New macOS Sonoma features I’m excited about

Dug through the PDF of all the new features coming in macOS Sonoma on the 26th. This is an exciting release for me because I’ve seen multiple people describe it as boring, and the thing with boring macOS releases is they (usually) spend more time polishing things up while adding little quality of life features.

Widgets on the desktop and the return of screensavers (why?!) is the big headliner this year, but it’s not 2005 anymore so those don’t excite me.

Video conferencing

Share multiple apps or windows. Add multiple windows or apps, or replace the current window when screen sharing, without having to stop sharing.

I haven’t seen a single video conferencing app that can do multiple windows and I’m curious how well this works. It’s rough sharing a 1440p screen and being able to share multiple windows would help video quality for the people watching.

Share from the current window. Start sharing right from the window you’re in, without having to return to your screen sharing app and click a screen sharing button.

This is supposed to work by hovering over the green traffic light on a window and selecting “Share to Zoom” or whatever video conf app you use. Apparently it works with all of them, but I use Whereby and I doubt it will work for similar web conf services. But it will be handy for FaceTime calls.

Safari

Multiple tab selection. Select multiple tabs at once to move them around the tab bar or into a Tab Group.

Finally.

Web apps on Mac. Save your favorite websites to the Dock for easy access. Access them in a streamlined format for simplified browsing.

Excited to use this for battery-hungry Electron apps like Discord, Element, Trello, etc.

Reading List widget. Add your Safari Reading List to your desktop for easy access.

The most important feature of a reading list is its visibility. Out of sight out of mind.

Link tracking protection in Private Browsing. Removes tracking used to identify you from URLs.

Velja does this when copying links, and it’s good to have this built-in.

Also, sidenote about Velja: When you copy a link to a song or album from Apple Music or Spotify, it can prepend song.link in front of the URL for you. Super handy!

Messages

One-time verification code cleanup. One-time verification codes are automatically deleted from the Messages app after using them with autofill anywhere in the system.

Also does this for those pesky verification emails.

Privacy and Security

Add-only Calendar permission. A write-only permission for Calendar gives apps the ability to write new events to your device, without being able to see your information.

On iOS I’ll be turning this on immediately for a grocery store app.

Accessibility

Text size. Customize your font size across Mac apps, including Finder, Messages, Mail, Calendar, and Notes, in one place within System Settings, with the option to set a single preferred reading size, or customize app by app.

Finally.

Freeform

Better diagramming. Quickly build diagrams and flowcharts by dragging connector handles to connect objects.

Hell yeah, a built-in diagramming app.

Reminders

Column View. Reminders sections can be organized in columns across your screen, making it easy to visualize your tasks, or even plan with simple kanban boards.

Oh hey, they called it what it is here (kanban). Trello is still the best for this when you need multiple people on the board.

iCloud

iCloud Passwords extension for macOS. Autofill passwords and verification codes from iCloud Keychain into websites in Chrome and Edge with the iCloud Passwords extension.

No idea if I’ll make the switch from 1Password (again), but if the extension works well in Arc I might be rid of another subscription. Although 1P’s CLI is super handy for SSH keys.