macOS Sequoia’s Awesome New iPhone Mirroring Lets You Use Your iPhone Even if Your iPhone is in Another Room

Following the introduction of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and watchOS 11 during its WWDC 24 keynote Monday, Apple detailed the new features coming to the next version of macOS this fall: macOS Sequoia. There’s a lot to discuss, but the headline feature is one that will make needing to reach for your iPhone while working with your Mac a thing of the past.

iPhone Mirroring

This big new feature is called iPhone Mirroring and it’s made possible by Apple’s underlying continuity framework that allows the Mac to wirelessly interact with and sense nearby iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches. Up until this point, the biggest Continuity features were the ability to use widgets from your iPhone on your Mac desktop and Continuity Camera, which allows you to use the vastly superior cameras on your iPhone as a wireless webcam when taking video calls with your Mac.

iPhone Mirroring steps things up considerably, allowing you to use your phone, see notifications, and use your apps—all from your Mac desktop. Because this is a Continuity feature, it does require that your iPhone be on the same WiFi network as your Mac and have Bluetooth enabled.

When you launch iPhone mirroring, your iPhone’s Home Screen appears in a window on the Mac desktop. From there you can use your keyboard and mouse/trackpad to navigate the phone, swiping between Home Screen pages, and launching and browsing apps.

You can even transfer files on your Mac to the iPhone with drag and drop. Apple demonstrated this during the keynote by exporting a video file from Final Cut Pro on the Mac, and dragging that file right over to an app running on the iPhone.

iPhone Mirroring also brings your iPhone notifications to your Mac desktop, allowing you to click an iPhone notification and immediately jump into that iPhone app from your Mac.

While you’re using iPhone Mirroring, your iPhone itself remains locked. And if your iPhone is in StandBy mode—which displays useful widgets when your phone is charging in landscape while on a stand—that mode stays visible as well.

Snap comes to Mac

One of the best features on Windows for years has been the ability to snap windows into place: drag an open window to one side of the screen and have it automatically resize into one of a few different choices such as spanning to cover half of the display or a quadrant of the display.

On the Mac, various excellent utilities over the years have replicated this functionality such as Swish or the excellent Lasso, Apple announced that it is bringing easy window tiling to the Mac in macOS Sequoia.

By dragging a window to one side of the display, your Mac will now suggest a tiled position. You can release the window to drop it into place. Apple has also implemented keyboard shortcuts as well if you prefer that over dragging.

New Passwords app

Just as the iPhone and iPad are getting a dedicated Passwords app, so to is the Mac in macOS Sequoia.

The app is built on the foundation of iCloud Keychain and provides a dedicated app for accessing all of your saved passwords, passkeys, and two-factor authentication codes. This app means you no longer have to dig into the Settings app to find these passwords. Access is end-to-end encrypted and on the Mac is protected by your Mac password or TouchID authentication.

Another welcome announcement with this new app is that Apple will provide it across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Windows via the iCloud for Windows app. It would be nice to see an Android app as well, but who knows if that will actually happen.

Safari updates

macOS Sequoia will also bring the new web page summary features that are coming to iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. The first of these is Highlights, which surfaces actionable information from any web page for things such as a business’s phone number and location, or providing direct links to music, movies, and TV shows if you’re browsing information on a particular artist, actor, or director.

The Reader view has also been redesigned to incorporate a summary of the page or article you’re reading, including the key points and an outline of the content. There’s also a new Viewer feature which detects when a video is present on a page and then places that video front and center while providing full access to the macOS system playback controls and Picture in Picture.

Gaming

With the increase in power brought on by Apple’s M-Series processors, the Mac’s dedicated Game Mode, and its Mac Game Porting Toolkit for game developers, Apple is gradually enticing developers to bring more and more AAA games to the Mac.

During the keynote, Apple reviewed recent titles that have hit the Mac from popular game series Resident Evil and Assassin’s Creed in addition to saying that several more anticipated titles will be coming to the Mac as well, including Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and the incredible looking Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Updates to Messages, Maps, Photos, Calculator, and Calendar

There are several other updates coming to the Mac in macOS Sequoia that replicate the updates to Apple’s major apps on the iPhone and iPad.

Messages has been updated with new text formatting and effects, improved Tapbacks with emoji reaction support, and the ability to schedule a message to send later.

Apple has also updated the Photos app on Mac which will now surface Collections, improve searches, and more.

Calculator now shows your previous calculations in a history list and will give you the ability to see expressions as you type.

The Notes app is adding audio recording, audio transcription, and summarization features along with the ability to type an equation and have it solved automatically in the body of the note.

Finally, Calendar will now show events and tasks from Reminders and has an updated Month View that makes it easier tos we events and reminders for an entire month at a glance.