**Introducing Mac OS Big Sur: A New Era of Design and Functionality**

As we take a closer look at the latest version of Mac OS, also known as Big Sur, it's clear that Apple has been working hard to create a fresh new interface that prioritizes usability and accessibility. One of the most noticeable changes is the addition of more space between different elements in menus, making navigation easier and more intuitive. The menus themselves have also undergone a redesign, with larger and less cluttered layouts that put the focus squarely on the content.

**A More iOS-Like Design**

One of the most striking features of Mac OS Big Sur is its new design aesthetic, which bears a strong resemblance to iOS and iPadOS. Many of the icons are direct interpretations of their iOS counterparts, complete with subtle touches and details that give them a distinctly Mac-like feel. For example, the Mail app icon is remarkably similar to the middle app icon on iOS, but notice how the park address is subtly integrated into the design. While some of these icons may be criticized for being too similar to their iOS brethren, others have managed to strike a perfect balance between form and function.

**Lighter Windows and Rounded Corners**

Another notable change in Mac OS Big Sur is the introduction of lighter windows, which give the overall interface a more modern and streamlined look. The windows themselves are also rounded, creating a sense of softness and approachability that's sure to please. It's hard not to wonder whether we'll see an updated iMac or MacBook Pro with similar design elements in the near future – perhaps even a new "Pro" model that incorporates the same sleek, rounded bezels as the iPad Pro.

**Uniform Full-Height Sidebars**

The sidebars have also been revamped in Mac OS Big Sur, with more uniform full-height layouts that provide ample space for icons and other visual elements. This change is likely to bring clarity and consistency across applications, making it easier for users to navigate and find what they need quickly and efficiently.

**Unified Symbols and Consistency**

One of the most exciting features of Mac OS Big Sur is the introduction of unified symbols, which bring a sense of clarity and consistency to the interface. These symbols are used throughout various applications, including notes, mail, and more, making it easy for users to find what they need quickly and easily. The composition button, in particular, has been given a prominent spot on many menus, serving as a convenient shortcut for users who want to create new content.

**Faster Software Updates**

In addition to its sleek new design, Mac OS Big Sur also promises faster software updates and improved security. With the system volume now separated from the data volume, Apple has added an extra layer of protection against malicious tampering. Moreover, software updates will begin in the background and complete faster than before, keeping your Mac secure and up-to-date with minimal disruption.

**Faster Spotlight Search**

Spotlight search has also been revamped in Mac OS Big Sur, with results appearing almost instantly as soon as you start typing. The new interface presents all the relevant results in a streamlined list, making it easier to find exactly what you're looking for – whether that's an app, document, website, or more.

**Integrating Spotlight into Find Menus**

Finally, Spotlight has been integrated into the find menus of various applications, including Safari and Pages. This means that users can easily search for specific content within those apps using the same intuitive syntax as before. With the ability to change search parameters from "begins with" to "contains", users have more control than ever over their search results.

**A Final Word**

With its fresh new design, improved functionality, and enhanced security features, Mac OS Big Sur is sure to bring a new level of excitement and productivity to the Mac user experience. As always, we recommend checking out some of our other content on the latest developments in the world of Apple. And don't forget to try CleanMyMac X, sponsored by MacPaul – the perfect tool for keeping your Mac running in tip-top shape.

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If you're looking for a way to keep your Mac running at its best, look no further than CleanMyMac X. This powerful tool offers real-time malware monitoring, as well as handy features like the Space Lens tool to instantly visualize and clean up your storage. With CleanMyMac X, you can say goodbye to slow performance and hello to a faster, more efficient Mac experience. As a special offer for our readers, use the code "9TO5" at checkout to receive 30% off – so what are you waiting for?

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhow's it goin ladies and gentlemen in this video we are taking a look at yes indeed Mac OS Big Sur so Big Sur is a huge update to Mac OS for tons of different reasons but in this video we're gonna be focusing on some of the differences between Big Sur and Catalina you could see some comparisons between Big Sur in Catalina and my biggest takeaway is that Mac OS Big Sur is definitely more iOS like in the way it looks not necessarily the way it functions but the way it looks is definitely heavily influenced by iOS let's talk about it but first a word from our sponsor CleanMyMac X is an all-in-one utility that takes care of your max health it's a real-time Mac OS cleaner performance monitor malware remover in so much more clean my Mac X makes it super easy to identify and remove gigabytes of hidden junk and instantly visualize your disk base with the space lens module CleanMyMac X keeps your Mac running at top speed it helps manage apps keeps the ones that you need up-to-date and removes unnecessary apps it can also free up RAM and run maintenance scripts to keep your Mac running fast clean my Mac X is the perfect tool to prepare your Mac for the new version of Mac OS it's available on the Mac App Store and Oh Mac Paul's website go to Mac Paul comm / 9:00 to 5:00 to get clean my Mac X with a 30% discount today so right off the bat you're gonna notice a lot different obviously you heard that startup chime is back in in effect that's so lovely to hear but also during the initial set up some of the accessibility options are very front and center helping users with disabilities to get Mac OS set up so we're going to look I'm gonna start actually with Safari because this is one of the biggest changes here in Mac OS fixer so let's take a look at some of the new Safari features starting with the customizable start page this is so cool so a Mac OS fixer you can go in and customize various facets of the start page in Safari and that includes your favorites the privacy report the reading list all your iCloud apps and more so all you need to do you'll notice a little button in the bottom right hand corner you just click on that that brings up this little window here and there you can go in and enable or disable all those various features you can even add your own background to the start page just like that and you can go in and customize the background for the start page I want to choose that the Mac OS Bitzer wallpaper I think that looks great but like I said you can go in and disable any of the features that you don't want to appear on the start page like I couldn't disable favorites if I want to do that although I'm going to keep favorites on there so you can enable or disable frequently visited if you want to do that get your privacy report here you can disable or you enable that series suggestions your reading list and of course your iCloud tabs I kind of like it look like that actually you can disable or enable the wallpaper or the background as well but I think that right there looks looks ace what do you guys think let me know down below in the comment section I love just that simple clean look with just your favorites there let's go ahead and remove those iCloud tabs I don't think I want those on there so let's go back in here and uncheck that yes just like that so anytime you open a brand new page in Safari just command in its gonna look just like that so you get this simple start up page with a nice background ready to go now Safari just like the iOS version also has improved performance in fact Apple says that Safari loads frequently visited websites 50% faster than Chrome and we already know chrome is horrible for power efficiency but now Safari is even better so you can stream video for up to 3 hours longer with Safari or browse the web for up to an hour longer when compared to Chrome or Firefox now if a pecans in tabs aren't new and fixer this actually was a feature in Catalina but in big sur they're enabled by default and they are definitely less of an afterthought they're integrated much better here in Safari those favicon icons and to go along with that now you can actually see way more tabs at once in Safari because the tabs actually are shrunk down to just show the favicon and you could still scroll through if you have an extra long list now here's something really cool you get website previews when you hover over a tab just like that so just hover over and you get a nice preview of what that tab contains so if you have a lot of tabs that's gonna help out big-time because you don't actually have to click it you just get a quick preview if it looks like something you want to look at give it a click and you're there so you can really see how like I said tabs are less of an afterthought they're more integral in Safari for a Big Sur than they ever we're before so this makes a huge deal when browsing the web you have a lot of tabs open easily preview those tabs thanks to this new feature and it's super handy now speaking of Handy we finally have built in native translation capability in Safari on the Mac in my opinion this has been one of the greatest deficiencies for Safari in the past and that has finally been addressed it's also been addressed on iOS as well but you can just simply click and it will translate a web page just like that and for me that's just one more reason not to or to resist the temptation to install Chrome I always use Chrome for translations now I don't have to worry about that at all because it's built right in natively in Safari for Big Sur and just like the iOS version of Safari you now get a privacy report for every website to track cross site trackers blocked and you can do this on an individual website basis but you can also pull up the privacy report to show you what every website is doing so you can view by website to see which trackers are used on each website or you can view by tracker so this just helps you to get a good idea of what's actually going on with their web browsing and you can get this privacy report displayed directly on the start page so like we showed you earlier you can enable that right there on your Start page didn't get your privacy report that way really cool now let's talk about the Maps app because it's a brand new app it's actually one of eight native Mac catalyst apps which are a version of the iPad app that runs on the Mac it's been customized to take advantage of Mac features but the core functionality was already there on the iPad so now you get the new guides functionality there which gives you guys from various partners like Lonely Planet things like that now you also have your own individual guys that you can go in and create based on your favorite locations so I've done that so it's really cool because all the functionality that you enjoy on the iPad version of maps it's going to be here on maps for Big Sur and that's a good thing because let's be honest the Maps app on Mac OS Catalina just wasn't all that good it was missing so many features like guides like look around for instance look around that sort of Google Street View like feature which is super cool and actually is better than Street View in some respects as far as speed and things of that nature it's a very impressive feature that you now get on Mac OS Big Sur thanks to you the fact that it's a catalyst happens and I've had app running here on the Mac customized for the Mac so you can also move around this little pair of binoculars there and have your little picture and picture window with your look around view now you also get cycling directions in this latest version of maps just like you do on the iOS version so when enabling navigation you just simply click the little cycling icon and that will give you all the details that you need to know such as elevation you can even go in and change up the various options to avoid things like stairs or heels things of that nature so this is really cool if you live in a city that has cycling support built in the maps now you also get indoor maps you can view here LAX and now let's talk about yet another new catalyst app messages no longer is it super limited when compared to the iPad version now you can do things like set pin messages you just simply drag up your thread to the top or you can swipe and then enable the pin so you can pin your messages at the top those that you frequently are in contact with and right there on the pin message you'll see incoming notifications for messages that are sent to you and you'll see the little avatars move around based on who's sending those messages it's really cool and I love having those pin messages at the top for my frequently used contacts it just makes a lot of sense and now this is available here on Mac OS things to catalyst because the previous messages app was pretty pretty pathetic when compared to the iPad or iOS version and you also find it now typing indicator on your message threads and also in the pinned messages as well so that's really cool and you have enhanced search so that's gonna make it easier to find the links and find photos even have a little avatar of who sent you the photo there to make it easily identifiable it's gonna search for another year let's search for there we go activity monitor so you could see click on that takes you right to the message super simple super easy so as expected it works very similar to how the iPad version works here in messages for Big Sur and now with this new updated messages app you can also share your name and photo just like you can on the iOS version so that's a nice feature for parody feature pair you with the iOS and iPad OS and the same new feature that you found in iowa's 14 now you can also rename and add a picture to your group messages so I'm gonna name this cool cats so I'm gonna need a picture that that really fits the bill of course you can use emoji you can also use an emoji so we're gonna use an emoji so we're just gonna click the plus sign here and find a cat emoji and there we go you can choose your background color as well click on done and that's it so now you have cool cats with the cat emoji in tow and just like on iOS 14 you also have inline messages so you can right click and select reply and reply to a message that was sent earlier that's gonna appear in line you have a link directly to that message you just click and you could see the context there as to which message you're responding to and yes indeed you finally have effects available in messages for the Mac so that means you can go through here and add your favorite effects that we're all used to seeing on iOS I'm gonna use the balloons here just click and you can send that and that appears on either your iPhone or on your Mac whatever the case may be you also have images access so all your gif animations thumbs up for the right pronunciation of the word gif yes you can put in your favorite cat animation and send it to your friends what's better than that I mean seriously let's go ahead and send this guy there we go and in Mac OS pic sir you have the ability to edit meme og and also send me moji stickers so let's go ahead and go into the Edit form emoji so you can go in and create your own meme meme hum and I always have a hard time saying that you can go in and create your own meme og avatar and customize it to your heart's content so let's go in here and find the new face covering that's what we're looking for so I'm gonna scroll down and where is that guy I think it's in head head where scroll down there it is everything's loading in still there's our face covering so we're gonna find something that looks good and appropriate there we go okay I'm gonna speed this up for you guys you're not waiting on this all right so now here are all of our stickers so we can just simply send a sticker like that or you can drag a sticker and pin it to a message so I'm gonna show you how to do that here as well simply click and drag on top of a message and pin your sticker just like that in messages for Big Sur you'll find the updated photo picker which allows you to quickly access and share your recent photos in so here we go you can also go in and search so we'll just click on one of our photos or videos or whatever the case may be you could add that right to your message and you'll also find mentions here in messages for Big Sur so this will make it so that you receive a notification if your name is mentioned even if your message thread is muted now let's talk about another catalyst app that is voice memos it's not a new application here on the Mac but it does get some new features like being able to favorite for instance as you can see there so I can favorite my favorite voice memos that was kind of weird alright so that will add it directly to your favorites you can delete as well and that's going to basically set up a smart folder which contains all of your recently deleted items as well there's also an Apple watch folder for all of your items that are created on Apple watch a smart folder and you can also create your own custom folder and yes thank you I know I say folder weird fo WD er there's also enhanced sound or enhanced recording I should say which will automatically reduce background noise and room reverb with just a single click of the enhance button in the new reminders app you can now assign out reminders to shared reminder lists so you just click the info button and next to a sign to choose your assignment great so now I have to test Burgers and in the updated reminders app you can create personalized lists with moji so let me show you how that works here so we're just going to go in and edit this one alright so you see the name can name it of course there's more icons to choose from but the really cool thing here is the ability to select emoji so you could choose any of the emoji give it a name you can give it a color if you choose a symbol not an emoji so just keep that in mind so there you go Jeff's crazy list of ideas yeah there's gonna be some insane stuff in there you can also organize smart lists there's also a new assigned to nice at in your smart list but here you can go in and organize those as you see fit you just drag to the location you want them to be pretty simple and there's new keyboard shortcuts so you can go in and manage your reminders list using a variety of new keyboard shortcuts available here so if you go to the View window you can show smart lists show completed things like that just like an iOS 14 the podcast app gets a revamped a listen now section it makes it easier to resume the next episode in your queue in the Notes app gives you top hits in search so I'm gonna search for exposure and you'll see your top hits at the top right I mean it makes sense it's called top hits for reason and there's new quick styles so this allows you to do things like bold italicize underline and strikethrough and just like on iOS 14 the music app has been updated with a new listen now page that replaces the old for you page this is where you go to find all of your recently played items find your top picks and learn about new tracks that Apple music thinks you may like and there's also an improved search with new browse categories so this allows you to jump directly to a genre of your choice just like that and now you can find all the latest jazz right there to your fingertips the home app gets a significant update again this is a catalyst app and just like on iOS and my iPad OS this thing has been updated significantly with new features like the new status view at the top there's also face recognition for cameras home to secure video cameras that is so you can go into the settings here and then go into facial recognition and you can set that up to recognize faces when your friend comes and rings the doorbell to tell you hey this person is at your door instead of just a person it'll tell you who it is so here you also get activity zones so you can set up different zones and this is just a terrible photo but it was a nighttime when I got - snapped and so yeah you can go in here for your home kit secure video cameras set up different zones so it only notifies you when things get inside or either outside if you invert those zones so super handy new feature and in the App Store's apple arcade you get the ability to continue playing where you left off so all of your latest games that you play before will be present it there for you and you also find details on various achievements right there on the apple arcade tab and in individual games you'll find more details on achievements as well so you can see what achievements are actually available for that particular game prior to even playing it but it doesn't stop there of course once you're actually in the game you can go into the achievements section and the leaderboards as well to view details on those things and you'll find updated info for the apps in the App Store at the top you'll find things like file size developer whether or not it supports controllers and just like iOS 14 Big Sur will support shared in-app purchases for developers that opted in to that that's for family sharing so that's really awesome and one of my favorite iPad features nail comes to Big Sur in the Photos app you now have enhanced video editing so you can go in and not just trim a video but now you can really get your hands dirty you can go in there add filters you can crop you can add all sorts of adjustments here so you can change the color intensity the saturation exposure but not just the the high level stuff you can go in there with the low level stuff changed up highlights and shadows all that goodness it's no longer just for photos you can do all this with videos as well non destructively so while apps like Final Cut Pro 10 are obviously gonna be what you want to use for more advanced stuff if you just need to quickly fix something Photos app is where it's at now let's talk about some of the differences in system preferences so let's go ahead and start with general now first of all you're gonna notice a lot of the icons are different and in general you're going to see accent color now has a new option or a new radio button that very first radio button almost makes it appear as if you can select or customize your own color however it doesn't really appear to do anything right at this second that very first selection that will be cool because you don't really have too many accent colors in highlight colors to choose from but being able to customize or using like a color wheel to select your own accent color would be awesome but right now you can see the accent versus the highlight color when you change accident it automatically changes the highlight color to that color but you can also go in and change the highlight color independently and the highlight color is where you highlight the text and that's what you see in that tax document it'll be interesting to see how beta-2 works with regard to that first radio button for accent color under general another change you'll find is that preferred tabs is now under the general section instead of the docs section and what this basically does is allow you to force a new document window to open up in a tab instead of a new window if you set it to always or when in full screen so I set it to always so even when I'm not in full screen when I open up a new window in this document for numbers it automatically opens up a new tab now let's talk about desktop & screen saver settings not a lot change here but you do have two new beautiful wallpapers one dark one light and you can configure it to automatically switch between light and dark mode and vice versa based on time of day or you can just choose the static light mode or the static dark mode wallpaper either one looks pretty good to me what do you guys think about the new big serve wallpaper let me know down below now you'll find several new accessibility changes in features here in Bexar so we're gonna open up accessibility and system preferences you get that nice overview and then if you go to where it says spoken content now these speak typing feedback is now under a spoken content section the same option used to be under a section called speech now what this does is it we'll speak what you type with your keyboard so it'll speak individual letters and words like this HIO half Jeff space-age that can definitely be helpful for those visually impaired for sure an accessibility in general is just one of the hallmarks of Apple devices whether it be iOS or Mac it's just amazing that the amount of attention and amount of tension to detail Apple pays to this sort of thing and it's wonderful under voice control you'll now find the numbered grid this is a feature already available in iOS 13 but when you enable this it creates a grid on the screen and you can speak each number to zoom in to those specific parts and navigate around Mac OS using only your voice which is super cool and like I said just another example of the attention to detail and just caring about making mac OS accessible to everyone or as many people as possible at least now you also have shortcuts and there's a couple of new shortcuts increased contrast and reduce transparency now under security and privacy preferences you're gonna find several new panels here under the privacy tab so let's scroll down here you'll find the Apple advertising has replaced the standard advertising section regarding personalized ads there's also a new Bluetooth section to manage app access to Bluetooth devices there's also a home kit section so apps they request home kit data get that here and there's media and Apple music and if you go to sound preferences now you already heard it at the very beginning but there's the start up sound you can enable or disable that right here from sound effects under sound preferences and you get all new yes indeed all new alert sounds let's listen in Oh Oh what's your favorite new sale let me know down below in the comment section and there's new battery preferences so this replaces the energy saver preference in older versions of Mac OS so you have your usage history shows you your last 24 hours or last 10 days similar to what you'll find on iOS now obviously this will only be for Apple laptops since those are the only Mac computers that have batteries then you also have battery and you'll find some cool options here to optimize video streaming while on battery and optimized battery charging similar to what you find on an iPhone for instance and then you can go into battery health and get details on battery health just like you can on iOS so when you click battery healthy you'll see the maximum capacity you also see the ability to view your battery condition mine is normal and manage battery longevity okay to schedule various events like to start up your computer or shut it down or put it in sleep mode you'll find in use dedicated schedule tab and in date and time preferences the clock now says menu bar clock just a small little detail there that I thought was interesting now there's also start up this Preferences nothing's really changed here but you see the the UI the icons in particular are much larger for the disc alright so let's talk about the dock and menu bar because this has really changed a lot so previously you had just dock now it's combined with dock and minibar so you have all your regular dock settings nothing really has changed in there too much although the automatically hide and show minibar option is now out of general and now it's in here which makes sense given the fact that it's called documen you bar and the menu bar is now updated as well as taller much more translucent allowing your desktop picture to extend edge to edge it just looks so much better it doesn't look like this tacked own like afterthought as much now it feels like it's a part of your desktop altogether I'd be much less tempted to hide them noubar here in Big Sur when compared to Catalina and before but what's interesting about the dock in minibar preferences is that you also have control center in there as well so control center isn't its own dedicated thing its lives inside documen you bar for whatever reason that's how apple's set it up so control center is just like you find on iOS well relatively similar this allows you to go in and control various aspects of your computer so you can change the brightness you can change the display brightness the volume you can toggle Wi-Fi bluetooth airdrop so you can go in there choose how you want to configure airdrop you can set it to everyone you can toggle airdrop off completely and then just click and that takes you back to the main control center center panel and that's how the whole thing works in general you just simply click to get back to the previous level it's very iOS like in some regards so you can see all the various options here and what you'll notice is that is that you can show these items in the menu bar as well so you can turn that on or off and basically it breaks it out of control Center it also still keeps it in control center but it allows you to quickly access directly those specific items from the menu bar without having to go any levels into control center so that's kind of a nice feature and of course you can drag items from control center to the menu bar if you wish to do so as well but what's kind of interesting is that you get options in the minibar that you normally wouldn't get in previous versions of Mac OS like keyboard brightness things like that so that's kind of cool there's also some other features like accessibility shortcuts you can customize the battery to show a minibar show in control center or disable both or enable both or enable show percentage or disable show percentage however you want to do it there's also fast user switching which allows you to quickly switch between multiple users if you have more than one configured and there's of course spotlight and Siri neither of which are found in control center their menu bar items only so here is the nail plane item you click that to view it and you can fast forward pause play click the album artwork to load the app unfortunately it doesn't appear that there's any sort of airplay to controls built in here like you will find on iOS and like I said you can actually drag items from the control center up to the menu bar like I just did with the nail plane interface and of course Notification Center is here in Mac OS Big Sur so you go into the notification preferences here and for the individual items in Notification Center you'll find the ability to show previews always when unlocked or never and then also there is notification grouping as well which is super cool right something I definitely desired for a long time so there you go you have quite a few homekit notifications but they're grouped like notifications are grouped together so you're not inundated with just this long list of notifications so you can expand and collapse if you want to and then all your widgets are below you can easily drag those around to customize your widgets and these widgets are similar to what you'll find on the new iOS 14 you can right-click and select different sizes so small medium large you can go in and edit the widget that way you can change the location for instance here on the weather app or the weather widget I should say so I'm gonna put in a location where I know it's raining right now because I want to show you the next hour precipitation so this gives you a minute-by-minute chart that shows the intensity of the rain or snow over the coming hour that has really cool something that Apple took from dark sky of course the acquired dark sky not too long ago and we can expect probably more features to be integrated over time now you also have the widget browser this is where you can go to view all your widgets here not as many as you'll get on iOS conspicuously missing is news also serious suggestions and things of that nature but you can select a widget category or just directly search if you want to do that all right so here's watch list you can just drag and release hit the minus sign to delete change the size either after the factor before the fact pretty cool so you just click the time that reveals your Notification Center the combined Notification Center with your notifications and your widgets now talking about some of the aesthetics of Mac OS Big Sur you get more of spacing between different elements or different items in menus which is interesting makes you wonder will we ever get a touchscreen Mac because that's obviously gonna be more ideal for a touchscreen interface to have more space for your fingers so these little menus are a little bit larger than what we find on previous versions of Mac OS not to say that that's actually going to happen but just interesting there's also redesigned sheets like this one right here that have been completely updated to remove borders bezels to put the focus directly on the content and there's a redesign floating dock that is more translucent that allows your wallpaper shine through similar to how the menu bars translucent allows the wallpaper to shine through as well and the icons as you can see are very much iOS like in appearance I mean very much iOS like and let's talk about that right now many of the icons are basically direct interpretations of the icons you find on iOS and iPad OS so in some cases they're exactly the same but in a lot of cases they have their own Mac OS aesthetic keeping those stylistic touches and the details that give the Mac its character for example look at the mail app icon looks very similar to the middle app icon on iOS but notice get the park address there the icons have more texture they're less flat but some of those icons like keychain access are just terrible in my opinion I don't know what you guys think about that let me know down below in the comments and just overall there are lighter windows here on Mac OS sorry planes in the background but here on Mac OS Big Sur lighter windows you have more rounded windows and makes me think hey are we gonna see an updated iMac or an updated MacBook Pro with rounded bezels sort of like the iPad pro I don't know I mean just interesting to think about considering this new design and you also get more uniform full-height sidebars which give you a nice updated look you get more space on the sidebar because it goes from top to bottom and to go along with that to get unified symbols that bring clarity and consistency across applications so these symbols just look much better than the symbols in previous versions of Mac OS where they were just kind of all over the place now you get some much-needed consistency for instance the compose button which you'll find in apps like notes you'll find in apps like mail as well and other applications well that compose button is going to be the same across all those apps and the same thing goes for all the little icons that are shared across multiple applications bringing that much needed consistency to Mac OS and then there are going to be faster software updates software updates will begin in the background and complete faster than before to keep your Mac secure and it just won't take us long to update Mac OS which is notorious for how long it takes in the system volume and Victor is signed to protect against malicious tampering so it seems like each year Apple adds yet another layer to its security first they had sip then they had having the data volume separate from the system volume and now we have cryptographically signed system volumes indeed Mac OS becoming more secure with each new release and a few other new features you get faster more responsive spotlight search so you'll get your results faster than ever before as soon as you start typing and spotlight will present all the results in a streamline list to make it easier to find the exact search result that you're looking for so that can be an app a document a website etc and then finally spotlight is also integrated into the find menus for apps like Safari or pages or a keynote so here with Safari I can change the search parameters from begins with which is going to be more specific to contains which is much more broad so ladies and gentlemen that has been a look at over 85 different changes and features in Mac OS pick sir if you found this video helpful let other people know by leaving a thumbs up and also click that subscribe button for more videos like this this is Jeff with a 9 to 5 Mac special thanks to Mac Paul creator of CleanMyMac X for sponsoring 905 Mac CleanMyMac x is the perfect tool to keep your Mac running in tip-top shape and to prepare it for the newest version of Mac OS along with the real-time malware monitoring you can use the handy space lens tool to instantly visualize and clean up your storage CleanMyMac X is available on the Mac App Store and on Mac paws website for a limited time go to Mac Paul calm slash 9 to 5 to get clean my Mac X with a 30% discounthow's it goin ladies and gentlemen in this video we are taking a look at yes indeed Mac OS Big Sur so Big Sur is a huge update to Mac OS for tons of different reasons but in this video we're gonna be focusing on some of the differences between Big Sur and Catalina you could see some comparisons between Big Sur in Catalina and my biggest takeaway is that Mac OS Big Sur is definitely more iOS like in the way it looks not necessarily the way it functions but the way it looks is definitely heavily influenced by iOS let's talk about it but first a word from our sponsor CleanMyMac X is an all-in-one utility that takes care of your max health it's a real-time Mac OS cleaner performance monitor malware remover in so much more clean my Mac X makes it super easy to identify and remove gigabytes of hidden junk and instantly visualize your disk base with the space lens module CleanMyMac X keeps your Mac running at top speed it helps manage apps keeps the ones that you need up-to-date and removes unnecessary apps it can also free up RAM and run maintenance scripts to keep your Mac running fast clean my Mac X is the perfect tool to prepare your Mac for the new version of Mac OS it's available on the Mac App Store and Oh Mac Paul's website go to Mac Paul comm / 9:00 to 5:00 to get clean my Mac X with a 30% discount today so right off the bat you're gonna notice a lot different obviously you heard that startup chime is back in in effect that's so lovely to hear but also during the initial set up some of the accessibility options are very front and center helping users with disabilities to get Mac OS set up so we're going to look I'm gonna start actually with Safari because this is one of the biggest changes here in Mac OS fixer so let's take a look at some of the new Safari features starting with the customizable start page this is so cool so a Mac OS fixer you can go in and customize various facets of the start page in Safari and that includes your favorites the privacy report the reading list all your iCloud apps and more so all you need to do you'll notice a little button in the bottom right hand corner you just click on that that brings up this little window here and there you can go in and enable or disable all those various features you can even add your own background to the start page just like that and you can go in and customize the background for the start page I want to choose that the Mac OS Bitzer wallpaper I think that looks great but like I said you can go in and disable any of the features that you don't want to appear on the start page like I couldn't disable favorites if I want to do that although I'm going to keep favorites on there so you can enable or disable frequently visited if you want to do that get your privacy report here you can disable or you enable that series suggestions your reading list and of course your iCloud tabs I kind of like it look like that actually you can disable or enable the wallpaper or the background as well but I think that right there looks looks ace what do you guys think let me know down below in the comment section I love just that simple clean look with just your favorites there let's go ahead and remove those iCloud tabs I don't think I want those on there so let's go back in here and uncheck that yes just like that so anytime you open a brand new page in Safari just command in its gonna look just like that so you get this simple start up page with a nice background ready to go now Safari just like the iOS version also has improved performance in fact Apple says that Safari loads frequently visited websites 50% faster than Chrome and we already know chrome is horrible for power efficiency but now Safari is even better so you can stream video for up to 3 hours longer with Safari or browse the web for up to an hour longer when compared to Chrome or Firefox now if a pecans in tabs aren't new and fixer this actually was a feature in Catalina but in big sur they're enabled by default and they are definitely less of an afterthought they're integrated much better here in Safari those favicon icons and to go along with that now you can actually see way more tabs at once in Safari because the tabs actually are shrunk down to just show the favicon and you could still scroll through if you have an extra long list now here's something really cool you get website previews when you hover over a tab just like that so just hover over and you get a nice preview of what that tab contains so if you have a lot of tabs that's gonna help out big-time because you don't actually have to click it you just get a quick preview if it looks like something you want to look at give it a click and you're there so you can really see how like I said tabs are less of an afterthought they're more integral in Safari for a Big Sur than they ever we're before so this makes a huge deal when browsing the web you have a lot of tabs open easily preview those tabs thanks to this new feature and it's super handy now speaking of Handy we finally have built in native translation capability in Safari on the Mac in my opinion this has been one of the greatest deficiencies for Safari in the past and that has finally been addressed it's also been addressed on iOS as well but you can just simply click and it will translate a web page just like that and for me that's just one more reason not to or to resist the temptation to install Chrome I always use Chrome for translations now I don't have to worry about that at all because it's built right in natively in Safari for Big Sur and just like the iOS version of Safari you now get a privacy report for every website to track cross site trackers blocked and you can do this on an individual website basis but you can also pull up the privacy report to show you what every website is doing so you can view by website to see which trackers are used on each website or you can view by tracker so this just helps you to get a good idea of what's actually going on with their web browsing and you can get this privacy report displayed directly on the start page so like we showed you earlier you can enable that right there on your Start page didn't get your privacy report that way really cool now let's talk about the Maps app because it's a brand new app it's actually one of eight native Mac catalyst apps which are a version of the iPad app that runs on the Mac it's been customized to take advantage of Mac features but the core functionality was already there on the iPad so now you get the new guides functionality there which gives you guys from various partners like Lonely Planet things like that now you also have your own individual guys that you can go in and create based on your favorite locations so I've done that so it's really cool because all the functionality that you enjoy on the iPad version of maps it's going to be here on maps for Big Sur and that's a good thing because let's be honest the Maps app on Mac OS Catalina just wasn't all that good it was missing so many features like guides like look around for instance look around that sort of Google Street View like feature which is super cool and actually is better than Street View in some respects as far as speed and things of that nature it's a very impressive feature that you now get on Mac OS Big Sur thanks to you the fact that it's a catalyst happens and I've had app running here on the Mac customized for the Mac so you can also move around this little pair of binoculars there and have your little picture and picture window with your look around view now you also get cycling directions in this latest version of maps just like you do on the iOS version so when enabling navigation you just simply click the little cycling icon and that will give you all the details that you need to know such as elevation you can even go in and change up the various options to avoid things like stairs or heels things of that nature so this is really cool if you live in a city that has cycling support built in the maps now you also get indoor maps you can view here LAX and now let's talk about yet another new catalyst app messages no longer is it super limited when compared to the iPad version now you can do things like set pin messages you just simply drag up your thread to the top or you can swipe and then enable the pin so you can pin your messages at the top those that you frequently are in contact with and right there on the pin message you'll see incoming notifications for messages that are sent to you and you'll see the little avatars move around based on who's sending those messages it's really cool and I love having those pin messages at the top for my frequently used contacts it just makes a lot of sense and now this is available here on Mac OS things to catalyst because the previous messages app was pretty pretty pathetic when compared to the iPad or iOS version and you also find it now typing indicator on your message threads and also in the pinned messages as well so that's really cool and you have enhanced search so that's gonna make it easier to find the links and find photos even have a little avatar of who sent you the photo there to make it easily identifiable it's gonna search for another year let's search for there we go activity monitor so you could see click on that takes you right to the message super simple super easy so as expected it works very similar to how the iPad version works here in messages for Big Sur and now with this new updated messages app you can also share your name and photo just like you can on the iOS version so that's a nice feature for parody feature pair you with the iOS and iPad OS and the same new feature that you found in iowa's 14 now you can also rename and add a picture to your group messages so I'm gonna name this cool cats so I'm gonna need a picture that that really fits the bill of course you can use emoji you can also use an emoji so we're gonna use an emoji so we're just gonna click the plus sign here and find a cat emoji and there we go you can choose your background color as well click on done and that's it so now you have cool cats with the cat emoji in tow and just like on iOS 14 you also have inline messages so you can right click and select reply and reply to a message that was sent earlier that's gonna appear in line you have a link directly to that message you just click and you could see the context there as to which message you're responding to and yes indeed you finally have effects available in messages for the Mac so that means you can go through here and add your favorite effects that we're all used to seeing on iOS I'm gonna use the balloons here just click and you can send that and that appears on either your iPhone or on your Mac whatever the case may be you also have images access so all your gif animations thumbs up for the right pronunciation of the word gif yes you can put in your favorite cat animation and send it to your friends what's better than that I mean seriously let's go ahead and send this guy there we go and in Mac OS pic sir you have the ability to edit meme og and also send me moji stickers so let's go ahead and go into the Edit form emoji so you can go in and create your own meme meme hum and I always have a hard time saying that you can go in and create your own meme og avatar and customize it to your heart's content so let's go in here and find the new face covering that's what we're looking for so I'm gonna scroll down and where is that guy I think it's in head head where scroll down there it is everything's loading in still there's our face covering so we're gonna find something that looks good and appropriate there we go okay I'm gonna speed this up for you guys you're not waiting on this all right so now here are all of our stickers so we can just simply send a sticker like that or you can drag a sticker and pin it to a message so I'm gonna show you how to do that here as well simply click and drag on top of a message and pin your sticker just like that in messages for Big Sur you'll find the updated photo picker which allows you to quickly access and share your recent photos in so here we go you can also go in and search so we'll just click on one of our photos or videos or whatever the case may be you could add that right to your message and you'll also find mentions here in messages for Big Sur so this will make it so that you receive a notification if your name is mentioned even if your message thread is muted now let's talk about another catalyst app that is voice memos it's not a new application here on the Mac but it does get some new features like being able to favorite for instance as you can see there so I can favorite my favorite voice memos that was kind of weird alright so that will add it directly to your favorites you can delete as well and that's going to basically set up a smart folder which contains all of your recently deleted items as well there's also an Apple watch folder for all of your items that are created on Apple watch a smart folder and you can also create your own custom folder and yes thank you I know I say folder weird fo WD er there's also enhanced sound or enhanced recording I should say which will automatically reduce background noise and room reverb with just a single click of the enhance button in the new reminders app you can now assign out reminders to shared reminder lists so you just click the info button and next to a sign to choose your assignment great so now I have to test Burgers and in the updated reminders app you can create personalized lists with moji so let me show you how that works here so we're just going to go in and edit this one alright so you see the name can name it of course there's more icons to choose from but the really cool thing here is the ability to select emoji so you could choose any of the emoji give it a name you can give it a color if you choose a symbol not an emoji so just keep that in mind so there you go Jeff's crazy list of ideas yeah there's gonna be some insane stuff in there you can also organize smart lists there's also a new assigned to nice at in your smart list but here you can go in and organize those as you see fit you just drag to the location you want them to be pretty simple and there's new keyboard shortcuts so you can go in and manage your reminders list using a variety of new keyboard shortcuts available here so if you go to the View window you can show smart lists show completed things like that just like an iOS 14 the podcast app gets a revamped a listen now section it makes it easier to resume the next episode in your queue in the Notes app gives you top hits in search so I'm gonna search for exposure and you'll see your top hits at the top right I mean it makes sense it's called top hits for reason and there's new quick styles so this allows you to do things like bold italicize underline and strikethrough and just like on iOS 14 the music app has been updated with a new listen now page that replaces the old for you page this is where you go to find all of your recently played items find your top picks and learn about new tracks that Apple music thinks you may like and there's also an improved search with new browse categories so this allows you to jump directly to a genre of your choice just like that and now you can find all the latest jazz right there to your fingertips the home app gets a significant update again this is a catalyst app and just like on iOS and my iPad OS this thing has been updated significantly with new features like the new status view at the top there's also face recognition for cameras home to secure video cameras that is so you can go into the settings here and then go into facial recognition and you can set that up to recognize faces when your friend comes and rings the doorbell to tell you hey this person is at your door instead of just a person it'll tell you who it is so here you also get activity zones so you can set up different zones and this is just a terrible photo but it was a nighttime when I got - snapped and so yeah you can go in here for your home kit secure video cameras set up different zones so it only notifies you when things get inside or either outside if you invert those zones so super handy new feature and in the App Store's apple arcade you get the ability to continue playing where you left off so all of your latest games that you play before will be present it there for you and you also find details on various achievements right there on the apple arcade tab and in individual games you'll find more details on achievements as well so you can see what achievements are actually available for that particular game prior to even playing it but it doesn't stop there of course once you're actually in the game you can go into the achievements section and the leaderboards as well to view details on those things and you'll find updated info for the apps in the App Store at the top you'll find things like file size developer whether or not it supports controllers and just like iOS 14 Big Sur will support shared in-app purchases for developers that opted in to that that's for family sharing so that's really awesome and one of my favorite iPad features nail comes to Big Sur in the Photos app you now have enhanced video editing so you can go in and not just trim a video but now you can really get your hands dirty you can go in there add filters you can crop you can add all sorts of adjustments here so you can change the color intensity the saturation exposure but not just the the high level stuff you can go in there with the low level stuff changed up highlights and shadows all that goodness it's no longer just for photos you can do all this with videos as well non destructively so while apps like Final Cut Pro 10 are obviously gonna be what you want to use for more advanced stuff if you just need to quickly fix something Photos app is where it's at now let's talk about some of the differences in system preferences so let's go ahead and start with general now first of all you're gonna notice a lot of the icons are different and in general you're going to see accent color now has a new option or a new radio button that very first radio button almost makes it appear as if you can select or customize your own color however it doesn't really appear to do anything right at this second that very first selection that will be cool because you don't really have too many accent colors in highlight colors to choose from but being able to customize or using like a color wheel to select your own accent color would be awesome but right now you can see the accent versus the highlight color when you change accident it automatically changes the highlight color to that color but you can also go in and change the highlight color independently and the highlight color is where you highlight the text and that's what you see in that tax document it'll be interesting to see how beta-2 works with regard to that first radio button for accent color under general another change you'll find is that preferred tabs is now under the general section instead of the docs section and what this basically does is allow you to force a new document window to open up in a tab instead of a new window if you set it to always or when in full screen so I set it to always so even when I'm not in full screen when I open up a new window in this document for numbers it automatically opens up a new tab now let's talk about desktop & screen saver settings not a lot change here but you do have two new beautiful wallpapers one dark one light and you can configure it to automatically switch between light and dark mode and vice versa based on time of day or you can just choose the static light mode or the static dark mode wallpaper either one looks pretty good to me what do you guys think about the new big serve wallpaper let me know down below now you'll find several new accessibility changes in features here in Bexar so we're gonna open up accessibility and system preferences you get that nice overview and then if you go to where it says spoken content now these speak typing feedback is now under a spoken content section the same option used to be under a section called speech now what this does is it we'll speak what you type with your keyboard so it'll speak individual letters and words like this HIO half Jeff space-age that can definitely be helpful for those visually impaired for sure an accessibility in general is just one of the hallmarks of Apple devices whether it be iOS or Mac it's just amazing that the amount of attention and amount of tension to detail Apple pays to this sort of thing and it's wonderful under voice control you'll now find the numbered grid this is a feature already available in iOS 13 but when you enable this it creates a grid on the screen and you can speak each number to zoom in to those specific parts and navigate around Mac OS using only your voice which is super cool and like I said just another example of the attention to detail and just caring about making mac OS accessible to everyone or as many people as possible at least now you also have shortcuts and there's a couple of new shortcuts increased contrast and reduce transparency now under security and privacy preferences you're gonna find several new panels here under the privacy tab so let's scroll down here you'll find the Apple advertising has replaced the standard advertising section regarding personalized ads there's also a new Bluetooth section to manage app access to Bluetooth devices there's also a home kit section so apps they request home kit data get that here and there's media and Apple music and if you go to sound preferences now you already heard it at the very beginning but there's the start up sound you can enable or disable that right here from sound effects under sound preferences and you get all new yes indeed all new alert sounds let's listen in Oh Oh what's your favorite new sale let me know down below in the comment section and there's new battery preferences so this replaces the energy saver preference in older versions of Mac OS so you have your usage history shows you your last 24 hours or last 10 days similar to what you'll find on iOS now obviously this will only be for Apple laptops since those are the only Mac computers that have batteries then you also have battery and you'll find some cool options here to optimize video streaming while on battery and optimized battery charging similar to what you find on an iPhone for instance and then you can go into battery health and get details on battery health just like you can on iOS so when you click battery healthy you'll see the maximum capacity you also see the ability to view your battery condition mine is normal and manage battery longevity okay to schedule various events like to start up your computer or shut it down or put it in sleep mode you'll find in use dedicated schedule tab and in date and time preferences the clock now says menu bar clock just a small little detail there that I thought was interesting now there's also start up this Preferences nothing's really changed here but you see the the UI the icons in particular are much larger for the disc alright so let's talk about the dock and menu bar because this has really changed a lot so previously you had just dock now it's combined with dock and minibar so you have all your regular dock settings nothing really has changed in there too much although the automatically hide and show minibar option is now out of general and now it's in here which makes sense given the fact that it's called documen you bar and the menu bar is now updated as well as taller much more translucent allowing your desktop picture to extend edge to edge it just looks so much better it doesn't look like this tacked own like afterthought as much now it feels like it's a part of your desktop altogether I'd be much less tempted to hide them noubar here in Big Sur when compared to Catalina and before but what's interesting about the dock in minibar preferences is that you also have control center in there as well so control center isn't its own dedicated thing its lives inside documen you bar for whatever reason that's how apple's set it up so control center is just like you find on iOS well relatively similar this allows you to go in and control various aspects of your computer so you can change the brightness you can change the display brightness the volume you can toggle Wi-Fi bluetooth airdrop so you can go in there choose how you want to configure airdrop you can set it to everyone you can toggle airdrop off completely and then just click and that takes you back to the main control center center panel and that's how the whole thing works in general you just simply click to get back to the previous level it's very iOS like in some regards so you can see all the various options here and what you'll notice is that is that you can show these items in the menu bar as well so you can turn that on or off and basically it breaks it out of control Center it also still keeps it in control center but it allows you to quickly access directly those specific items from the menu bar without having to go any levels into control center so that's kind of a nice feature and of course you can drag items from control center to the menu bar if you wish to do so as well but what's kind of interesting is that you get options in the minibar that you normally wouldn't get in previous versions of Mac OS like keyboard brightness things like that so that's kind of cool there's also some other features like accessibility shortcuts you can customize the battery to show a minibar show in control center or disable both or enable both or enable show percentage or disable show percentage however you want to do it there's also fast user switching which allows you to quickly switch between multiple users if you have more than one configured and there's of course spotlight and Siri neither of which are found in control center their menu bar items only so here is the nail plane item you click that to view it and you can fast forward pause play click the album artwork to load the app unfortunately it doesn't appear that there's any sort of airplay to controls built in here like you will find on iOS and like I said you can actually drag items from the control center up to the menu bar like I just did with the nail plane interface and of course Notification Center is here in Mac OS Big Sur so you go into the notification preferences here and for the individual items in Notification Center you'll find the ability to show previews always when unlocked or never and then also there is notification grouping as well which is super cool right something I definitely desired for a long time so there you go you have quite a few homekit notifications but they're grouped like notifications are grouped together so you're not inundated with just this long list of notifications so you can expand and collapse if you want to and then all your widgets are below you can easily drag those around to customize your widgets and these widgets are similar to what you'll find on the new iOS 14 you can right-click and select different sizes so small medium large you can go in and edit the widget that way you can change the location for instance here on the weather app or the weather widget I should say so I'm gonna put in a location where I know it's raining right now because I want to show you the next hour precipitation so this gives you a minute-by-minute chart that shows the intensity of the rain or snow over the coming hour that has really cool something that Apple took from dark sky of course the acquired dark sky not too long ago and we can expect probably more features to be integrated over time now you also have the widget browser this is where you can go to view all your widgets here not as many as you'll get on iOS conspicuously missing is news also serious suggestions and things of that nature but you can select a widget category or just directly search if you want to do that all right so here's watch list you can just drag and release hit the minus sign to delete change the size either after the factor before the fact pretty cool so you just click the time that reveals your Notification Center the combined Notification Center with your notifications and your widgets now talking about some of the aesthetics of Mac OS Big Sur you get more of spacing between different elements or different items in menus which is interesting makes you wonder will we ever get a touchscreen Mac because that's obviously gonna be more ideal for a touchscreen interface to have more space for your fingers so these little menus are a little bit larger than what we find on previous versions of Mac OS not to say that that's actually going to happen but just interesting there's also redesigned sheets like this one right here that have been completely updated to remove borders bezels to put the focus directly on the content and there's a redesign floating dock that is more translucent that allows your wallpaper shine through similar to how the menu bars translucent allows the wallpaper to shine through as well and the icons as you can see are very much iOS like in appearance I mean very much iOS like and let's talk about that right now many of the icons are basically direct interpretations of the icons you find on iOS and iPad OS so in some cases they're exactly the same but in a lot of cases they have their own Mac OS aesthetic keeping those stylistic touches and the details that give the Mac its character for example look at the mail app icon looks very similar to the middle app icon on iOS but notice get the park address there the icons have more texture they're less flat but some of those icons like keychain access are just terrible in my opinion I don't know what you guys think about that let me know down below in the comments and just overall there are lighter windows here on Mac OS sorry planes in the background but here on Mac OS Big Sur lighter windows you have more rounded windows and makes me think hey are we gonna see an updated iMac or an updated MacBook Pro with rounded bezels sort of like the iPad pro I don't know I mean just interesting to think about considering this new design and you also get more uniform full-height sidebars which give you a nice updated look you get more space on the sidebar because it goes from top to bottom and to go along with that to get unified symbols that bring clarity and consistency across applications so these symbols just look much better than the symbols in previous versions of Mac OS where they were just kind of all over the place now you get some much-needed consistency for instance the compose button which you'll find in apps like notes you'll find in apps like mail as well and other applications well that compose button is going to be the same across all those apps and the same thing goes for all the little icons that are shared across multiple applications bringing that much needed consistency to Mac OS and then there are going to be faster software updates software updates will begin in the background and complete faster than before to keep your Mac secure and it just won't take us long to update Mac OS which is notorious for how long it takes in the system volume and Victor is signed to protect against malicious tampering so it seems like each year Apple adds yet another layer to its security first they had sip then they had having the data volume separate from the system volume and now we have cryptographically signed system volumes indeed Mac OS becoming more secure with each new release and a few other new features you get faster more responsive spotlight search so you'll get your results faster than ever before as soon as you start typing and spotlight will present all the results in a streamline list to make it easier to find the exact search result that you're looking for so that can be an app a document a website etc and then finally spotlight is also integrated into the find menus for apps like Safari or pages or a keynote so here with Safari I can change the search parameters from begins with which is going to be more specific to contains which is much more broad so ladies and gentlemen that has been a look at over 85 different changes and features in Mac OS pick sir if you found this video helpful let other people know by leaving a thumbs up and also click that subscribe button for more videos like this this is Jeff with a 9 to 5 Mac special thanks to Mac Paul creator of CleanMyMac X for sponsoring 905 Mac CleanMyMac x is the perfect tool to keep your Mac running in tip-top shape and to prepare it for the newest version of Mac OS along with the real-time malware monitoring you can use the handy space lens tool to instantly visualize and clean up your storage CleanMyMac X is available on the Mac App Store and on Mac paws website for a limited time go to Mac Paul calm slash 9 to 5 to get clean my Mac X with a 30% discount\n"