The Best MacOS Mojave Features to Try
macOS Mojave is in public beta right now , and it has tons of cool features that might not completely change the way you use your Mac, but will speed up some parts of your workflow, help organize your files, and make you smile with custom touches. …
After hands-on testing, these are our favorite features in Mojave – both obvious benefits and hidden gems. If we missed something, let us know in the comments.
Dark mode looks great
The most striking feature of Mojave is the dark mode (shown above), which darkens system elements like the menu bar, dock, Finder windows, toolbars – everything beautiful and dark, which makes everything you work on stand out. The colors in your images stand out, the articles you read are easy to focus on, and it’s a nice fresh look for macOS. Find it in System Preferences> General.
Some Apple apps appear much darker than others, such as Notes. While the entire app is dimmed by default, you can set the background color of your notes to white again in Settings to make them pop-up, leaving the sidebar and toolbars dark.
Add bright colors
When you turn on dark mode in System Preferences> General, you can also choose an accent color to be used when you click a radio button, check a box, or select a file. The default color is blue, but you can change it to pink, purple, orange, red, green, yellow, or graphite.
Whatever you choose for the accent color automatically becomes the highlight color when you also select the text, but you can choose something else to highlight if you want.
Finder is an awesome photo viewer
A new view of the Finder Gallery makes browsing folder by folder of photos a pleasure, and you can see all the metadata right next to your photos: resolution, device used to take the photo, aperture, ISO sensitivity, and so on. If you don’t need a lot of details, just hover your cursor over the metadata and click the Show less button to cut it.
Below the metadata, you can find buttons for image rotation, markup, or export to PDF – tasks that were used to invoke the preview application.
Organize your desktop with stacks
The stacks themselves are worth the cost of accessing the public beta. (Yes, admission fees to Mojave are low, but I’d pay a few dollars for Stacks, that’s how great it is. And I paid for Declutter , a utility that does the same.)
If your desktop is cluttered with screenshots, images, and other files while you work, Stacks sorts them by type. And it keeps sorting them as they accumulate – for example, when you keep taking screenshots, they appear in the stack of screenshots, rather than as separate files on the desktop. Click the stack to expand it and it will stay that way until you click the stack again to close it.
To enable stacks, right-click on the desktop and select Use Stacks. If you don’t want your stacks to be sorted by type, right-click the desktop again, choose Group Stacks By, and choose something else.
Recently used apps in the Dock
The Dock now has a section for your recently used apps, very similar to the Dock that Apple added to the iPad in iOS 11. We find it useful, but if you’d rather keep your dock static, go to System Preferences> Dock and uncheck the box that says Show recent apps in the Dock.
Dynamic desktop wallpaper
You’ve always had the option to rotate your desktop images, but Mojave takes the page from Apple TV video screensavers, which often come in day and night versions, so the time of day on your TV screensaver matches the time of day in your area.
Mojave’s dynamic desktop wallpapers are not animated, but they can change depending on the time of day at your location, going from morning light to noon, noon, evening and night. Just keep in mind that if you are in dark mode the dynamic wallpaper will be dark all the time.
Sniff 32-bit apps
Mojave is the latest version of macOS to run 32-bit apps. When you launch one of them, you will receive a pop-up warning that it will not work in future versions of macOS. But sometimes these legacy applications are background processes and the warning will be vague about something like “LOGINserver”.
Don’t panic if you don’t know what the warning is about. Simply open System Information (which is located in the Applications / Utilities folder, or which can be found by clicking the Apple icon and choosing About This Mac> System Report) and look for legacy software in the sidebar. Then you can see that LOGINserver, for example, is in the library folder created by the Brother printer, which suddenly makes sense.
Set up the new News app
News debuts on macOS Mojave. The News app looks and acts just like its iOS counterpart, only with a handy sidebar instead of a tab bar at the bottom.
If you are interested in different news on different devices – perhaps you want news on your Mac about topics and sources related to your work, and news on your iPhone about sports and entertainment – go to System Preferences> iCloud and uncheck the box … for news. If you leave this checkbox checked, themes, favorites, and saved stories will sync between your Mac and iOS devices.
New screenshot tools
When you take a screenshot (Command-Shift – 3 for the whole screen, Command-Shift – 4 for a selection), the screenshot shrinks and lingers in the lower-left corner of the screen for about five seconds. While it’s there, you can click on it to open it in a floating window with the same markup tools as for screenshots in iOS 11.
You can draw on the screenshot, add text, crop it, rotate it, and add shapes. If you manually draw a circle or rectangle around something in the screenshot, Mojave will automatically convert it to a beautifully drawn one that can be resized as needed – just like magic. You can save your screenshots from here or click the Share button to send them to other apps.
Finder Quick Actions
But what if you take a screenshot and don’t click on it right away – do you need to open that PNG file in Preview to flag it post facto? Damn it no! Just right-click it on your desktop and find “Quick Steps” in the context menu. Here you can choose Layout, Rotate Left, and Create PDF. The same options also appear in the Preview pane of the Finder window when you have an image file selected.
Trim audio and video files right in the Finder
You don’t need a full-fledged editor to trim a few seconds of video – just open the video in Quick Look and press Command-T for the trim function. Mojave takes that up a notch by putting the cropping feature right in the Finder. It’s great for cutting 20 second iPhone videos into the 7 second masterpieces they should be.
Trimming appears as an icon at the top of the window when you quickly preview a video file, and in the preview pane in Finder windows. You can also right-click any video file and choose Quick Steps> Trim. When the Crop window appears, simply drag the ends of the yellow box to shave off the front or back of the video a little, and click Done to save or Revert to discard your changes.
Capture video from your screen
We’re sure you’ll never use this for anything copyrighted, but you can now record video from your screen by pressing Shift-Command – 5. A window will appear that you can move and resize, as well as a panel tools with buttons that you can click to take screenshots or videos of all or part of the screen.
Hover over the buttons if you need a reminder of what they are, and click Options to choose where to save the output, if you need a timer, should the cursor appear in your video, etc.
Ask Siri for a password
Ask Siri, “What’s my Amazon password?” and it will show you the entry for that password in your iCloud Keychain (Safari> Preferences> Passwords). Safari pops up nicely when you click on the password field, but it can be handy for apps like Spotify or Kindle where you might need to cut and paste the password.
As with previous versions of macOS, Mojave requires you to unlock the password vault with your account password, which means that if someone knows how to unlock your Mac, they can retrieve all of your passwords as well. But honestly, this is possible on any version of macOS you have now, just not through Siri.
Go to the Home app
The new Home app in Mojave looks the same as the Home app on iPad and is a very welcome addition for HomeKit users. Siri on Mac can finally control HomeKit devices, although I found that it launches activities slower than my iPhone (or iPad, or HomePod).
The app’s Home tab contains your favorite devices and scenes, while the Rooms tab lets you swipe the trackpad with two fingers to navigate between rooms in your home. On the Automation tab, you can edit existing animations and scenes, or program new ones. You just can’t set up new HomeKit devices from a Mac.
Continuity chamber
Sometimes a project needs an image. Apps have already been able to connect to your Mac’s camera to take a new image, but unfortunately, your Mac’s camera is awkward to use and takes awful photos. Mojave’s Continuity Camera will let you fill in empty spaces with pictures from your iPhone, without having to personally AirDrop photos from your iPhone to your Mac before you can post them. Documents that you scan with your iPhone can also be displayed in a preview.
For example, to use it in Pages, just right-click on the document and find the closest iPhone (running iOS 12) in the context menu. Select “Take Photo” or “Scan Document”. When you do, your iPhone will instantly launch the camera ready for you to aim and fire. On iPhone, you can preview your image and click Use Photo or Re-take Photo. To scan a receipt into notes, right-click the note text and select Scan Document. The iPhone will automatically find the edges, straighten the image, save it as a PDF, and attach it to your note.
Record a meeting or lecture using voice memos
Another new app that has arrived on iOS is Voice Memos. Since it syncs with iCloud, it’s handy for anyone using Voice Memos on Mac.
It also separates speech from background noise quite well – it picked up my voice on the TV in the background while I spoke, and only started recording background noise when I was silent.
Stop autoplay for specific sites
If a site continues to annoy you with autoplaying videos, Mojave gives you other options besides sending angry tweets to site editors and authors who probably hate autoplaying videos as much as you do. Open Safari> Preferences> Websites> Autoplay and you can set global preferences or allow specific sites to have different rules.
Show icons in Safari
An icon is a tiny representation of each site’s logo – it appears on every open tab, which helps you find the tab you’re looking for, especially if you’re suffering from too many tabs syndrome. To enable them in Mojave, go to Safari> Preferences> Tabs and check the box next to Show website icons in tabs.