Instead, you can keep tab sets for various tasks in their own groups and toggle between them.Įven better: Tab Groups sync via iCloud, so any of your Apple devices running iOS 15, iPadOS 15, or macOS Monterey will show the very same pages in the same groups. Tab Groups lets you create multiple sets of open tabs that you can switch between, meaning you don’t need to have dozens of tabs open in a single window or scattered across multiple windows. While Apple was tinkering with the legibility of tabs, it also created a pretty cool feature for those of us who use a lot of tabs every day. Tab Groups let you section off sets of tabs and sync them with all your other devices. But I think Apple made the right call in reverting to the previous Safari design. If you feel like you desperately need a few more pixels of vertical space in Safari, go ahead and give it a try. Now it’s just an option you can turn on-but I don’t think I can recommend it. What’s worse, until the outcry this summer, this compact view was the default Safari appearance. (You can turn it off via an option in the Advanced subsection of Safari’s Preferences window.) It’s a cute trick, but in general it hinders the legibility of the Safari interface in general and tabs in particular. When in Compact mode, the background color of the entire top of the Safari window is matched to the color of the website you’re viewing. In this mode, the active tab is merged with the Smart Bar. The Tabs become floating lozenges that are indeed compact-it doesn’t take more than a few of them being open at once to make their text impossible to decipher. (You’ll find the setting in the Tabs subsection of Safari’s Preferences window.) When this feature is turned on, the traditional two rows at the top of the Safari window-one with toolbar items and the Smart Bar, another with tabs-are collapsed into one. In the end, what we’re left with is an option that’s off by default to present Safari windows in a Compact tab layout. The revamp was met with a lot of criticism, and Apple spent the first months of the summer simplifying, revamping, and making aspects of the change optional. Keeping tabs on Safari 15 Safari’s look hasn’t changed much by default (top), but the new Compact tab view (bottom) combines tabs and the toolbar in a single row, and (optionally) color matches the webpage in the active tab.īack in June, Apple made a bold announcement: It was going to revamp the interface of its Safari web browser across Mac, iPad, and iPhone. While Apple wants its platforms to share features, it also recognizes that each serves a different (albeit overlapping) audience. And one of the biggest features being imported to the Mac from iOS, Shortcuts, is in a half-finished state.īut here’s the good news: Despite all the worry among Mac users the past few years that Apple might be attempting to collapse Mac, iPhone, and iPad into a single amorphous product, macOS Monterey still feels unreservedly like a Mac. The most important new feature in Photos is missing from the Mac, though Apple says it will arrive soon. Unfortunately, some of the biggest features are still missing. And with macOS Monterey, you can see the fruits of all that labor: The big new features of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 are also the big new features of macOS Monterey. This development is most significant for macOS, which tended to lag behind iOS in the 2010s, missing out on some or all of the year’s exciting innovations.Īpple has spent the last few years getting the base technology of iOS and macOS back in sync, removing 32-bit software, adding Mac Catalyst and support for iOS apps on Apple silicon, and introducing new cross-platform development technology via Swift UI. If there’s a theme of Apple’s operating-system releases in 2021, it’s platform unification. MacOS Monterey Review: Seeking harmony, but a work in progress
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