macOS Sequoia will be available on September 16

During its “It’s Glowtime” event, Apple announced when macOS Sequoia will begin rolling out to users and when it will become the pre-installed operating system on all new Macs.

It will be released on September 16, although as usual, no specific time has been given. It should also be noted that the release will only be available worldwide after a few hours.

The most immediate, visually obvious addition to a Mac with the new operating system is iPhone Mirroring. It’s a new icon in the Dock, and when you click it, your iPhone screen opens on your Mac.

It’s amazing how useful it is to have your iPhone screen on your Mac

As a result, macOS Sequoia will now show notifications from your iPhone. If you already have mostly the same apps on your Mac and iOS, you won’t notice the difference, but it’s there.

On the Mac side, there’s now Window Tiling. Counting Spaces and Stage Manager, Apple’s third attempt to help organize windows on the screen.

Apple Adds Window Tiling to macOS Sequoia

It’s also very similar to both how Windows has worked for years, and to third-party apps like Moom. By dragging a window to the edge of the screen, you can position it so that it takes up the left or right side, the top or bottom, or goes full screen.

Apple’s functionality is limited compared to Moom or what you can do — and have done for so long — with apps like Keyboard Maestro. But it’s a welcome addition.

It’s a similar story with Passwords, Apple’s newest app, in addition to iPhone Mirroring. It’s essentially the same password functionality that’s been in Safari for years, ported to a standalone app.

However, if it makes a small difference to have your passwords displayed in the app instead of in Safari, then it’s a small difference, but it makes a huge difference.

Apple’s Passwords app is a welcome addition

It won’t replace third-party tools like 1Password for people who already use them and see the difference. For example, 1Password lets you save credit card details, secure notes, and website logins, while Apple’s passwords don’t.

However, Passwords will stop some people from buying third-party password managers. This is more than good enough for a large portion of users.

Safari is a great browser that Apple has been constantly improving, and continues to do so in macOS Sequoia. At first glance, the Reader view is better. This is the option to disable website formatting and just present the website text.

There are more detailed options for changing how text is presented, and overall reading seems more enjoyable.

However, Safari is only a microcosm of the entire macOS system, as its real changes will come with Apple Intelligence.

We’re still waiting for Apple Intelligence. For Safari, that means automatically highlighting and displaying important details on web pages and offering a chapter index.

In other respects, Apple Intelligence primarily means completely new features such as Writing Tools, which summarize or even rewrite your texts.

What will probably become widely used — because it will be the default and good enough that you won’t be screaming to turn it off — is the automatic summarization feature in Apple Mail. Summaries are everywhere in macOS Sequoia, but in Mail, it takes the regular inbox view of the first few lines of a message and replaces it with a pretty good summary of the entire message.

It’s even less clear whether Image Playground will, too. When it does, it will let Mac users ask macOS to create an image for them—within limits.

While we won’t know all the specific restrictions on what can be requested until Apple Intelligence Image Playground is released, a lot of things were already made clear at WWDC. For example, Image Playground won’t let users create the kind of deepfakes that are plaguing the internet.

Cleverly, Apple has found a way to rule them out entirely — by not allowing Image Playground to create any photorealistic images. None.

Instead, Image Playground will be able to create what Apple describes as sketches, illustrations, and animations. The difference between the first two may be subtle, but none of the three are likely to create anything NSFW.

Image Playground on Mac

But perhaps most importantly, Apple Intelligence should introduce a better Siri.

If you do nothing, at some point your Mac will offer you a new update. However, this may take a long time.

So if you want this now and have given yourself enough time to find any major bugs, do one more thing. Go through your apps and check if each one supports macOS Sequoia.

If they need an update and there is one available, update the app. If your apps need an update and there is none, do not download macOS Sequoia.

But when you’re ready, you can go to System settings, GeneralAND Software update. Then perform the update.

Apple Insider recommends users update to it, but not before a few days. Despite all the beta testing by users and developers, it is possible that new and even serious problems will be discovered only after the mass rollout.

The biggest highlight of macOS Sequoia will be support for Apple Intelligence, but these features will arrive in a later release.

For now, macOS Sequoia offers features like iPhone screen mirroring, window tiling, and a new Passwords app.