magic of Continuity, users can also enjoy the vast ecosystem of iPhone widgets on their Mac. Widgets become interactive, allowing users to check off reminders, play or pause media, access home controls, and perform various tasks from their Mac, all directly from the desktop.

Smarter Video Conferencing Experiences

macOS Sonoma brings enhanced video conferencing features that enable users to present and share their work more effectively within any video conferencing app. Presenter Overlay, a new video effect, elevates a user's presence by displaying them on top of the content they are sharing. This is an effort towards making presentations even more personal. Additionally, Reactions allow users to share how they feel by seamlessly adding balloons, confetti, hearts, and more into the video, which can also be triggered with a hand gesture. The improved Screen Sharing picker simplifies the process of sharing apps during video calls. Users can simply click the green button in the top-left corner of an app and choose to share it in the call, allowing for easy content sharing from their currently open windows.

Major Updates to Safari

Safari introduces new features to enhance the browsing experience for Mac users. Private Browsing, comes with even greater protection during browsing both from trackers and from people who might have access to the user's device. Advanced tracking and fingerprinting protections in Private Browsing go even further to help prevent websites from tracking or identifying the user. Private Browsing windows also lock when users are not using them, allowing them to keep tabs open even when they step away from their device.

Additionally, profiles help users stay 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. Safari also enables the creation of web apps that behave like normal apps, putting users' favorite sites at their fingertips and providing a simplified toolbar for an app-like experience.

New Screen Savers

macOS Sonoma brings new beautiful screen savers featuring slow-motion videos of various locations worldwide. This rich graphical and photographic imagery enhances the Mac experience by shuffling through Landscape, Earth, Underwater, or Cityscape themes. The login experience is now repositioned at the bottom of the screen, making space for the new screen savers, which seamlessly transition into the desktop.

Games on Mac

Game developers are bringing exciting gaming IP’s to the Mac, including DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT, Stray, Fort Solis, World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, HUMANKIND, Resident Evil Village: Winters' Expansion, The Medium, ELEX II, Firmament, SnowRunner, Disney Dreamlight Valley, No Man's Sky, Dragonheir: Silent Gods, and Layers of Fear. To make it easier to port games from other platforms to Mac, Metal 3 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 according to Apple.

macOS Sonoma also introduces Game Mode which promises 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 lowers audio latency with AirPods, and significantly reducing input latency with popular game controllers like those for Xbox and PlayStation by doubling the Bluetooth sampling rate.

New Accessibility Features

macOS Sonoma introduces a range of accessibility features that make Mac even more customizable for all users. For customers with hearing disabilities, Made for iPhone hearing devices can connect to their Mac for calls and media consumption, while users who are nonspeaking can use Live Speech to type and vocalize their 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.

Some other updates in macOS Sonoma include streamlined PDFs, inline PDFs in Notes, Siri improvements, enhanced password features, an improved Messages experience, intelligent grocery lists in Reminders, an all-new autocorrect and inline completions in the keyboard, enhanced privacy and safety features, and more.