By macOS Sierra’s last dispatch practically around the corner, there have been various betas, both developer and public, launched by Apple. These betas offer us a knowledge into what we ought to anticipate from the last form of the tremendously anticipated cycle to OS X: macOS Sierra. While the name is certainly one major change in the most recent OS, making the naming tradition predictable over all Apple gadgets, there are a great deal of new elements and changes tagging along in the new refresh.
[ad type=”banner”]1.Use Safari’s Picture in Picture Mode with YouTube Videos
The feature that has been highly celebrated, all over the internet, is Safari finally getting the picture in picture capabilities, that users earlier had to use a third-party app for. The problem with this feature was that it was not accessible to be used with YouTube videos. However, there is a hidden method that can allow you to watch YouTube videos on Safari using the Picture in Picture mode. To use Picture in Picture mode with YouTube videos, simply follow the steps below:
Launch Safari and go to YouTube, and play a YouTube video of your choice.
Perform a right click (two finger tap) on the video, which will open up a menu on the video.
Perform another right click on the video. You will now see another menu with the option to enable Picture in Picture mode for the YouTube video.
Simply click on it, and the YouTube video will play in Picture in Picture mode on your Mac. You can position this window to any corner of your screen and it automatically snaps in place. Cool, right?
2. Place the Picture in Picture Window Anywhere on the Screen
While it makes sense for the Picture in Picture video to be located on the corner of the screen, sometimes you might want it somewhere else. Unfortunately, dragging the window around on the screen will not allow you to do that. Drag the Picture in Picture window anywhere on the screen, and when you let go of the mouse, the window will automatically snap to the nearest corner.
Play any video in Picture in Picture mode. Then, press Command and drag the Picture in Picture window to the desired location, and the window will stay there.
3. Siri on Mac
We put Siri through a lot of tests and different scenarios where someone might want to use Siri to help them out, and we have finally come up with the following Siri features that will make your life easier on the Mac.
- Siri can help you find files and folders on your Mac:
We can simply ask Siri to find files and folders on your Mac, offered you know what they are called. Users can also ask Siri to find documents based on a time frame. So, one might ask Siri something like “Find my files“, and Siri will gratify. Even better, Siri can answer context based cross queries. So, you can make another query saying “Just the ones created last week”, and you will be presented with the files that were created in the last week.
- Siri can find images off your Photos library:
You can request Siri to find photos from your Photos library, and Siri will launch photos with the results displayed.
- Siri can also find images off the web:
You can use Siri to find images from the web, and the results are displayed neatly. Even better, you can simply drag and drop images from the search results directly into an app like Notes, Pages, Mail, etc.
- Siri can fetch sports results too:
Siri can also give results for major sports teams, in major contests. For example, you can request Siri when Manchester United played their last game, and it will quickly give me the result. The best part is that we can add this result to your notification center as a widget, and get informed of any changes.
4. Universal Clipboard
By macOS Sierra, Apple has also added another great new feature – Universal Clipboard. What this does, is that it allows the users to copy text, images, etc on one Apple device, and the copied data can be pasted on every other Apple device that is signed in with the same iCloud ID. The feature uses iCloud to synchronization clipboard data between devices, so there is a possibility of lag.
The thing about a feature such as this, is that users probably don’t know they need it, until they use it. Sure, a lot of people already wanted such a feature to be implemented natively in the ecosystem, but most didn’t realize the need (or the usefulness) of such a feature until they experienced it. Universal clipboard opens up new options in the way you use your Apple devices. It allows easy sharing of text, links, etc. You can simply copy a link on your laptop, and paste it into your iPhone (and vice-versa), making sharing URLs easier. Noticeably, this applies to standard text, images and videos as well. Anything that you can copy and paste on one Apple device, can be pasted on another Apple device as well.
5. Store Desktop and Documents Folders in iCloud
Apple communicated widely about storage optimisation features coming to the Mac, at the WWDC 2016. One of the storage optimisation features obtainable in macOS Sierra, is the ability for users to store their Desktop and Documents folders on the cloud. For starters, this means that your Desktop and Documents are available on every device you have connected to iCloud. You don’t want to email it to yourself, or carry it on an external storage device. It simply will be available on your Mac, iPhone and iPad, all by itself.
Another great thing about the way Apple has implemented this feature, is that if the storage space on your device runs low, your Mac will automatically remove the local copies of larger, less frequently used files from your system, and keep them stored only in iCloud. In my opinion, this is great. Not everyone does regular housekeeping on their Desktop, let alone the Documents folder and this feature will greatly help towards optimizing storage on your devices.
Note: If you delete a file or folder from iCloud synchronized folders, they are removed from all of your devices. So ensure you always backup important data.