macOS Ventura is set to offer a large number of new and interesting features and upgrades. It was announced at WWDC 2022 along with two new laptops likely to be launched at Ventura: the new 13-inch MacBook Air 2022 and MacBook Pro 2022, both featuring the Apple M2 chip.
The new version of macOS may not look as tangibly exciting as the new MacBooks, but when Ventura comes out in the back half of 2022, it looks like it’ll introduce a host of new features and improvements aimed at making your life on your Mac a little easier.
There are many changes coming to Ventura to list here, but after attending WWDC in person and checking out some of the new features myself, I’m excited. Heck, there are a few improvements that I want enough to consider installing Ventura’s public beta when it debuts in July.
Here’s what I’m most looking forward to from macOS Ventura.
1. Continuity Camera provides the ultimate webcam
The Continuity Camera feature on macOS Ventura allows you to use your iPhone as a wired or wireless camera/mic for your Mac. This can help you look your best if the webcam on your Mac takes lower quality photos than your iPhone, and gives you more options for how to position and use your iPhone as a webcam.
Notably, your iPhone is treated like any other webcam, so you should be able to use it in any app that accepts camera/mic input. Apple has also done some software work to enable features like Studio Light (which artificially dims the background and lights up your face) and Desk View (which taps your iPhone’s ultra-wide camera to display a second camera feed of what’s on the desk in front of the camera). It also means you can now use Apple’s Center Stage (which uses the ultra-wide camera and software magic to intelligently crop the camera on who’s talking and follow up if they move), which is limited to iPads and Macs that pack Apple silicon.
Of course, you’ll need compatible hardware and software to take advantage of the Continuity Camera feature in macOS Ventura. Specifically, it requires an iPhone with iOS 16 or later and a Mac with macOS 13 (also known as Ventura) or later. Also, many features of the Camera Continuity software require an iPhone XR (released in 2018) or later model.
2. Live Captions and Other Accessibility Improvements
There are a plethora of features available in Ventura that should make using macOS a little easier for all of us. I’m particularly excited about Live Captions, a new feature unique to Macs with Apple silicon (so they need either an M1 or M2 chip) that creates captions for any audio content in real time, including FaceTime calls.
Although the start is only in English and Apple warns users not to rely on Live Captions for important business, this is still a huge improvement that could be a game-changer for people who rely on Captions every day. Not many modern streaming platforms offer a written explanation reliably, so integrating the option directly into macOS is an accessibility gain. It will also be available on compatible iOS 16 / iPadOS 16 devices, including any iPad that packs an A12 Bionic chip (or better) and an iPhone model 11 or later.
Another big accessibility improvement coming in macOS Ventura includes a text checker for VoiceOver input (so you can format and edit spelling text more effectively), a white noise tool that lets you create soothing background sounds like rain, and a new Buddy Control system that lets you combine input from Multiple game controllers in one device.
The latter is particularly exciting to me, as I find it difficult to play games with a gamepad these days due to severe carpal tunnel issues. Tools that let you combine inputs from multiple devices allow people like me to play games more comfortably, for example, using dedicated controllers or having a friend nearby with a second gamepad to handle inputs that I can’t manage, and it’s great to see Apple support like these options.
3. Drop in letters and mail
It looks like Apple is ready to break the “no rollback” rule in 2022, as Messages and Mail both get new undo buttons in macOS Ventura.
That’s great news for anyone who’s revisited a message ten seconds after hitting send, which by chance is how long you’ll have to cancel sending an email in Mail once the feature comes out later this year. Messages will give you a little more space, giving you 15 minutes to undo or edit a message after you send it.
Metal 3 is scheduled to be released alongside macOS Ventura in late 2022, and could significantly improve the state of gaming on Macs.
Metal is the API that developers use when they want to improve the graphical performance of an app on Apple devices, as it’s designed to give programmers precise control over how the GPU in your Mac or iPhone displays things on the screen. The fact that Apple is releasing the third major release alongside macOS Ventura is especially exciting because Metal 3 will provide developers with entirely new ways to harness the power of Apple’s silicon.
While we’ll have to wait and see what developers can do with this new toolkit to see how much of a difference it will make, Apple has already announced some exciting new features that debuted in Metal 3.
This includes faster resource loading, new upgrade features, and improved ray tracing, as well as more efficient shader bundling. There are plenty of technical ways to say Metal 3 should help developers make games look nicer and work better on your Mac,
5. Password keys are here to kill the password
If you (like me) spend more time than you’d like trying to guess/reset your passwords, the new Passkey feature debuting in macOS Ventura might make your life a little less stressful.
Apple is touting passkeys as a first step toward a passwordless future, and if they work as advertised, the future looks very bright. Passkeys (in macOS Ventura, iPadOS 16, and iOS 16) work with the Face ID/Touch ID sensors on your Mac or iPhone to securely verify your identity, then log you into a website.
This means that every time you create a new account online somewhere with an email and password, you will have the option to create a passkey instead of the password. Then, when you try to sign in to that account again, a message will appear asking you to verify your identity via Face ID / Touch ID. Do it and presto, you’re subscribed.
According to Apple Passkeys, they are only stored locally on your Mac, which should be a bit more secure than having a password stored on a server somewhere. It also syncs via iCloud Keychain, so the passkey created on your iPhone should work fine on your iPad or Mac and vice versa. Apple also claims to use end-to-end encryption for passkeys, which means no one – not even Apple – should have an easy time accessing them.
Of course there are a lot more features coming to macOS with Ventura than what’s listed here, and you can catch up on the full review in fall 2022.
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