

But Apple always adds a couple of new tricks you can do to personalize your desktop.Īs is customary, Big Sur comes with new wallpapers, featuring the beautiful part of the California coast the new OS is named after. Visually, new versions of macOS are never radical departures from the last version. The company also added a tool that monitors breached passwords and pings you when one of your saved passwords may have been compromised. Credit: appleįinally, adding to the privacy features mentioned above, Safari now also comes with a Privacy Report, giving you an overview of trackers which were prevented from profiling you. New Safari has a big emphasis on privacy. That's very handy if you, like me, have a zillion tabs open at all times. New Safari also has built-in translation and enhanced search, letting you search for a particular tab.
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Still, Safari is getting better, and in some ways, it's the best browser out there.īesides being faster than ever before (Apple claims), especially if you have a new Mac with Apple's M1 processor, Safari's got a ton of improvements, including a customizable start page and redesigned tabs. With every new macOS launch, Apple keeps improving Safari, but it somehow stays forgotten next to Google's Chrome. This includes the type of data that's used to track you, data that's linked to you, and how this information is shared with third parties. But it is pretty important: When it launches, the Mac App Store will have a new section for each app, explaining in detail how the app handles your privacy. You won't be able to find this feature just yet it's coming later this year, according to Apple. If you don't like it, you can turn it off by going to System Preferences - Sound - Play sound on startup. Startup soundįiring up a Mac always meant hearing the legendary, slightly dissonant startup sound - up until Apple, for some reason, decided to remove the feature.īut in macOS Big Sur, the startup chime is back to warm our hearts on every bootup. Another thing you can do is someone's name to directly answer their message. Our favorite new feature is the ability to pin favorite chats to the top of the Messages list. Inline replies are a particularly neat feature, giving users the ability to create messaging threads. That may still be so, but the new Messages on macOS Big Sur make this gap narrower than ever.Īmong other features, the new Messages lets users create and customize Memoji and add visual tricks like balloons and confetti. Messages improvementsĪpple's messaging service for macOS, Message, has come a long way since its launch in 2012, but it's always played second fiddle to iMessage (Apple's messaging service on iOS) in terms of features. The coolest thing about Big Sur's Control Center is that you can drag any item from the Control Center to the menu bar on top of the screen to get one-click access to that particular option. You can also customize the Control Center by going to System Preferences - Dock & Menu Bar. Click on any of these and you'll get additional, granular options. It's an easy way to get to some essential controls, such as display and keyboard brightness, sound volume, Wi-Fi connections, and more. In Big Sur, Apple was kind enough to bring one of the coolest iOS features to macOS: The Control Center. Need one-click access to a specific feature? Drag it to the menu bar.
