While macOS Sequoia offers many notable features like Apple Intelligence, it also has some lesser-known but interesting additions. These features can improve your daily user experience and make your work on the device smoother and more efficient.
Here, we’ll talk about these features in detail that deserve to be at the top of your list of concerns when using macOS Sequoia and see how they impact your Mac user experience. Check out my experience with macOS Sequoia and Apple Intelligence: My Initial Impressions.
1. Improve window splitting
When I first moved from a Linux PC to a Mac, I was puzzled by how complicated splitting windows was on macOS. I had to use “view sideways” instead of dragging a window to the edge to split it, which felt much slower and less flexible than the options already available on Windows or Linux.
Previously, you could add this functionality using a third-party app like RectangleHowever, macOS Sequoia has a completely revamped window manager, allowing you to split windows simply by dragging them to the edge of the screen, where they'll automatically snap into place.
Additionally, when you hover over the green button in the top corner of a window, you’ll find more split presets under the new Fill & Arrange section. After you select the orientation you want, macOS will automatically detect and arrange all the windows on your current desktop.
2. All-new password app
I used to rely on NordPass to store all my passwords, but I’ve now fully switched to Apple’s new password manager. While you can already access your saved passwords through iCloud Keychain, digging through the Settings app added a few extra steps, especially if you’re in a hurry.
With macOS Sequoia, you’ll notice a new app on your Mac called Passwords, which is a big improvement over Keychain Access. It’s simple and organizes your credentials into categories for easy access, but my favorite feature is that it can also act as an authenticator app.
Given how seamlessly it works across all of my Apple devices and is completely free, it's hard to recommend a third-party password manager to anyone already invested in the Apple ecosystem.
3. Replace background in video calls
If you frequently use video calling apps and change your video background, macOS Sequoia has a new feature that could be useful for you. There’s now a built-in option to replace your background that works universally across all apps.
Whenever your Mac detects that an app is using your camera, you'll see a Video icon in the menu bar. Click it, select the Background option, and you can choose from several default backgrounds or use an image of your own.
Besides the fact that it’s convenient, I like how good it looks compared to other apps. Edge detection is almost perfect in most cases, probably due to the image signal processor built into Apple Silicon chips. Unfortunately, this also means that this feature won’t work on Macs with Intel processors.
4. Hide distracting items in Safari
Safari has also seen a number of improvements, including a new distraction control feature. If you visit a particular website frequently, you can now remove certain parts of the page and focus only on what you want to see. For example, this tool is perfect if you’re tired of constant cookie popups or registration prompts.
However, it's important to note that this feature doesn't act as an ad blocker. It only affects content that isn't updated very often, so any hidden elements on the page that remain unchanged after a refresh will remain hidden.
5. More efficient app store
Downloading large apps from the App Store has always been a pain because the initial installation requires twice as much storage space. Given how Apple has been promoting a bunch of AAA games from major studios on the App Store, I found this frustrating, as the excessive storage requirement often held me back.
For example, Resident Evil 4 is around 64GB in size on the App Store, but to install it, you’ll need 128GB of available space, which is a tall order for those with low-performance Macs. Fortunately, macOS Sequoia has fixed this issue, and App Store downloads no longer require twice as much storage space to install.
Another big improvement is that you can now install apps larger than 1GB to an external drive. This is useful for people like me who use a Mac with 256GB of storage and often need to store larger apps, like games, on an external SSD.
Apple's macOS Sequoia update brings a bunch of other features, but if you want to try them out today, you can install the macOS Sequoia beta. However, your experience may not be completely stable, since these are early betas. Here's a look at what your Mac can do that your iPad can't.
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