Introduction
MacOS Mojave is the 14th major version of Apple’s Unix-based operating system. It’s got very little in common with the original Mac operating system, the one that saw Apple through the 1980s and 1990s. Apple dumped that in 2001, when CEO Steve Jobs decided it was time for a change. Apple had spent too many years piling new features onto a software foundation originally poured in 1984. Programmers and customers complained of the “spaghetti code” the Mac OS had become.
So today, underneath macOS’s classy, shining desktop is Unix, the industrial-strength, rock-solid OS that drives many a website and university. It’s not new by any means; in fact, it’s decades old and has been polished by generations of programmers.
Note
Beginning with Sierra in 2016, Apple stopped calling the Mac operating system “OS X.” It’s now “macOS.” That’s partly because Apple sought consistency with the software in its other products—iOS and watchOS—and partly, no doubt, because it was tired of hearing people pronounce it “oh ess sex.”
What’s New in Mojave
Having run out of big cat species (Lion, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard), Apple has begun naming its Mac operating systems after rock formations in California. There was Yosemite, and then El Capitan, and then Sierra and High Sierra, after the Sierra Nevada mountain range. And now there’s Mojave, named after the California desert.
The changes in macOS Mojave are either “thoughtful and strategic” or “ridiculously minor,” depending on your generosity of thought toward Apple products.
Herewith: a list of what’s new.
Dark Mode
Dark Mode is a dark-gray color scheme (“Designing Your Desktop”); you’re offered the chance to turn it on during the installation process, and you can turn it on and off at will in System Preferences → General. Once you turn it on, most of Apple’s built-in apps—Finder, Mail, Calendar, Messages, iTunes, Notes, Xcode, and so on—match that white-on-black appearance.
Apple says that, by making menus and panels darker, Dark Mode helps to emphasize your document or photo, making it pop more. Dark Mode may also be less disturbing to someone sleeping next to you in bed, because it radiates less light from the screen.
As a bonus, Mojave comes with two new desktop wallpapers, called Dynamic Desktop, that actually change their look as the day wears on, as though the sun is moving through the sky.
Accent Colors
For 10 years, your list of accent color options—used in progress bars, OK buttons, highlighted menu names and menu commands—was pretty short: blue or gray.
MacOS Mojave offers a choice of eight accent colors. You might be surprised to see what a difference a new accent color makes to the experience of using the Mac.
Desktop Stacks
Desktop stacks (View → Use Stacks) is designed for people who leave their desktops strewn with icons. When you turn on stacks, your desktop icons auto-clump into related piles, sorted by date created, date last opened, date modified, tag, or kind (for example, Documents and Images). Each icon auto-expands when you click it. Why should your real-world desktop be the only one with stuff in piles?
Preview Sidebar
The Preview sidebar column (View → Show Preview) shows what’s inside any icon you select: a thumbnail of a photo, for example, or the first page of a Word document. It also shows the file’s metadata—your choice of data bits like size, date, camera model, number of pages, and so on.
But this one’s got Quick Actions buttons at the bottom, relevant to the kind of file you’ve clicked. For a photo, the buttons include Rotate and Mark Up. For a PDF document, it’s Mark Up or Add Password. If you’re handy with Apple’s Automator app, you can make your own Quick Actions buttons, too.
Screenshot Tools
When you capture the screen image using the age-old keystroke Shift-
-3 (whole screen) or Shift--4 (portion of the screen), it now works as it does on iOS: It shrinks down into a thumbnail in the corner of the screen. If you click it before it disappears, you can open it up, edit it, crop it, mark it up, delete it, or share it. You’re spared the whole business of finding and editing and sending the shot after creating it.
Even better: The new keystroke Shift--5 opens a master screen-capture utility panel. It offers buttons for capturing still images of your screen (whole screen or a portion) and also for capturing videos of your screen activity (whole screen or a portion). An Options menu lets you choose whether or not the cursor should be included, whether or not you need a timer (a few seconds to get the screen set up properly), and where you want the resulting screenshot sent.
Not everyone needs to capture photos and videos of the screen every day. But if you do, this enhancement is awesome.
Continuity Camera
This cool feature turns your iPhone or iPad into a detached, handheld, wireless camera for your Mac. When you snap a photo, it appears on the Mac a moment later, for incorporating into whatever app you’re using. (It requires that iOS 12 be running on your phone or tablet.) “Continuity Camera” has the details.
The iPhone’s document-scanning module is available, too, using the same mechanism. It comes complete with auto-straightening and -clarifying magic for whatever piece of paper you’re scanning. Insta-PDF!
These features can be brilliant time-savers for researchers and students. If you use Messages on your Mac to do your texting, it’s life-changing: Now you can pop a photo into the conversation without any file-transferring nonsense.
Four New Apps
Four apps that have been on iOS for years are now full-blown Mac apps. All four take great advantage of your Mac’s large screen. And, maybe more important, all four sync wirelessly with your phone, so the news (or stocks, or voice recordings, or home-automation settings) are identical on all your Apple gadgets. Here’s what you’ll get:
News is Apple’s news app. It culls articles from hundreds of publications, online and off (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Esquire, NPR, HuffPost, and so on), and then presents them in gorgeous, ad-free magazine-like layout. Some of the sections are curated by Apple editors, chosen for fairness and neutrality; other sections are For You, algorithmically determined based on your interests.
Stocks tracks your stocks and bonds. When you click a stock’s name, you see the latest news about that company, brought to you by the same headline engine that drives News.
Voice Memos is the iPhone’s traditional audio-recording (and basic editing) app. The presence of this app on the Mac means there’s no more figuring out how to transfer your recordings from the phone to the computer; they appear on the Mac automatically.
Home. HomeKit is Apple’s home-automation standard. This app lets you control any product whose box says “Works with HomeKit”—all those “smart” or “connected” door locks, security cameras, power outlets, thermostats, doorbells, light bulbs, leak/freeze/temperature/humidity/air-quality sensors, and so on.
All of this, Apple says, is the first phase in its long-term plan to let software companies bring their iOS apps to the Mac with very little rewriting. (“Almost every year, people ask us the question, ‘Are you merging iOS and macOS?’ ” says Apple VP Craig Federighi. “No! Of course not.”)
Safari Defenses
Last year, Apple introduced a technology in its Safari browser that prevents advertisers from tracking you as you move from site to site. This year, it has tripled down on that promise. Apple says that it’s slamming shut privacy holes you didn’t even realize you had:
Like buttons, Share buttons, Comment buttons. Little do most people realize: Those buttons allow social-media sites to track you, too, whether you use them or not. Now, Safari blocks them from sending information about you and your actions—until you actually use those controls. And even then, it warns you that “This information will be shared with Facebook,” for example.
Configuration fingerprinting. Cookies aren’t the only tools that advertising networks have for tracking your online activity. They also use fingerprinting: following you by identifying the particular characteristics of your Mac, such as its hardware configuration, the plug-ins it uses, and even the fonts it has installed. But in macOS Mojave, all the Macs in the world look alike to the advertisers, making it dramatically harder for them to track you.
Lots of Misc.
Some of the smaller tweaks:
Gallery view. The old Cover Flow view has received a weird, minor tweak. It still displays a large thumbnail of each icon as you arrow-key your way through the items in a folder. But now, the icons themselves appear in a horizontal row, instead of in a list view. And now it’s called gallery view.
More permission granting. You know how the Mac asks for permission every time an app wants to use your location, contacts, or calendar? Now it also asks you when an app wants to access your camera, microphone, Mail database, Messages history, Time Machine backups, or Safari data.
Recent Apps on the Dock. For the first time, the Dock displays a mini-bank of icons representing the programs you’ve used most recently. (You can turn that off in System Preferences → Dock.)
Group FaceTime. Yep: Video calls with up to 32 people simultaneously (on Macs with Mojave or iPhones/iPads running iOS 12). You see the other participants on floating tiles, which get big and pop to the fore when somebody speaks. This, of course, isn’t a novel invention (hi, Google Hangouts!). But for the tens of millions of Apple fans, it’s welcome.
Redesigned Mac App Store. The Mac App Store gains features from the iOS App Store, like video previews, app ranking, and Editor’s Choice selections. (Apple says Microsoft Office and Adobe Lightroom will be coming to the Mac App Store for the first time, too.)
Auto-text-code entry. You know that system where, when you try to log into a website (your bank’s, for example), they send a six-digit number code to your cellphone, which you’re supposed to type into the login screen? Now the Mac can automatically “see” that texted code and offer to type it in with one click.
Reused password spotting. If you view your passwords in Safari’s Preferences, you’ll see special symbols to indicate passwords you’ve used more than once. Safari offers to change them to much stronger passwords (which, of course, it memorizes for you).
A revamped Save panel. The controls for changing your view of the “Mini-Finder” in a Save As dialog box (list, column, icon view; grouping commands; sorting commands) are now consolidated into a single pop-up menu.
Seventy new emoji. At last, the little cartoon emoji symbols include characters with red, curly, or gray hair—or no hair at all. There are new emoji for superheroes, cold face, party face, pleading face, face with hearts, kangaroo, parrot, lobster, mango, lettuce, cupcake, and more. How did we live...?
Siri knows a little more. Siri can now answer questions about celebrities, food nutrition, motorsports, and your own passwords. (“Hey Siri: Show me my Hulu password!”)
Favicons on your tabs. In Safari’s Preferences, you can turn on favicons (those little website-logo icons) so they appear on each of your tabs.
A couple of removals. The Mac used to let you store your account details for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo, and Flickr right in System Preferences. And they were options in the Share menu, too, so you could post photos and tweets directly from your Mac apps. But no longer.
Back to My Mac is gone, too. Apple says these removals make the Mac more secure from hackers.
Oh, and stationery templates are no longer part of the Mail app.
True, that’s not a very long list of new stuff in macOS. But look at the bright side: With changes this minor, it means you won’t have many app glitches to get over.
About This Book
To find your way around macOS Mojave, you’re expected to use Apple’s online help system. And as you’ll quickly discover, these help pages are tersely written, offer very little technical depth, lack useful examples, and provide no tutorials whatsoever. You can’t mark your place, underline, or read them in the bathroom.
The purpose of this book, then, is to serve as the manual that should have accompanied macOS—version 10.14 in particular. Whether you have an antique, hand-cranked 2012 iMac or one of the shiny new 2018 models, like the sleek updated MacBook Air or the compact, screenless Mac mini, this is your user guide.
MacOS Mojave: The Missing Manual is designed to accommodate readers at every technical level. The primary discussions are written for advanced-beginner or intermediate Mac fans. But if you’re a Mac first-timer, miniature sidebar articles called “Up to Speed” provide the introductory information you need to understand the topic at hand. If you’re a Mac veteran, on the other hand, keep your eye out for similar shaded boxes called “Power Users’ Clinic.” They offer more-technical tips, tricks, and shortcuts.
When you write a book like this, you do a lot of soul-searching about how much to cover. Of course, a thinner book, or at least a thinner-looking one, is always preferable; plenty of readers are intimidated by a book that dwarfs the Tokyo White Pages.
On the other hand, Apple keeps adding features and rarely takes them away. So this book isn’t getting any skinnier.
Even so, some chapters come with free downloadable appendixes—PDF documents, available on this book’s “Missing CD” page at missingmanuals.com—that go into further detail on some of the tweakiest features. (You’ll see references to them sprinkled throughout the book.)
Maybe this idea will save a few trees—and a few back muscles when you try to pick this book up.
About the Outline
MacOS Mojave: The Missing Manual is divided into six parts, each containing several chapters:
Part I covers everything you see on the screen when you turn on a Mac: folders, windows, icons, the Dock, the Sidebar, Spotlight, Dashboard, Spaces, Mission Control, Launchpad, Time Machine, menus, scroll bars, the Trash, aliases, the
menu, and so on.Part II is dedicated to the proposition that an operating system is little more than a launchpad for programs—the actual applications you use: email programs, web browsers, word processors, graphics suites, and so on. These chapters describe how to work with applications—how to open them, switch among them, swap data between them, and use them to create and open files. And there’s also, of course, a chapter about Siri.
Part III is an item-by-item discussion of the software nuggets that make up this operating system—the 30-ish panels of System Preferences and the 50-some programs in your Applications and Utilities folders.
Part IV treads in more advanced territory, like networking and file sharing. These chapters also cover the visual talents of the Mac (fonts, printing, graphics) and its multimedia gifts (sound, movies).
Part V covers all the internet features, including the Mail email program and the Safari web browser; Messages for instant messaging and audio or video chats; internet sharing; Apple’s free, online iCloud services; and connecting to and controlling your Mac from across the wires—FTP, SSH, VPN, and so on.
Part VI. This book’s appendixes include guidance on installing this operating system, a troubleshooting handbook, a Windows-to-Mac dictionary (to help Windows refugees find the new locations of familiar features in macOS), and a master list of all the keyboard shortcuts and trackpad/mouse gestures on your Mac.
About → These → Arrows
Throughout this book, you’ll find sentences like this one: “Open the System folder → Libraries → Fonts folder.” That’s shorthand for a much longer instruction that directs you to open three nested folders in sequence, like this:
“On your hard drive, you’ll find a folder called System. Open that. Inside the System folder window is a folder called Libraries; double-click to open it. Inside that folder is yet another one called Fonts. Double-click to open it, too.” See Figure I-1.
Figure I-1. If this book says “Choose View → Sort By → Name,” it’s describing a logical sequence of steps.
In this example, that would mean clicking the View menu, choosing the Sort By command from it, and then choosing Name from the submenu.
About MissingManuals.com
To get the most out of this book, visit missingmanuals.com. Click the “Missing CDs” link—and then this book’s title—to reveal a neat, organized, chapter-by-chapter list of the shareware and freeware mentioned in this book.
The website also offers book corrections and updates. (To see them, click the book’s title, and then click View/Submit Errata.) In fact, please submit such corrections and updates yourself! In an effort to keep the book as up-to-date and accurate as possible, each time we print more copies of this book, I’ll make any confirmed corrections you’ve suggested. I’ll also note such changes on the website so you can mark important corrections into your own copy of the book, if you like. And I’ll keep the book current as Apple releases more macOS 10.14 updates.
The Very Basics
To use this book, and indeed to use a Mac, you need to know some basics. This book assumes you’re familiar with a few terms and concepts:
Clicking. To click means to point the arrow cursor at something on the screen and then—without moving the cursor—press and release the clicker button on the mouse or trackpad. To double-click, of course, means to click twice in rapid succession, again without moving the cursor at all. And to drag means to move the cursor while holding down the mouse button.
When you’re told to
-click something, you click while pressing the key (which is next to the space bar). Shift-clicking, Option-clicking, and Control-clicking work the same way—just click while pressing the corresponding key.(There’s also right-clicking. That very important topic is described in depth in “Notes on Right-Clicking”.)
Menus. The menus are the words at the top of your screen:
, File, Edit, and so on. Click one to make a list of commands appear.Some people click once to open a menu and then, after reading the choices, click again on the one they want. Other people like to press the mouse button continuously after the initial click on the menu title, drag down the list to the desired command, and only then release the mouse button. Either method works fine.
Dialog boxes. See Figure I-2 for a tour of the onscreen elements you’ll frequently be asked to use, like checkboxes, radio buttons, tabs, and so on.
Figure I-2. Knowing what you’re doing on the Mac often requires knowing what things are called. Here are some of the most common onscreen elements. They include checkboxes (turn on as many as you like) and radio buttons (only one can be turned on in each grouping).
Pressing Return is usually the same as clicking the default button—the lower-right button that almost always means “OK, I’m done here.”Keyboard shortcuts. If you’re typing along in a burst of creative energy, it’s disruptive to have to grab the mouse to use a menu. That’s why many Mac fans prefer to trigger menu commands by pressing key combinations. For example, in word processors, you can press
-B to produce a boldface word. When you read an instruction like “Press -B,” start by pressing the key, and then, while it’s down, type the letter B, and finally release both keys.Tip
You know what’s really nice? The keystroke to open the Preferences dialog box in every Apple program—Mail, Safari, iMovie, Photos, TextEdit, Preview, and on and on—is always the same:
-comma. Better yet, that standard is catching on in other apps, too, like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.Gestures. A gesture is a swipe across your trackpad (on your laptop, or on an external Apple trackpad) or across the top surface of the Apple Magic Mouse. Gestures have been given huge importance in macOS. “Dialog boxes” contains a handy list of them.
Icons. The colorful inch-tall pictures that appear in your various desktop folders are the graphic symbols that represent each program, disk, and document on your computer. If you click an icon one time, it darkens, indicating that you’ve just highlighted or selected it. Now you’re ready to manipulate it by using, for example, a menu command.
A few more tips on using the Mac keyboard appear at the beginning of Chapter 6. Otherwise, if you’ve mastered this much information, then you have all the technical background you need to enjoy macOS Mojave: The Missing Manual.
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