At WWDC 2022, Apple announced macOS 13 Ventura, its newest update to the Mac, and the successor to macOS 12 Monterey
Alongside the M2 chip becoming official, Apple confirmed that macOS 13 Ventura is coming in late 2022, with a developer beta available to download from June 6, alongside a public beta arriving in July
Ventura will offer new features in addition to upgrading Mac staples like Spotlight and Safari. Apple also announced a 2022 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, both with a new M2 chip.
The new Continuity Camera feature does away with the need for a poor-quality built-in Mac camera because it allows you to use your iPhone as a webcam for your Mac.
The weather app moves over to macOS alongside iPadOS 16, with a redesigned System Preferences, a new way of multitasking thanks to Stage Manager, and more.
macOS 13 Ventura
Now, let’s look more into macOS 13 and its details that were discussed in WWDC 2022
What is macOS 13 Ventura?
macOS Ventura (version 13) is the nineteenth major release of macOS, Apple’s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. As the successor to macOS Monterey, it was announced at WWDC 2022 on June 6, 2022. In other words, it is the latest big update for macOS
What is WWDC 2022?
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in the macOS, iOS, iPad, watchOS, and tvOS families as well as other Apple software.
macOS 13 Ventura Release Date
The first developer version was released on June 6, 2022, while the public beta is expected to become available in July. The full and final release will be launched this fall, 2022
Supported Macs
If you’re not sure whether your Mac supports this big update or not. Below is a list of all the Macs that support macOS 13 Ventura
- iMac (2017 and later)
- iMac Pro MacBook Air (2018 and later)
- MacBook Pro (2017 and later)
- Mac Pro (2019 and later)
- Mac mini (2018 and later)
- MacBook (2017 and later)
This new update restricts more Macs to older versions of macOS. Ventura is available only for Macs that were released from 2017 onwards
macOS 13 Ventura Features
Ventura also brings updates to other apps and features. Upgrades to Spotlight will let you search the internet for images and also search within images.
You can drag and drop files in a much easier way here too, by going to this sidebar and the app will appear in the center, making it easier for you to drag it into a specific place in the app. There are a lot more features waiting for us, and let’s look at them, one by one
- Stage Manager
- Shared Tab Groups
- Continuity Camera
- iMessage Features
- Spotlight Updates
- Passkeys
- Visual Look-Ups
- Game Controller Menu
1. Stage Manager
One of the hottest new features on macOS 13 Ventura is Stage Manager. The multitasking feature, which will also be available on iPadOS 16, has been designed to organize the windows on your desktop better. The feature launches later this year with the rest of the macOS 13 Ventura update.
With Stage Manager on macOS 13 Ventura, open windows are now shown on the left side of the screen as tiny screenshots, while the current window is prominently displayed in the center.
Even if an app has multiple windows open, you can still cycle through them via thumbnails.
Stage Manager also has a “Hide Recent Apps” option that you can set in the Stage Manager Control Center module. This option hides the Stage Manager icons, like how the Dock can be set to hide. To make Stage Manager appear, move the pointer to the left edge of the screen. If you’ve set the Dock to appear on the left side, Stage Manager appears underneath the Dock, with thumbnails that are larger enough to access.
2. Shared Tab Group
macOS Ventura brings a new productivity feature to the Safari web browser: Shared Tab Groups. It lets you and your family members (or your workmates or friends) plan things out together. Using the feature, you will be able to build a collective list of bookmarks and use it as a shared landing page
Once shared, recipients can add their own tabs and links to the Shared Tab Group, enhancing collaboration and teamwork even when working remotely or from multiple locations.
3. Continuity Camera
One of the more eye-catching new features Apple has announced for macOS Ventura this morning is Continuity Camera. The feature gives Mac customers the ability to use their iPhone as a webcam and unlocks new capabilities that were never possible before on a webcam.
While Apple only showed off FaceTime and mentioned Zoom, Teams, and Webex during the big WWDC 2022, keynote, developers shouldn’t need to do anything to their apps for them to work.
You get Portrait Mode, “Studio Light,” and Center Stage which beautifully illuminates the user’s face by dimming the background. They’re in a Control Center dropdown menu, alongside your iPhone’s battery.
Apple says the setup will be seamless and that as soon as a user brings their iPhone closer to the iMac or MacBook, it will connect. A dialogue box will appear which will ask if the user wants to use the iPhone as the web camera. Users will require a stand to make sure the iPhone stays in place.
Moreover, it’s not just wireless. You can always connect USB cables, in case you need your iPhone to remain charged
Apps can let your Mac capture photos and video from your iPhone, too. Plus, it can optionally pass along face detection and body detection “metadata,” which sounds a little intriguing and a little creepy at the same time. Captures max out at 1920 x 1440 and 60fps.
There’s an API for Apple’s nifty Desk View mode, too. Apple figured out a way to bend and crop images from the iPhone’s super-ultrawide lens to let you show off things on the surface of your desk without moving your phone. That’s available for app devs, too, and Xing showed it off as a way to present in Zoom:
4. iMessage Features
Messages are getting undo and edit buttons to fix errors in or recall a recently sent iMessage, and there is an option to mark messages as unread. Accidentally deleted messages can be recovered, and there are new collaboration features.
When sharing a file to Messages through the share sheet or drag and drop, you can choose to collaborate with the recipient, giving them access to the file or document. Edits to the shared document appear at the top of the Messages thread, making it easy to chat while working simultaneously with others.
SharePlay works in Messages in addition to FaceTime in macOS Ventura, so you can watch TV shows and use apps with others while chatting with them in the Messages app.
Users can also schedule emails and even cancel a delivery after hitting send, and Mail now intelligently detects if items such as an attachment or cc’d recipient are missing from their message. In Mail, users can set reminders to come back to a message at a particular date and time, and receive automatic suggestions to follow up on an email if there has been no response.
Mail users can set reminders to return to a message at a specific date and a time, and there’s an option to receive automatic suggestions to follow up on an email if there’s been no response. Mail is also now able to detect if items like an attachment or a cc’d recipient are missing from a message based on the context.
5. Spotlight Updates
In macOS 13, Apple has integrated Quick Look into Spotlight Search, allowing you to get a quick peek at a file that appears in your search results, without opening it wholesale in its associated app, allowing you to confirm you have indeed found what you were searching for.
Quick Look also continues to support text-based clipboard actions. So you can now copy and paste content from documents after searching for them using Spotlight.
In other improvements, Spotlight now leverages the full search window to display information-rich web results, and it can also retrieve results from your photo library, with full Live Text support meaning you can even Spotlight search for text that appears in your images.
6. Passkeys
One of the more intriguing ones is Passkeys, which look to replace passwords for any websites and apps requiring authentication.
Password managers are helpful for remembering and automatically entering credentials, but even still are not 100-percent foolproof. Even the most secure passwords are worthless if leaked in a data breach, especially if the password to your password manager leaks!
Apple thinks it has a way to authenticate users securely without the need to remember complicated passwords and worry about changing them frequently. Passkeys rely on biometrics to sign Safari users into websites without the possibility of having their credentials stolen.
By avoiding the use of passwords entirely, they should prevent users from falling victim to phishing attacks, social engineering, or bot attacks that plug in passwords snagged from databases of leaked passwords. Instead, you can use a device (like your phone or computer) as your primary authentication device. So using Face ID or Touch ID or entering the device PIN will be enough for you to log in to various services across the web.
7. Visual Look-Ups
Live Text, which uses on-device intelligence to recognize text in images, can now do the same with videos as well. The feature now has support for paused video frames. Furthermore, Visual Look Up is now expanded, and it can now recognize animals, birds, statues, landmarks, and even insects. Plus, users can now lift the subject away from an image and drop it into another app to use as stickers.
8. Game Controller Menu
Apple has introduced Game Center, where you can see your friends’ play activities and achievements. Along with this, we also get another feature – Shareplay, which lets you play with your friends while on facetime
In the system settings of macOS Ventura, you will find a new game controller menu for managing the game controllers that are connected to the Mac. The game controller menu allows the MacBook users to map the controller’s buttons and thumbsticks to Mac’s keyboard. Users can even adjust the haptic feedback levels and create multiple profiles using the new game controller menu.