Top 10 macOS Sierra tips & tricks

Apple’s macOS Sierra — which is currently available as a free download — brought a slew of new features and useful capabilities to your Mac device. Here’s a list of our top 10 favorite tips & tricks so you can get the absolute most from the new operating system update.

1. Use Siri on the Mac

One of the biggest changes that macOS Sierra brings to the Mac platform is the addition of Siri — and it’s a much more versatile and powerful assistant than the one on our phones. For example, the macOS version of Siri can answer multiple strings of follow-up questions. Ask Siri for directions to a city, and you can follow up with, “What’s the weather like there?” without specifying a location in the second command.

You can also ask Siri to tweet for you, FaceTime a significant other, show you specific photos taken at specific locations, and even files that you worked on on any specific date.

2. Use Apple Pay via a browser

Another feature that macOS Sierra borrows from iOS is Apple Pay. You can now shop online and easily checkout your cart using Apple’s proprietary payment system.

Just click on the Apple Pay button on a compatible website, and you’ll be prompted to enter your Apple ID. You’ll then get a notification on your Apple Watch or iPhone. Confirm on either device, and your payment will go through. Easy.

3. Use Picture-in-picture mode

Picture-in-Picture mode first appeared on the iPad in iOS 9, but Sierra brings it to macOS. This feature lets you keep a video playing on your desktop while you’re doing other things on your Mac.

You can use PIP mode in both iTunes and Safari. To use it in iTunes, just play a video, hover over the video window and click the PIP icon. In Safari, you can only use it on certain websites for now — like YouTube and Vimeo. To activate it, just right-click the video and click Enter Picture-in-Picture mode.

4. Memories in Photos

Like iOS 10, macOS Sierra brings Apple’s new “Memories” feature to Photos. The app now scans your images, categorizes them via metadata, and can even detect objects and facial expressions within each picture.

Beyond creating Memories — with categories based on location or activity, for example — you can search Photos for things like “animals,” “beach,” or “sunset” and the app will return results with those objects in them. Try it out; the AI’s recognition is pretty amazing, and just a little bit creepy.

5. Sync your desktop across your Mac computers

If you’re use multiple Mac computers on a day-to-day basis, this feature can come in handy. macOS Sierra introduces an iCloud sharing feature that can sync files on your Desktop and Documents across your devices.

To use it, just open System Preferences > iCloud and click the Options button next to iCloud Drive. Once you do, every file saved to your Desktop or Documents folder will now be shared across all of your computers.

6. Copy and paste between devices via the Universal Clipboard

If your Mac is running macOS Sierra, and your iOS devices are on iOS 10, you have access to the awesome Universal Clipboard feature. Basically, if you copy something on your iPhone, that clipboard is available to paste on your Mac device, and vice versa.

To activate it, on your Mac, go to System Preferences > General > and turn on Allow Handoff. On your iOS device, open Settings > General >Handoff & Suggested Apps, and toggle Handoff on.

7. Use Tabs in (almost) every app

With macOS Sierra, you can cut down the number of windows you have open using Tabs, which are now available in almost every application that uses a standard window manage. Some non-Apple apps, like Microsoft Office, don’t currently support this feature.

To quickly condense all of your windows into one with multiple tabs, simply open the Window menu and click Merge All Windows. You can also drag and drop open windows into tabs if the Show Tab Bar option is activated in View. Lastly, you can create a new tab in certain apps with the small “Plus” icon.

8. New Messages features

Like iOS 10, the Messages app in Apple’s newest macOS has gotten an improvement. While not as dramatic as iOS’s upgrade, there’s still a handful of useful and fun features.

Videos, preview links, and GIFs will now play within your messages thread. In addition, you can now send “Tapback” reactions to individual messages, and emoji are now larger. Some things, like iOS 10’s full-screen animations, are missing, but macOS’s Messages app is at least spruced up and livelier now.

9. Clear up some space with Optimized Storage

If your Mac’s hard drive is getting full, macOS Sierra has introduced several features to help you clear up some space. The first of which is Optimize Storage, which uploads files that aren’t used very often to iCloud and removes them from your computer. Uploaded files will still show up on your Mac, but may have to be downloaded before you can access them again.

The second option is to go to Apple > About This Mac > Storage, and click the Manage tab. You can turn on iCloud Photo Library — which uploads images and videos in Photos and replaces them with lower-res versions on your hard drive. There’s also an Empty Trash Automatically feature, as well as a Review Files option, which finds space-hogging files, or older files that you may not need anymore.

10. Collaborate with Notes

Notes has gotten a powerful and productive feature in macOS Sierra: the ability to collaborate. Now, when you create a note within the app, you can invite others to edit or write additional text within the note.

Hidden in the Share menu is an “Add people to this note” button — and you have the option to invite collaborators via Mail, Messages, Twitter, Facebook and AirDrop, among others. You can also copy a link to collaborate, and paste it into whatever app or browser you please.

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