macOS Sonoma Tidbits: New FaceTime UI, Safari Profiles, Screen Sharing Improvements, and More

[MacRumors]

The first macOS Sonoma beta was released to developers and early adopters this week, and changes in the newest version of Apple's macOS operating system are still being unearthed. Below are just a handful of notable differences that may have passed you by.

System Settings

In macOS Ventura, Apple replaced System Preferences with System Settings to align it with iOS and iPadOS, but the way controls were organized left many users wanting.

The same System Settings interface remains in macOS Sonoma, but it is now easier to navigate through different menu screens you have visited without continually scrolling through the side bar, thanks to the addition of backward and forward buttons.

FaceTime UI and Reactions

Apple has changed the way FaceTime integrates with the menu bar. The video effects options no longer appear in the Control Center, and instead have a new home in a dedicated green FaceTime menu bar item, which also includes a mini webcam view and buttons to trigger Reactions.

Reactions include Love, Like, Dislike, Balloons, Rain, Confetti, Lasers, and Fireworks. Some reactions are even triggered automatically by the user's physical actions: One thumb up triggers a Like, and two thumbs up are attended by Fireworks. Similarly, one thumb down counts as a dislike, and two thumbs down initiates a rain shower.

Safari Profiles

Safari has gained a new feature called Profiles, which is designed to help keep your browsing separate for topics like Work, School, or Personal.

Each profile gets its own icon and silos your history, Tab Groups, favorites, and cookies. You can even assign specific extensions to different profiles to optimize your browsing experience based on the task at hand.

Seamless Keyboard Input and Dictation

macOS Sonoma supports simultaneous use of keyboard input and Dictation, without any disruption in your flow of thought.

In other words, you can keep typing after hitting the Dictation shortcut. So whenever your fingers need a rest, you can complete the sentence you were just typing by saying it out loud.

Screen Sharing Improvements

When you're in a FaceTime or Zoom call, click-hold the green traffic light in the corner of an open app window and you'll see a screen sharing option, and a new Presenter Overlay feature can be used to keep you on screen and better able to point to details.

When on a video call, you can either place yourself inside a movable bubble in the corner of the window or desktop that you're sharing, or you can bring on-screen content into the background of your own environment so that it looks as if you're standing just in front of it.

Docked Web Apps

Thanks to a new option in Safari, you can now create independent web apps that can be added to your Dock.

All you have to do is visit a website and select File -> Add to Dock.... You can then give the web app a name and even change its icon. When you open a docked web app, it will open in its own separate window that includes back and forward buttons for simple navigation.

Other Notable Tidbits

• New visual Caps Lock indicator
• Mail search prioritizes upcoming travel-related emails
• Use the Share button to send a note in Notes into Pages.
• New Zoom and Pan controls for Continuity Camera

Developers are still learning what else has changed in macOS Sonoma, so be sure to check back for more coverage here on MacRumors.

Article Link: macOS Sonoma Tidbits: New FaceTime UI, Safari Profiles, Screen Sharing Improvements, and More

 

[gpat]

It's ridiculous that it took this much, but I'll resume using Safari as my main browser after more than a decade, thanks to the new Profiles feature.

 

[gmanist1000]

The Safari profiles are confusing. I created two profiles, Work and Home. When I open Safari fresh, it opens.... neither profile... it's just a normal window. I have to navigate to the menu bar and click New > Work, or Home. How do I set a default to open automatically??

 

[Brad7]

I love the new moving screensavers/wallpapers, they’re really mesmerizing. They should really bring them to iOS and tvOS.

Web apps are finally here, too. Now I can just use those instead of native apps that suck up all our personal data. Tracking protection and extensions will be there now, too.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Seamless Keyboard Input and Dictation


aint it the case since Ventura already?

 

[Larsen2k4]

Another tiny but nice tweak: The text input cursor now smoothly fades in and out like on iOS 🥰

 

[lazyrighteye]

Maybe I’m imagining or misremembering, but didn’t they say presentation Overlay was a feature also in Teams video calls during the keynote - as posed to just FaceTime and Zoom?

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

The widgets on the desktop are amazing! Apple did a great job with that! Well-refined!

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

for people using Sonoma already, do you need to have safari itself opened , in order to launch a web app/pwa ? or can it be open undependantly?

 

[mattopotamus]

It's ridiculous that it took this much, but I'll resume using Safari as my main browser after more than a decade, thanks to the new Profiles feature.

I've been using grouped tabs for now to get this separated. About to dive into profiles, hopefully it's seamless to change over.

 

[Brad7]

for people using Sonoma already, do you need to have safari itself opened , in order to launch a web app/pwa ? or can it be open undependantly?

Just tried - it opens independently. 👍

 

[headlessmike]

It's funny how half of the people complain that Apple need to do bigger OS upgrades while the other half wish Apple would introduce fewer features with each update to focus on stability.

I look forward to the new features in Sonoma, they mostly seem to refine the experience of macOS one areas that are useful to me.

 

[mattopotamus]

Just tried - it opens independently. 👍

Figured I would ask you since you just verified that. I just created new profiles, but how do you get safari to open in those profiles? Mine is still opening and the only drop down I have are my grouped tabs.

edit: nm, looked on the Mac forum and seems like it is buggy and the profile button is not showing for some of us.

 

[LunarFalcon]

Just tried - it opens independently. 👍

If you set up a web app with gmail, do gmail's notifications work? Red badge and everything?

 

[BenGoren]

What I most want for Safari is for every top-level domain to sandboxed. That is, even if foo.com sets a bunch of Google and Facebook tracking cookies, when you visit bar.com, it has no access to them whatsoever. And, of course, if bar.com sets those same cookies, foo.com can’t see them, either.

Of course, not just cookies, but all Website data.

That’s the reason why I always use private browsing everywhere. I’m okay with MacRumors knowing which articles I click through to, but I’m not okay with Google knowing that I read both MacRumors and, say, the Times. And that I might then click through to the Wirecutter and compare prices for a given product on a few different retailers.

Ideally, this should work even as I click through links from one domain to another. So, if MacRumors links to the Times and I click on it, the Times should have no way to access anything that MacRumors might have set. If I go back (or re-visit) MacRumors, it shouldn’t have any clue that I even know that the Times exists.

And, of course, with embedded media … a YouTube video embedded in a MacRumors page shouldn’t be able to know that I’ve logged into MacRumors with my ID. Indeed, YouTube shouldn’t know anything other than the URL of the embedded video. If I then click, “Open in YouTube” and I’ve logged in to YouTube, it should see that as me directly pasting that link into YouTube, with no knowledge of how I got the link. If I’ve never visited YouTube before, or if I’ve cleared history for YouTube, then YouTube should get a completely clean slate. It would also be nice to designate sites as “always private (don’t save data),” so YouTube couldn’t build an anonymous profile of what I watch and then match that up should I log in later. Or, the reverse: everything private, but with an exception list for sites I don’t mind staying signed into across sessions.

Make that the default behavior … and Apple will have done as much to protect user privacy as everything else they’ve done combined. (And, to be sure, that’s an awful lot more than any other big company has done.)

b&

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Just tried - it opens independently. 👍

amazing ! to confirm again, you have the web app open, but safari is closed, right?

 

[funkypepper]

Did they fix windows jumping positions after a restart? Does Stage Manager holds window layouts through restarts?

 

[Brad7]

Figured I would ask you since you just verified that. I just created new profiles, but how do you get safari to open in those profiles? Mine is still opening and the only drop down I have are my grouped tabs.

edit: nm, looked on the Mac forum and seems like it is buggy and the profile button is not showing for some of us.

I was able to create profiles, but doesn’t seem like there’s a way to launch them directly yet. You have to open a regular Safari window first, and then only do they show up via the top menu bar and the dock context menu.

 

[allpar]

These things actually sound really useful in daily life, but what I want to know is, did they fix all the bugs in Mail that crept in since Mojave? In Ventura I have to have most of my email handled by a third-party program!

 

[Brad7]

amazing ! to confirm again, you have the web app open, but safari is closed, right?

Correct, Safari is completely closed (quit). A few things I noticed:

- If you open it and navigate to another page inside it (say you go from Twitter.com to a specific Twitter profile), and quit the web app. When you re-open it, it opens to where you last left it (the Twitter profile).

- Clicking external links not related to the web app opens them in full Safari (or your default browser).

- Web app history does not show up in Safari history.

 

[boak]

When you're in a FaceTime or Zoom call, click-hold the green traffic light in the corner of an open app window and you'll see a screen sharing option, and a new Presenter Overlay feature can be used to keep you on screen and better able to point to details.

There has to be a more intuitive and better implementation 💀

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Correct, Safari is completely closed (quit). A few things I noticed:

- If you open it and navigate to another page inside it (say you go from Twitter.com to a specific Twitter profile), and quit the web app. When you re-open it, it opens to where you last left it (the Twitter profile).

- Clicking external links not related to the web app opens them in full Safari (or your default browser).

- Web app history does not show up in Safari history.

thanks

one last thing please, can you only add web apps to the dock, or can they be added to /apps ? and if they can only be added to dock, are you able to group them, or even delete them from dock ,whilst keeping the app (and opening it with spotlight) ?

 

[mattopotamus]

thanks

one last thing please, can you only add web apps to the dock, or can they be added to /apps ? and if they can only be added to dock, are you able to group them, or even delete them from dock ,whilst keeping the app (and opening it with spotlight) ?

You can remove it from the dock, and open it from spotlight. I just tried to group them, and that does not seem like an option.

If you remove it from the dock, to actually delete it you do so from finder.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Correct, Safari is completely closed (quit). A few things I noticed:

- If you open it and navigate to another page inside it (say you go from Twitter.com to a specific Twitter profile), and quit the web app. When you re-open it, it opens to where you last left it (the Twitter profile).

- Clicking external links not related to the web app opens them in full Safari (or your default browser).

- Web app history does not show up in Safari history.

oh sorry I got another question if you don't mind trying, does it support caching? aka using the app offline

like idk if you have an android phone, but if you do, could you try https://messages.google.com/web/authentication and see if after you've synced your phone, you're able to use the app even without wifi on your Mac

another idea if you have YouTube premium, install a web app for it, then download a video inside it (using your premium subscription) and see if it works offline

but now something I REAAALY need, could you please, for the love of god, install google.keep and see if you're able to access it offline, that'd be a life saver for me, as im unable to find a cross platform note taking app. please if you can , try it https://keep.google.com/

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

You can remove it from the dock, and open it from spotlight. I just tried to group them, and that does not seem like an option.

If you remove it from the dock, to actually delete it you do so from finder.

thanks. can you not put them in /applications folder though ? basically adding them to launchpad apps by doing so , like a regular app