Apple macOS Sequoia

The free macOS 15 Sequoia update is a must-have if you use a recent Mac and particularly if you have an iPhone. The most exciting new feature is iPhone Mirroring, which lets you directly control an iPhone running iOS 18 from your computer. Sequoia also offers a one-stop Passwords app that competes with even the best password managers. We would have liked a more full-featured clipboard, but the aforementioned features, along with dozens of smaller conveniences, help macOS Sequoia earn our Editors' Choice award for operating systems alongside Windows 11.

Little Conveniences...and Some Inconveniences

Like every new macOS release, Sequoia is visually spectacular. The default wallpaper is a stunning picture of the trees the OS is named for, and you can switch to dynamic wallpapers that change color depending on the time of day. 

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

As always with annual macOS releases, the latest version includes small conveniences that Apple doesn’t publicize but which you’ll be grateful to have. The System Settings, for example, finally gets a useful list of options you use frequently, so you don’t have to enter Startup Disk or Software Update in a search box to get to them.

Security concerns have led Apple to make some things less convenient than they were in earlier versions. For example, if you want to open a third-party app that Apple hasn’t “notarized,” you won’t find an option to do so in the contextual menu like before. Instead, you have to take a detour to the System Settings to authorize the app. It isn’t a showstopper and adds another level of protection for non-expert users, but it's a minor annoyance for anyone who uses a lot of software from smaller developers.

Should You Upgrade to macOS Sequoia Now?

I suggest holding off on upgrading to Sequoia until the first point release because the initial release of every new version of macOS has bugs and gotchas that don’t emerge until after the OS goes public. 

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Sequoia has been in public beta for more than three months and registered Mac developers have had access for longer, so it's not entirely untested. But beta testers don’t put every app through its paces. If you use only Apple’s native software—Mail, Messages, Preview, Safari—then you can safely upgrade today. If you use any third-party software, hold off until the first point release. 

Note that the company's much-touted Apple Intelligence—Apple’s custom version of AI that every technology company seems to be adding to apps and operating systems—won’t be functional in Sequoia until the first point release, likely in October. Moreover, many of Apple’s AI features won’t arrive until later releases. If you want an early look at Apple Intelligence, you can install the public beta of macOS Sequoia 15.1 (I cover this later).

Can Your Mac Run macOS Sequoia?

Sequoia is compatible with:

• Any Intel or Apple Silicon Mac first released in 2019 or later
• Any iMac Pro released in 2017 or later
• Any MacBook Pro or Mac mini released in 2018 or later

Most major features—like iPhone Mirroring—work on Intel Macs, but advanced features like the ability to capture text from photographs only work on Apple Silicon machines.

Best New Features in Sequoia

iPhone Mirroring

Apple’s ecosystem has always been seamless in terms of interconnectivity, especially between Macs and iPhones. For the past few years, you’ve been able to use your Mac’s microphone and speaker to answer calls that arrive on your iPhone. Last year, Apple added an option to run iOS widgets on your Mac’s desktop—with the exception of some high-security and finance apps. You’ve long been able to view your phone’s screen on a TV or monitor, but you haven’t been able to control your phone from them. 

The new iPhone Mirroring feature is completely different from the old passive screen mirroring. As far as I can tell, you can use your Mac to do almost everything on your phone that your phone can do—you just can't use the phone's microphone or camera. In the early Sequoia betas, some of my banking and financial apps refused to run in iPhone Mirroring, but Apple sorted out this problem before the final Sequoia release.

You set up iPhone Mirroring by selecting your phone in Sequoia and then responding to a series of security prompts that you have to answer just once. You can mirror your phone only when you’re not using it, and no one who looks at your phone while you’re running it from your Mac can see what you’re doing. 

You can’t swipe up to shuffle through open apps, but clicking on an icon above the image of your phone on the Mac performs this action. Otherwise, you can hold down your Mac’s trackpad to make your home screen icons start to wiggle for rearrangement. As mentioned, you can’t use the microphone or camera, and you won’t hear any audio coming from the phone, though everything that you can see on your phone is visible on your Mac.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Apple also announced that you will be able to drag and drop photos and other files between a mirrored iPhone and a Mac, but not until later this year with an update to Sequoia and iOS 18.

Passwords App

The new Passwords app, available on both macOS and iOS, is a marvel of efficiency and clear design. It should help you ditch any clumsy password app. If you knew where to look and had lots of patience, you may have used it in earlier versions of macOS. Now, it’s all in one place, with separate lists for passkeys, verification codes, and Wi-Fi and family passwords, along with a section of your compromised and duplicated passwords.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Windows Tiling

As usual with Apple, the latest operating system adds features that used to require third-party software, as well as those already on Windows. For example, Sequoia adopts one of Windows’ best window-management ideas: When you drag a window far beyond the left or right edge of the screen, an outline fills the left or right half of the screen. You can then drop the window into it to snap it into place. You can also get the same effect by holding down the Option key when dragging a window. Windows 11 divides the screen into four quarters, while macOS only splits it in two when you drag a window. But macOS also has a Move & Resize item on the app’s window menu that lets you divide the screen into four Windows-style quarters.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Backgrounds for Video Calls

Video conferencing apps like Zoom already have features that replace your background with a custom or stock image and let you choose exactly how much of your screen you share when you turn on screen-sharing. Now, macOS has those features system-wide and implements them better than the competition. 

Apple’s background-replacement feature isn’t perfect, though. When I move around, the edges of my shoulders look like ocean waves, for example. Still, it’s vastly better than the competition and close to perfect if you don’t move around much.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Effects and Styling in Messages

Messaging apps like WhatsApp let you apply bold and italic to text, as well as send gifs and emoji. Apple’s Messages app does one better by giving you text formatting and effects (such as Nod, Ripple, and Shake). Your friends will probably get tired of this feature if you overuse it, but it’s worth having when you want to make a point that plain text can’t convey.

Updates to Reminders

The Apple ecosystem gets tighter all the time, with existing options to use your camera to send photos into macOS apps like Pages or for use with macOS video apps. Within macOS, you can now create and view Reminders from the Calendar app. 

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

The Reminders app supports subtasks in the Today and Scheduled Smart Lists. The Notes app now includes the recording feature already in the Voice Memos app, complete with the live-transcription feature that your phone uses to translate voice messages into text. Voice Memos, by the way, also gets stereo recording. 

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Math in the Notes App

The Notes app gets built-in math, so you can enter a formula, type the equals sign, and see the result. You can already enter such text in the Spotlight search bar, but Spotlight typically opens the Calculator app, whereas the Notes app keeps everything neatly in place inside a note.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Safari Summaries (and Overly Protective Security)

Safari’s Reader feature now gives you a summary of a web page that appears in a sidebar to the right of the reader screen. If you haven’t used Safari’s Reader View, know that it's available only on select pages. When it is available, you see a little icon for it to the right of the search bar. A new AI-generated page summary is also available on some web pages, denoted by a tiny red plus sign in the reader icon. 

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

One minor annoyance has to do with websites that require authentication. I spend a lot of time on a site that requires me to authenticate when I log in, but it lets me remain logged in for one day if cookies are enabled in my browser. Using Safari on macOS Sonoma, the Advanced settings tab lets me simply uncheck Block All Cookies, and I can stay logged in to that site for a full day. On Sequoia, I have the exact same settings, but the website insists that I don’t have cookies enabled, and I have to log in again on every visit. Something’s clearly wrong in Safari’s cookies settings, and Apple needs to fix it.

Trail Walking and Saved Places in Apple Maps

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

The Maps app adds an enormous set of detailed walking trail maps and a Google-Maps-like feature that lets you permanently record points on the map, using a Places Library to store them. 

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Authorizing Third-Party Apps

I mentioned earlier that you need to turn to the System Settings app to run third-party software that Apple hasn't notarized. One other new inconvenience involves third-party QuickLook previewing. Many apps—for example, BetterZIP, CorelDraw, and VMware Fusion—silently install QuickLook preview generators that let you view a thumbnail of a document simply by selecting the file in the Finder and pressing the space bar. Some apps still use an old version of the QuickLook technology that Apple eliminated from Sequoia, and the app’s authors will have to update their software before you can preview your files again. If you find that you can’t preview a specific file type after upgrading to Sequoia, the only thing to do is complain to the software developer.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

What's Missing: Clipboard History, Folder Colors, and Attention to Detail

I’ve been waiting for years for Apple to fix some things in macOS, and it looks like I’ll have to keep waiting for some of them. For example, macOS still doesn’t have a clipboard history, something Windows has had for years. Of course, you can always install a third-party clipboard history app from the many available in the App Store (I use Fiplab’s free CopyClip). 

Another perpetual complaint of mine is that macOS doesn’t let you assign a default color to the Finder’s folder icons. By default, they are always a distracting bright blue, though the edges become a bit darker when you switch the display setting to Dark Mode.

If you use a laptop, you might find that an app's menu hides some of your top-line menu icons. There’s no way to access those icons until you switch away from the menu-hogging app. Some third-party apps can manage menu bar icons (I use the open-source Ice). Windows has a convenient feature that hides taskbar icons that you don’t use often, and macOS should have something similar. 

How to Try Out Sequoia Safely

If you want to try out Sequoia before updating your current Sonoma system, it’s relatively easy to do. You can use the same method for trialing the Sequoia 15.1 release with Apple Intelligence. 

To try out a Sequoia version without interfering with your existing setup, launch the macOS Disk Utility and click the plus sign to add a volume to your existing setup. Name it something like Test System. Then, close the Disk Utility, open the App Store, and search for macOS Sonoma—not Sequoia, but Sonoma. (The point of this is to prevent macOS from updating your current system, as it will try to do if you download Sequoia.) 

In the App Store page for Sonoma, click Get and wait for the Sonoma installer to download and start up automatically. Make sure to select Show All Disks below the icon for your current disk. Select your new Sequoia disk, and install Sonoma into it. When your system restarts in your new Sonoma system, let it copy your settings from your existing system. Then, if it doesn’t prompt you to upgrade to Sequoia, use the System Settings app and choose Software Update. You can then use the Startup Disk option in the System Settings app to switch between Sequoia and your current system. When you’re ready to upgrade your current system to Sequoia, you can use the Disk Utility again to delete the Test System volume and regain its disk space.

If you want to try out the Sequoia point release, you need to register as a developer with Apple. You likely don't need to pay Apple’s developer program fee—that’s applicable only if you plan to write and distribute software notarized by Apple. Simply go to developer.apple.com/register, sign in with your Apple ID, skim the immense agreement, and click Submit. Then, go to the System Settings app, find Software Update, enable Beta Updates, and choose macOS 15.1 Sequoia Developer Beta from the dropdown list. After a few seconds, the system prompts you to download and install it.

Verdict: An Especially Worthwhile Upgrade for iPhone Users

Although I use both a Windows and Mac machine for work, I turn to the latter when I'm off the clock. Sequoia further cements macOS as my choice for personal computing. The latest OS update looks elegant, runs smoothly, is very enjoyable to use, and builds on Apple’s long tradition of seamless cross-platform compatibility with the iPhone Mirroring feature. The excellent Passwords app and a bunch of small tweaks also outweigh a couple of continuing frustrations with core features. Accordingly, macOS Sequoia is an Editors' Choice winner for desktop operating systems along with Windows 11. If you are having trouble deciding between the two, check out our head-to-head comparison.