The Menu Bar

Starting at the top of the screen, we have the familiar Mac menu bar. It’s now even more translucent than before, letting your background image show through, with text that changes in shade depending on the color behind it. The menus themselves are also more translucent. (If you dislike this effect, see the sidebar Turn Off the Translucency.)

As always, the Apple  menu is on the left, followed by other menus such as File, Edit, and View. Individual items on each menu are now more widely spaced, as are the icons for menu extras on the right.

Apple-provided menu extras such as the clock, Wi-Fi , Spotlight , and Time Machine (each of which can be enabled or disabled on the appropriate pane of System Settings) are still there. You’ll also see new icons for Battery (on laptops only) and Control Center , which gives you quick access to system settings (see Control Center).

The Dock

Your Mac’s Dock (Figure 7) is now more translucent than before (again, see the sidebar Turn Off the Translucency if that makes you unhappy). It looks much like the Dock on an iPad, in that it floats near the bottom of the screen (or near the left or right edge, if you’ve changed its position in System Settings > Desktop & Dock). I think it strains the metaphor to use the word dock for a thing that floats, but that’s me. In any case, the change in position is subtle; you’re more likely to notice the redesigned icons, about which I say more next.

Icons

Almost every icon for Apple software included with macOS—including the Finder, Siri, all the apps in the Applications folder, and the panes of System Settings—has been updated. (Figure 8 shows some examples; you can see a few more in Figure 7, above, and still more below in Explore System Settings.)

Most of the icons are similar to, or derivatives of, their earlier versions, while others are dramatically different. For app icons, Apple has chosen to use the same design as on iOS and iPadOS, where each icon is a rounded rectangle. They’ve reduced the color palette, too, to favor just a handful of shades.

Windows

Windows, like menus, now have more widely spaced elements and are predominantly white (or translucent) with some gray accents. They also have much rounder corners than in earlier versions of macOS. And the disclosure triangle ()—that little icon to the left of folders that you click to expand or collapse the view of what’s inside them—is now no longer a triangle: it’s more of a caret (). So it’s called the disclosure arrow now.

There are also two other significant changes to windows:

• Toolbars: The toolbar is the area at the top of a window that typically contains icons for changing the view and performing actions on items in the window. In Catalina and earlier (Figure 9, top), it was a gray bar that extended across the entire window; in Big Sur and later (Figure 9, bottom), it’s a white area that begins to the right of the sidebar (if any) and has subtler icons without borders that make them look like buttons.

  

• Sidebar: The sidebar (see Figure 10) in apps like the Finder, Mail, Notes, and Photos now extends all the way to the top of the window, and now features blue rather than gray icons for Favorites. (You can adjust the size of the text and icons in the sidebar by going to System Settings > Appearance and choosing Small, Medium, or Large from the “Sidebar icon size” pop-up menu.)

  

Alerts

The standard shape of alerts has changed from a horizontal orientation to a vertical orientation. Figure 11 shows the difference. Although some alerts (especially from third-party apps) may continue to have the old-style appearance for a while, the new standard is to make alerts look much like they do in iOS and iPadOS.

Control Center

If you have an iPhone or iPad, you’re already familiar with Control Center there: swipe down from the upper-right corner of your device’s screen to get quick access to common settings and controls—without having to dig around in Settings or open any apps. The macOS Control Center (first introduced in Big Sur) is the same concept.

To display Control Center on your Mac, click the Control Center icon on your menu bar. A panel overlay (Figure 12) appears.

Here, you can do three types of activities:

• Manipulate a control directly: If you want to turn something on or off, click the round toggle button next to the label. For example, click the Bluetooth button to toggle Bluetooth. You can also drag the Display or Sound slider to change brightness or volume levels, and use the icons on the Music tile to control playback in the Music app.

• Display controls: Some Control Center tiles, such as Keyboard Brightness and Screen Mirroring, have no visible controls, but if you click the tile, a separate control panel appears. For example, click Screen Mirroring to display a panel with a list of other screens to which you can mirror or extend your display and a link to open the Display pane of System Settings.

• Display expanded controls: If a tile (or a portion of a tile) displays a disclosure arrow when you hover over it, you can click the tile in that spot to display an expanded set of controls. For example, if you click the Focus tile, you see a display with options for Do Not Disturb and other focus modes, as well as a link to the Focus pane of System Settings.

The tiles and their capabilities are:

• Wireless: This tile has sections for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and AirDrop. Use one of the three buttons to enable or disable the appropriate wireless feature, or click for additional options (such as choosing a different Wi-Fi network).

• Focus: Click the tile to enable Do Not Disturb or another focus mode.

• Stage Manager: Click the tile to turn on Stage Manager, a new way of managing your windows (see Discover Stage Manager).

• Screen Mirroring: Click to see other devices you can mirror your screen to using AirPlay.

• Display: Drag the bar to set your screen brightness. Click to see controls for Dark Mode, Night Shift, True Tone (if your display supports it), and connecting to an iOS or iPadOS device as a second screen using Sidecar.

• Sound: Drag the bar to adjust your system volume. Click the tile to send the output to a different destination via AirPlay.

• Music: See what’s currently playing and use the icons to play, pause, or skip to the next track. Click the tile to see expanded playback controls.

Notification Center

Mac users previously clicked the Notifications icon on the menu bar to display a slide-in view called Notification Center. Starting in Big Sur, to show Notification Center, click the time on your menu bar. You’ll see something like Figure 13.

Like the pre-Big Sur Notification Center, this new version, by default, shows upcoming calendar and reminder items, the weather, and stock prices. But the big change is notifications themselves, which appear above these widgets. Now, instead of a single, endlessly scrolling, reverse-chronological list, notifications are grouped by app in “stacks.” If you see a stack, you can click it to expand it and show all the individual notifications inside. To collapse it again, click Show Less.

Notifications can also be interactive—for example, you can click and hold on a notification from Podcasts about a new episode to play that episode, or click and hold on a Mail notification to compose a reply right there.

To dismiss a notification, hover over it and click the X icon that appears in the upper-left corner. For an unexpanded stack, this icon becomes Clear All when you hover over it, enabling you to dismiss all the notifications from an app at once.

And, to dismiss Notification Center altogether, press Esc or click the clock again.

To customize your widgets, display Notification Center and click Edit Widgets at the bottom. You can then do any of several things:

• To delete an existing widget, click its minus icon. (You can always add it again later.)

• To rearrange widgets, drag them to a new location.

• To add widgets, drag one from the large display in the center to your desired location. (You can use the list on the left to sort by app; some apps have more than one associated widget.)

  Some widgets come in two or three sizes, indicated by S, M, and/or L icons at the bottom. (Larger sizes display more information or offer more controls.) Select a size before dragging the widget to see which configuration is most useful to you.

When you’re finished, click Done.

Apple ID Settings

Two new settings appear on the Apple ID pane, both of which I explain in more detail in Apple ID:

• Automatic Verification: This new switch, in Apple ID > Password & Security, will eventually enable you to bypass some CAPTCHA tests for faster webpage logins.

• Wallet: In Apple ID > iCloud there’s now an on/off switch for Wallet.

Family Settings

The Family pane in System Settings now has entries for each family member. Click a family member’s name to display a dialog (Figure 17) where you can view and edit a variety of details all in one place, including Location Sharing and Parent(s)/Guardian(s); and, for children, Screen Time, Ask to Buy, Subscriptions, and Purchases. Select a subcategory on the left to see or adjust the corresponding settings.

Wi-Fi Settings

The new Wi-Fi pane gives you a shortcut to Network > Wi-Fi. If you click Details next to the current Wi-Fi network (or hover over any of the Known Networks, click the More icon, and choose Network Settings from the pop-up menu), you’ll see a new option: Low Data Mode. Turn this on to limit the amount of data used on this Wi-Fi network (similar to the way you’ve previously been able to limit cellular data usage on an iPhone or cellular iPad).

There is another little change in this pane. macOS has long stored Wi-Fi passwords and synced them among your devices via iCloud Keychain, and Ventura adds a potentially more convenient way to find and copy these passwords (for example, if you want to share them with someone else).

Scroll down to the very bottom and click the Advanced button. In the Known Networks list, click the More menu next to a Wi-Fi network to access commands for Auto-Join and Remove from List (both of which you could do in Monterey and earlier), plus a new one: Copy Password. Choose this to put the Wi-Fi network’s password on your clipboard.

Network Settings

The big change here is not what’s new, but what’s missing. You can no longer configure different sets of network settings for different locations and then switch among them with a simple menu command. It’s possible that such a small percentage of Mac users knew about or employed this feature that Apple felt it wasn’t worth keeping around, but the people who liked it, really liked it. Take Control author Jason Snell decries the loss of this feature in Apple removes Network Locations from macOS Ventura.

Focus Settings

Ventura introduces focus filters, which give you control over which portions or aspects of an app can notify you in a focus mode; it also lets you choose whether to allow or silence a list of people or apps. I cover these features later in Focus.

General Settings

Whereas the General pane of System Preferences in Monterey and earlier was just that—a small selection of general preferences—in Ventura, General is a broader category with a dozen subcategories, most of which were separate panes in earlier versions of macOS:

• About: The information here is similar to what’s in the About This Mac window (Apple  > About This Mac)—with buttons that link to other locations in System Settings for things like Displays and Storage. (Because of this change, Ventura’s About This Mac window has become much smaller and simpler, as in considerably older versions of macOS.)

• Software Update: This is where you now go to update macOS and built-in apps, and to configure automatic updates if you want them. Click the Info icon next to Automatic Updates to see a new switch, “Install Security Responses and System files,” which is on by default. These are special, urgent security updates that can be installed and applied as needed without restarting your Mac.

• Storage: The Storage subcategory gives you information about disk usage—the same information that used to be on the Storage tab of the About This Mac window. It also lets you move your Desktop and Documents folder to iCloud Drive (which I don’t recommend), enable an optimized storage feature for movies and TV shows, or turn on automatic trash emptying.

• Login Items: Your login items were previously shown in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Your Name > Login Items. Unlike in Monterey and earlier, there’s no Hide checkbox for each item (to open items at login in the background). However, there is a new Allow in the Background list, with switches for each app and process that wants to be able to perform actions when it’s not actively running—things like checking for updates or syncing data. I recommend reviewing this list to check for anything that you don’t want to run in the background.

• Language & Region: The Language & Region subcategory, formerly its own pane in System Preferences, has a new setting that appears if you have more than one Preferred Language configured: List Sort Order. (Unless your lists are sorting in an obviously incorrect manner, Universal is almost certainly the right choice here.) Unfortunately, Ventura no longer offers granular control over number separators, currency symbol, and user-defined date and time formats.

• Time Machine: I’m surprised that Time Machine is no longer a top-level option, given how important it is, but it’s now a subcategory of General. It has a new feature that lets you change backup frequency. Click Options and choose an option from the “Back up frequency” pop-up menu: Manually, “Automatically every hour” (the default), “Automatically every day,” or “Automatically every week.” In addition, when configuring a new, APFS-formatted local volume for Time Machine backups, you can now set a maximum size for the portion of the disk dedicated to Time Machine.

• Transfer or Reset: This subcategory, on the other hand, is easier to find than it once was (it was on the application menu in Monterey’s System Preferences). Click Open Migration Assistant to move data to or from another Mac, or click Erase All Contents and Settings (and follow the prompts) to delete the contents of your Mac’s Data volume, leaving a plain installation of macOS itself.

Accessibility Settings

The Accessibility pane now has new options for configuring AirPods (see AirPods Controls), playing soothing sounds such as rain or ocean in the background (see Background Sounds), controlling screen zoom (see Zoom Control), and captioning audio and video playing through your Mac (see Live Captions).

AirPods Settings

If you have AirPods that are currently connected to your Mac, there will be a separate entry in System Settings for them, right above Keyboard; the name of the entry will match the name you’ve given your AirPods. Select this to customize all your AirPods settings in one place.

Control Center Settings

Two items now appear on the Control Center pane that previously did not:

• Hearing: There are now switches to show the Hearing icon on your menu bar or in Control Center. When one of these is enabled and you click the icon, you can turn background sounds on or off, or jump directly to Accessibility Settings.

• VPN: If you have a VPN (virtual private network) configured on your Mac, you can show or hide it on your menu bar using the VPN pop-up menu.

Siri & Spotlight Settings

In System Settings > Siri & Spotlight, click Siri Responses to see two new options:

• Always Show Siri Captions: When this is on, Siri’s audio responses are also shown on screen.

• Always Show Speech: When this is on, what Siri recognizes you as having said appears on screen.

Privacy & Security Settings

Three new settings appear on the Privacy & Security pane:

• App Management: A new subcategory under the Privacy heading, App Management lets you choose which apps are allowed to update or delete other apps. Before you object that this would be a weird and obviously unsafe thing to do, keep in mind that Setapp does exactly this: it installs, updates, and removes other apps. This setting is off by default; turn it on for Setapp or any other app you want to have this capability.

• Connection alert: M-series Macs can now notify you when a USB or Thunderbolt accessory is attached (Figure 18). From the “Allow accessories to connect” pop-up menu, choose “Ask every time,” “Ask for new accessories” (the default), “Automatically when unlocked,” or Always.

  

• Lockdown Mode: This new and, in Apple’s own words, extreme mode makes your Mac extra resistant to targeted cyberattacks, which also severely restricts normal activities. (Read Apple’s description here.)

Desktop & Dock Settings

The only new Desktop & Dock settings are to turn Stage Manager on or off, and customize it; see Discover Stage Manager.

Battery Settings

Battery settings, as usual, appear only on Mac laptops. If you click the Options button on an M-series Mac laptop, you’ll see a new switch: “Optimize video streaming while on battery,” which is on by default. This reduces battery drain when streaming video, presumably at the expense of video quality.

Game Center Settings

The Game Center pane has a new option: “Requests from contacts only” (off by default). If you turn this on, then only Game Center requests from people who are in your Contacts will appear in your inbox; others will be ignored.

Keyboard Settings

In the Dictation subcategory of Keyboard settings there’s a new Auto-Punctuation switch, which is on by default. To learn more about this, flip ahead to Dictation.

Game Controller Settings

If you have any game controllers connected to your Mac, this new pane appears with options to configure the controllers. I don’t have any such controllers, so I was unable to test this feature.

Time Machine on APFS

Up through Catalina, Time Machine could use only Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) volumes as destinations, even when the source volume was formatted as APFS. (In some situations, Time Machine could use a disk image formatted as Mac OS Extended, where the image itself was stored on an APFS volume, but the actual volume Time Machine wrote to could not be APFS.) Starting in Big Sur, however, Time Machine can also store backups on APFS-formatted volumes.

Why would any of this matter? Well, APFS (see More About APFS) has advantages in both reliability and security. And, when Time Machine backs up to an APFS volume, it uses space much more efficiently (copying only the portions of files that have changed, not the whole files). That means you can store more backups on a smaller drive.

This development is good news, but it won’t have any practical affect on most users, because:

• Ventura does not automatically convert Time Machine volumes from Mac OS Extended to APFS.

• You can’t manually convert an existing Time Machine volume from Mac OS Extended to APFS without erasing it and starting over from scratch. However, if you format a new, empty volume as APFS, Time Machine can use it in Ventura.

• Even if you can start over from scratch with a newly formatted volume, you may not want to, as your Time Machine backup will then be usable only by Macs running Big Sur or later—this change is not backward-compatible to Catalina and earlier.

So, even though you can do this now, the only situation in which I currently recommend using APFS for Time Machine is when it will be used only to back up Ventura sources, and you’re starting fresh with a new Time Machine backup.

Bootable Duplicates in Ventura

I long recommended bootable duplicates as one of the pillars of a complete backup strategy, but as I mentioned earlier in Back Up Your Disk, I no longer do. If you’re still depending on them, you should be aware of two gotchas:

• Split volumes: Most Mac backup apps designed to make bootable duplicates evolved to handle the split-volume structure introduced in Catalina, in which there’s a read-only volume for system files and then a separate (but normally invisible) read-write volume for your data. However, in Big Sur and later, Apple took the split volumes further, adding a digital signature to the system volume. That signature becomes invalid if copied conventionally, and without a valid signature, you can’t boot from the volume. Apps such as Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! can now create bootable duplicates of this structure, but with a catch: the destination volume must be erased before creating a bootable duplicate, and once it has been created, only the Data volume can later be updated with new or changed information. (If macOS is updated and you want your backup to reflect that, you must start your Mac from the bootable duplicate and update macOS there using Software Update.)

  As an alternative, I now recommend creating a duplicate of just the Data volume, which can solve nearly all of the same problems that previously required a bootable duplicate, though in a somewhat more cumbersome way. (If you want, you can install macOS onto the data-only backup disk after the fact, thus making it bootable. For details, read Creating and restoring data volume backups on the Carbon Copy Cloner site.)

• Bootable duplicates over a network: Apps like Carbon Copy Cloner, ChronoSync, and Retrospect can no longer create bootable duplicates over a network (with the destination volume on a drive connected to another Mac); your backup disk must now be directly connected to your Mac, via USB or Thunderbolt.