Apple Introduces MacOS Monterey with Universal Control and More

During the WWDC 2021, Apple unveiled an update to the macOS and calls it macOS Monterey. As the WWDC event was aimed at Apple developers we got to see all the OS updates that the company will be rolling out this year. It comes with new features such as universal control, airplay and so on. The new macOS combines features from the new iOS and iPadOS 15.

This time the company has focused on streamlining the experience and ensuring seamless connectivity across the Apple devices. Without wasting more time, let us explore the new features that macOS Monterey packs.

Universal Control

The universal control will let you control the iPad directly using the mouse of the Mac. All you need to do is to keep the iPad and Mac next to each other as it does not require any additional setup. This feature will let users dragon and drop pictures or documents across the devices with ease.

 AirPlay to Mac

The AirPlay to Max feature allows users to play audio and video with iPhone or iPad on the Mac as you would on the Apple TV. One use case of this feature is the ability to share videos or presentations from iPhone directly onto the Mac.

Shortcuts

This feature finds its way to Mac from iPhone and lets a user automate tasks and trigger these actions with a single click. In addition to pre-existing actions, the users can create custom ones to suit their tasks or import existing workflows from Automator to Shortcuts. As the Shortcuts feature is integrated throughout the MacOS Monterey it can be triggered from anywhere and even invoke Siri.

Shareplay and Shared with You

Shareplay allows you to share music, movies, TV shows via FaceTime. It will also let you share your entire screen to help with productivity or troubleshooting. Apple will also let other apps integrate this feature by releasing the API.

This feature lets you gather content shared with you via Message and place it in a Shared with You tab. The content shared can vary from photos, videos, articles and so on. It will be available across Photos, Safari, Apple Podcasts, Apple News, and the Apple TV app.

Focus

It will help users concentrate on the current task by filtering out unwanted notifications. The Focus feature will let you set the status as unavailable so that the people who are pinging you know you are busy at the moment. If you change the Focus setting on one Apple device, it will be synced across all Apple devices.

Live Text

The new macOS Monterey gets an updated Maps with interactive elements and a detailed city experience. Live Text, similar to Google Lens will detect texts and lets users copy and paste directly from the camera into other applications.

Other Features

FaceTime also gets an uplift as it now supports spatial audio, voice isolation and wide spectrum and portrait mode which will let the user enjoy sound in 3D, eliminate background noise, pass ambient noise if required and blur background at will respectively. These features are carried over from iOS and iPadOS 15 in case you did not know.

Finally, the macOS Monterey brings a fully-redesigned Safari on board with a new tab bar layout that places address and search box within the active tab, group frequently opened tabs and let users arrange tabs in custom groups. The Apple web browser gained the ability to adjust the UI colour scheme to match the active webpage.

Update Schedule

The new macOS update will be rolled out to both Intel machines and the ones powered by the Apple M1 chipset. The company is also dropping support for some older iMac and MacBook models. The macOS Monterey is already available for developers with public beta rolling out sometime next month followed by a stable release in the Fall.