iOS 15 features come to your Mac

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Photo: Caitlin McGarry/Gizmodo

Of all Apple’s operating systems, macOS is the one that most people delay in updating. How many of you, when you turn on your Mac, ignore update reminders for days – sometimes weeks or even months – with a “remind me later” click instead of waiting to finish the task you’ve sat down to get done? I think a large number. In the days before I blogged regularly about Macs, I admit I did the same thing.

But macOS 12 is so in sync with iOS 15 that if you update your iPhone — and you will — updating your Mac makes perfect sense. So many features move from one device to another that they now feel like extensions of each other.

If macOS Big Sur is the iOS embodiment of the Mac aesthetic, then the main macOS Monterey software features are all lifted right from the iPhone and work across all of your Apple devices. Shortcuts, Apple’s best-known automation app for enabling users to customize Home screen icons in iOS 14, just landed on the Mac after debuting on the iPhone in 2018. FaceTime gets a huge upgrade, with SharePlay for watching videos, sharing screen, and listening to music with contacts. You can set up focus profiles to manage the notifications that sync across all your devices. Safari has a new look, which isn’t as gruesome on a Mac as it is on an iPhone but has the same overall look. And I’ve long been able to AirPlay content from an iPhone to an Apple TV, for example, but never to a Mac—until now. Everything just works.

If I’ve had any disappointments with macOS Monterey so far, it’s that Universal Control, one of the few Mac-specific features in Apple’s extensive suite of upgrades this year, has not yet been included in beta. I’m rarely too excited about new Mac features, but I’m curious to try this one, which allows you to use a single mouse/trackpad and keyboard to control multiple Macs and iPads arranged next to each other. I was imagining how I could pair my iPad Pro with my Mac to set up the dual display of my dreams – should I go horizontal or vertical? Even going so far as to set up an iPad stand set up next to my iMac. He sits empty, waiting.

While I won’t describe the Universal Control experience here, I can tell you what it’s like to live with macOS Monterey in general. If you have updated your iPhone to iOS 15 and like what you see, Monterey is so far a solid and complete upgrade.

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How to install macOS Monterey

macOS Monterey is now available as a public beta that anyone can try. I’ve been using it on an M1 iMac for a while now, and haven’t had any stability issues. As always, back up your files and prepare for errors before installing the beta software, and I recommend using it on a machine you don’t rely on every day, just to be safe.

You also need a Mac compatible with Monterey. For reference, these are: MacBook Air or MacBook Pro from early 2015 or later; MacBook (early 2016 or later); iMac (late 2015 onwards); iMac Pro (2017 and later); Mac Pro (late 2013 onwards); and Mac Mini (late 2014 onwards).

If you’re still feeling brave and have a compatible Mac, go ahead to enroll in the Apple Beta Software Program with your Apple ID and follow the instructions for installing Monterey.

Now let’s get into it.

The main features of iOS 15 on MacShortcuts, a redesign of Safari, and AirPlay on the Mac, just like on the iPhone. Photo: Caitlin McGarry/Gizmodo

I’ve described in detail what it’s like to use iOS 15 features like FaceTime’s SharePlay and Focus in my iOS 15 preview here. And while it has equal capabilities on Monterey Macs, you may find that you use it differently. I don’t find Focus, Apple’s contested approach to notifications, to be as useful on a Mac as it is on an iPhone because my interaction with notifications on my Mac is very different than it is with my iPhone. I don’t really need to use the Work Focus profile on my Mac because basically everything I use it for is working. I don’t get a lot of hits from messaging apps besides Slack (consistently, forever), and the only notifications I allow are from Messages and Calendar. All this means is that my Mac isn’t a monitor I’m addicted to, so focus isn’t necessary here.

The new FaceTime features are also fun on a Mac, although screen sharing was a little tricky. I didn’t see controls for screen sharing or my window, nor was I able to turn off screen sharing when I wanted – instead, I had to hang up. I expect these are small bugs that will be ironed out before the official release.

FaceTime Portrait Mode is a little aggressive about frizz, but I don’t hate it.

And while I usually use FaceTime on my iPhone or iPad, using Portrait Mode with the iMac’s 1080p front lens is really next level, and I plan to use this on all future video calls. Fortunately, Portrait Mode will be available in third-party video conferencing apps as well, not just FaceTime (although it is only supported on M1 Macs). I apologize to all my friends and colleagues in advance for being over hell.

Cool new maps, a Shared With You feature from Messages that lets you see content your friends have sent you in related apps (for example, a web link in Safari or a song link in Apple Music), and more iOS Mac features have been accessed, This makes the two devices seem more intertwined than ever. They’re not a game changer for the Mac, but they make it easy to pick up where you left off on another screen, and that’s exactly the point of Monterey.

The new Safari is a little less annoying on your Mac

Awesome as I found the Safari redesign in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, somehow less so on my Mac. Unlike the iPhone, the address bar doesn’t jump up and down depending on whether you’re typing in it or not, so we’re immediately off to a better start. And while I absolutely hated color-matched tabs when I started using the redesigned Safari—confusingly, they made it appear as if my browser was jumping between Light Mode and Dark Mode by page—you can turn this feature off.

The redesigned Safari isn’t too bad on a Mac, but the disappearance of the reload button isn’t for me.

I find it odd that the tabs and the address bar are center aligned in the same place, which means things can get very cluttered (although there are tab groups, which let you organize tabs into categories and switch between them, a bit less). This feature can now be accessed from a new safari sidebar, which makes things very streamlined.

And while the page reload button seems to be gone, if you hover your cursor over the More menu (behind the ellipses to the right of the search bar), you’ll see it reappear. It’s a neat trick, but it’s also infuriating, why? What problem does this solve? I expect Safari will make a lot of people angry. Fortunately, I mainly use Chrome on a Mac because Kinja doesn’t work in Safari, so at least Safari problems will be limited to iPhone and iPad.

AirPlay is fine, but I want global control

AirPlay 2 from Apple is a convenient way to send content from one Apple device to another, usually a device with a larger screen. I generally use it to send videos to my Apple TV or music to my AirPlay compatible speakers. Because of other continuity features like Handoff, I always forget that you can’t AirPlay from iPhone to Mac – or at least you can’t yet.

At first, I wondered why this feature is useful. I never need to AirPlay a song on my Mac, for example, because I’ll open Apple Music or Spotify. And AirPlaying a YouTube video on a Mac is silly because I can go to YouTube in a browser. But there are some cases where you might want to use AirPlay with your Mac. Apple has highlighted the use of iPad drawing apps, which allow you to broadcast your drawings to your Mac in real time. I drew a little on the iPad Pro while mirroring my screen on an iMac, and while I’ll give you the result (I’m not an artist), it worked just fine and there was no lag.

There is no Fitness + Mac app, but you can now AirPlay workouts from your iPhone. Photo: Caitlin McGarry/Gizmodo

Perhaps the most popular use case for AirPlay on a Mac is Fitness+, Apple’s on-demand workout service. You can now cast these videos from your iPhone to your Mac, if you want to take lessons on a bigger screen (and you do; they’re awful on the iPhone). I tested it, and while the AirPlay settings were a bit wonky – the chapter I chose for me offered the option to AirPlay audio but not video – the video came out smooth anyway.

You can also use AirPlay to transfer content from one Mac to another, which I haven’t tested yet. I tend to play quickly with betas, but putting an upgraded beta on both my work Mac and my personal Mac seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. I’ll be testing this along with Universal Control in the future, so stay tuned. If you’re hoping to use an old Mac as a second display for a newer monitor, AirPlay probably isn’t the answer — your device must be from 2018 or later to take advantage of AirPlay from Mac to Mac functionality.

In general, AirPlay works well and can be useful in some circumstances. I’m glad it’s on my Mac. This is!

all the little things

More than any other version of macOS in recent memory, Monterey seems to be filled with little things that will make a big difference in the way you use your Mac. For some people, adding Shortcuts from the iPhone will make automation on your Mac easier (although if you’re already using Automator on a Mac, you’ll have to start making your way easier by importing scripts into Shortcuts).

There’s Quick Note, which lets you move the cursor in a hot corner (lower right for me) to bring up a quick note, you might have guessed. This is very useful for jotting down the little things, rather than adding random notes and to-do items to one note that gets constantly updated (just me?).

And one little thing that might just interest me, the one who has had to erase so many Macs: With the M1 Macs in Monterey, Apple is finally making it as easy to erase a Mac and factory reset as it is on an iPhone or iPad. Instead of going through the complicated process of starting up in recovery mode and then using Disk Utility to erase your hard drive before reinstalling macOS, there will be a new option to Erase User Content from Mac under System Preferences without erasing the entire operating system.

There are other M1-specific features as well, like Live Text, a system-wide feature that lets you search for or translate text in any image. A new visual search tool will appear in an image when the on-device Mac intelligence recognizes something prominent, such as an animal or a landmark. I took a picture of a houseplant, the species I can’t quite detect, but unfortunately, Visual Lookup didn’t have a diagnosis.

So far, macOS Monterey has been mostly good, if not a little boring. But once Universal Control arrives – oh my gosh, I can’t wait.

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