When I upgraded to MacOS Sequoia, the idea of Apple Intelligence didn’t excite me all that much. I’ve experienced deeply integrated AI within an OS (Android and Gemini) and have yet to be impressed. On top of that, I only use artificial intelligence (AI) for research purposes and nothing more.
When you couple that with the fact that I’m not an iPhone user, this latest version of MacOS seems like it wouldn’t have much to appeal to users like me.
Also: Upgrading to MacOS Sequoia? Here’s why you may want to hold off
Fortunately, that’s not the case. Yes, there are plenty of really cool features that iPhone users will love, but if you’re not an iPhone or AI aficionado, what features stand out?
For me, the list is short but that shouldn’t distract from how the new features improve the overall MacOS experience.
Let me share my favorite Sequoia features with you.
1. Window Tiling
Over a year ago, I installed a tiny app on my MacBook that added tiling features to the UI. Tiling windows is one of the easiest ways to improve the efficiency of the desktop interface. What is tiling windows?
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With tiling windows, you can drag an app window to an edge of the display to automatically snap that window to a portion of the screen. For instance, say, you want your web browser to fill the left half of the display and your email app to fill the right side. Drag your browser to the left edge and it’ll automatically take up the left half of the screen. Drag your email app to the right and it’ll take up the remaining space.
You can also drag a window to the top of the display to fill the entire screen. If you want to tile four apps (each to take up a quarter of the screen), drag each to a corner and each app will take up a quarter of the screen. Once you start working with window tiling, you’ll wonder how you managed without it.
2. Move & Resize
Speaking of tiling, along the same lines, there’s a new Move & Resize option available when you long-press the green full-screen button. When that menu opens, you can send a window to the tiling option of your choice. Yes, this is a redundancy (along with the manual dragging and snapping) but there will be those who have trouble tiling their windows exactly how they want them and this menu makes it easy. For me, this is just one more route to a more efficient desktop.
3. Window title bar double-click options
Some Linux window managers allow you to configure what happens to a window when you double-click the title bar, and now MacOS finally has this feature. Unlike Linux, there aren’t as many options (such as my favorite, the shading option) but you can at least configure windows to fill the screen, zoom, or minimize.
I appreciate this addition because MacOS doesn’t really have a maximize button (unless you count full-screen), and I prefer my apps maxed out when using a laptop’s smaller display. Combine that with the new window tiling, and the MacOS desktop just became a lot more efficient.
4. Dedicated password app
Although the new MacOS dedicated password app isn’t going to woo me away from my favorite password app, Bitwarden, it is a serious step forward for MacOS users.
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With this addition, MacOS users should start seeing the benefit of using a real password manager, and given the previous iteration wasn’t exactly as user-friendly as it could be, this is a big step forward. Every user should have already migrated away from saving passwords in their browser (because it’s simply not secure) and having a built-in, dedicated app for that purpose will go a long way to ween users from that behavior.
On top of that, Apple did a great job designing a password manager that is user-friendly and elegant to boot.
5. Improved Reader Mode
I use Reader Mode every chance I get on every browser I use. Why? Because it not only makes web pages easier to read but also avoids many of the traps and pitfalls that can bring a browser to a screaming halt (like poorly coded JavaScript, too many ads, etc.).
With the new Safari Reader Mode, you can set a theme, change the font, zoom in, and search the page. The new Reader Mode in Safari is better than anything the competition has to offer, and every browser developer would do well to learn from what Apple has done.
6. Advanced note-taking
Since I write for a living, I take a lot of notes and I don’t mind typing those notes. However, there are times when my hands aren’t exactly free (such as when eating lunch) and I still need to take notes. Thanks to the latest update, I can add an audio note to the Notes app and then have it transcribed to a regular text note.
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The transcription is incredibly fast but not always 100% accurate. The accuracy will depend on ambient noise and how clearly you speak. In a quiet room, speaking clearly, the transcription is spot on. You can view the transcription and even copy it or add it to the note. For anyone who depends on speech-to-text, this addition will be a boon.
