Five cool features and one weird thing you’ll find in macOS 14 Sonoma

Apple released its first public beta for macOS Sonoma (among other operating systems) this month, and per usual, headlining features like desktop widgets have gotten a lot of coverage. We'll take a more comprehensive look at the big-ticket items in our review later this fall, but there are always some features and changes worth discussing that get buried or lost in the shuffle. Here are a few deeper cuts we've played with so far.

Better screen sharing

Apple first added basic screen sharing support to macOS back in 2007, with version 10.5 (Leopard). Screen sharing did use a dedicated app, but it was hidden in macOS' system folders rather than in the Applications or Utilities folders—it was really only intended to be launched indirectly, either using the Finder or the Connect to Server menu. If you did launch it directly, its interface was a simple "connect to" dialog where you could enter your desired hostname or IP address. Functional, but minimalist.

Screen Sharing in Sonoma revamps the app itself, as well as how the underlying technology works. You'll now find a Screen Sharing app in the Utilities folder (the same place as Terminal, Disk Utility, and others), signaling that Apple has made it a full-fledged app. The new Screen Sharing app looks a bit like a (very) light, feature-limited version of the Remote Desktop management software, with a list of all computers you've connected to in the past, the ability to see all computers on your local network with screen sharing enabled, and the option to create groups of computers so you can easily sort systems based on how you use them.

In the Settings of this new app, you're able to block specific users you don't want sharing your screen. By default, anyone can request control of your screen if they're on the same network as you and know your hostname or IP address—you can allow or refuse access or allow them to connect in a view-only mode—but you can limit those requests to only people in your contacts list if you want to.

Screen Sharing remains compatible with the VNC protocol, so it will still provide basic functionality when connected to Windows or Linux PCs with VNC servers installed and enabled. But the app remains at its most capable when connecting to other Macs, and it has gotten several upgrades (a few of which only work with two Sonoma Macs connected to each other).

Sonoma-to-Sonoma connections get a new High Performance connection mode—note that High Performance mode and all related features only work on Apple Silicon Macs, not Intel machines. High Performance mode mainly reduces latency and improves image quality when the connection between the two Macs is fast enough. But it also enables a couple of different display-related modes.

The first is Dynamic Resolution, which allows you to use the native resolution of the host computer's display with the remotely connected Mac. Say you connected to an iMac or Mac mini with a 4K or 5K screen from a MacBook Air. Normally, you'd see that 4K or 5K image resized to whatever resolution your MacBook was using, resulting in a loss of detail and quality. With Dynamic Resolution on, you could use that Mac at your MacBook Air's native resolution instead, more like the way it works in Microsoft's Remote Desktop app for Windows PCs. That said, this feature seems super flaky in the Sonoma public beta and consistently either didn't resize properly or totally crashed on my test Macs.

The other is High Dynamic Range over screen sharing, which will render a host Mac's content using HDR if your remotely connected Mac has an HDR screen. If you don't, this button will be grayed out.

The other buttons across the top of the Screen Sharing window work when you're connected to older versions of macOS, too. Three of them offer shortcuts to the Launchpad, Mission Control, and Show Desktop functions, since pressing any of those keys or using the trackpad gestures will activate those features on your host Mac, not the one you're connecting to. There's also a toggle for switching between remote-control and view-only modes.

Finally, there are a bunch of multi-monitor improvements. Connecting to a remote Mac with multiple monitors using Screen Sharing has always been a bit of a pain, since you're locked into whatever monitor configuration the remote Mac is using. This could mean trying to juggle the contents of two 4K or 5K displays on a single MacBook display; the app gives you the option of viewing one screen at a time, but both screens would still be there.

For starters, the Sonoma version of Screen Sharing will let you split all of those remote displays out into separate windows; now, swapping between displays is as quick and easy as switching between app windows. For Sonoma-to-Sonoma Macs in High Performance mode, you also get up to two "virtual displays," no matter how many physical screens are connected to the host or guest Mac. If you're connected to a host Mac that has one screen (or no screens!) and you want to use it with a Mac that has multiple monitors connected, you can do that.

On a local Wi-Fi network, a High Performance connection between two Macs did look visibly better than a standard connection, and the remote Mac tracked my cursor well and responded to clicks and other inputs promptly. But animations were still choppy enough that you can tell it's a remote connection, and work remains to be done on the stability of the Dynamic Resolution feature. Still, assuming Apple can get everything working as intended, it's a nice batch of upgrades for people who regularly work with remote Macs.

There are other under-the-hood changes to the way that screen and window sharing works in Sonoma that we'll cover in our full review, but one to be aware of is a new menu bar icon that pops up to tell you when third-party apps are sharing or recording your screen.

New Apple TV-style wallpapers and screensavers

The coolest-looking thing in Sonoma is probably its collection of wallpaper-turned-screensavers, mostly a collection of high-definition videos of cities or nature that smoothly and continuously zoom around their subjects.

These videos aren't new—they're the same videos that Apple TV boxes use as screensavers—but the way Apple is using them in Sonoma looks undeniably cool. You get the best effect when you use the same video as your wallpaper and screensaver, which you can do with an easy toggle in the Settings app.

With this toggle turned on, your desktop wallpaper looks like a still image. But when the screensaver turns on, your icons and app windows fade away, and your wallpaper starts to move. Nudge the keyboard or trackpad to exit the screensaver, and your icons and app windows come back, but your wallpaper continues to move for a bit before slowing down and becoming a static image again. Same deal when you wake the computer up—you'll see the video version on the login screen, and once you log in, your icons and apps fade in, and the video slowly comes to a stop.

Like some of Ventura's wallpapers, these new screensaver/wallpaper videos are downloaded on first use to save disk space. If you don't want to use them, regular wallpapers and screensavers in Sonoma work like they used to but with a more graceful transition to and from screensavers—a gentle fade instead of a cut to black.

More built-in password-manager features

Over the last few releases, Apple has slowly built many of the most useful password manager features into iOS and macOS, including sync between devices, automatic password generation, warnings about reused and potentially breached passwords, and more. It doesn't fully replace a dedicated password manager for advanced users who make extensive use of multiple password vaults, for people who want a password manager with a 2FA code generator included, for Android users, or for IT people who need to be able to centrally manage passwords for a large group of users, but for people at home it's considerably better than "using the same six passwords for every single site you visit."

Sonoma (and iOS 17) expands Apple's password-manager capabilities by adding password sharing—essentially separate password vaults that can be shared with other people who have a compatible device tied to their iCloud account. The area where you get this up in Settings is a bit misleading, implying that people need to be in your iCloud Family Sharing group to have access to passwords, but once you set it up, the only limitation is that people you share passwords with must be in your Contacts somewhere.

Upon setup, each group member can decide which of their passwords to share with everyone else in the group, ideal for sites or apps (daycare/school, banking, utilities, health care, and so on) where you share access with one or more people. It clears that same "good enough for lots of people, considerably better than nothing" bar that the other password management features have cleared, and the addition of shared password groups might even help it replace a paid password manager for people whose families and friends mostly live within Apple's ecosystem.

Safari web apps

It's not as though you've never been able to create web apps like this on the Mac before; Chromium-based browsers can very easily create new web apps that are installed in the dock and run as their own separate windows, where they can be accessed separately by Command-tabbing or however you choose to manage your windows normally. This was a solved problem.

But the feature could still be worth a look specifically because it's part of Safari 17, which has generally, historically been a bit easier on MacBook batteries than Chrome has been (though Google claims it has made significant improvements this year). One could choose to replace Chrome and an entire universe of Chromium-based Electron apps with Safari web apps instead, theoretically netting some small power-efficiency gains.

It's also the first time dedicated Safari users will be able to use this feature, which is notable (the same goes for user profiles, also new to Safari). It doesn't matter if Chrome and Edge already have a feature if you don't use Chrome or Edge and have no desire to.

Apple does release versions of Safari for three versions of macOS at once—Safari 17 will cover Ventura and Monterey as well as Sonoma. On older macOS versions, you don't get access to Safari web apps, though according to Apple's release notes (PDF) it seems like most of the other features will work on all supported macOS versions. This is frequently the case with new Safari updates; only the newest macOS gets all the features, though older OSes benefit from many feature additions and all the rendering engine and security patches.

Caps lock indicator

When you push the Caps Lock button on any Sonoma Mac, in any text field, a new blue icon shows up next to your cursor to tell you that your caps lock is on. Arguably redundant with the Caps Lock light that's built into most keyboards, it's also useful for the times when you hit the Caps Lock key by acciDENT WHEN YOU ARE TYPING SOMETHING.

The indicator goes away once you actually start typing, at which point the text you're suddenly yelling will clue you into the fact that Caps Lock is engaged; pause your typing for a second and it will pop back up. The indicator can show up in any text field in any app—you won't need an app to be targeted to Sonoma to benefit.

The weird thing: New desktop behaviors to get used to

Coming from Ventura, very little about Sonoma has been different or disruptive. But I was puzzled by one big change about how the desktop works.

Click an empty spot on the desktop in Sonoma, and suddenly all of your windows will fly away, exposing the desktop (and, more relevantly, any desktop widgets you've enabled). This is the same behavior you get when pressing Command+F3 on your keyboard or swiping outward with a thumb and three fingers on your trackpad.

Initially, I found this behavior disorienting, mostly because I wasn't expecting it. If you truly don't like it, you can revert to the old behavior in the Desktop & Dock settings. But I ended up leaving it enabled, even though I still normally expose my desktop and widgets with a trackpad gesture rather than clicking the desktop. The only reason I would click the desktop under normal circumstances is if I wanted to bring up the Finder menu in the menu bar without opening a new window or selecting a specific file, and that still works whether my windows go flying everywhere or not.

In keeping with the more iPadOS-y flavor you can give a Mac with lots of desktop widgets, the new Desktop & Dock settings can hide all files, folders, and other icons entirely. They'll reappear whenever you show your desktop, whether by clicking on it or using a trackpad gesture. This is how desktop icons behave when using Stage Manager in Ventura; they're still there, and the Desktop folder still exists as a place where files can go, but the visual clutter goes away unless you're specifically interacting with your desktop.