Discover the Power of Big Sur with these 11 tips, tricks, and hidden Features.
Big Sur is an outstanding innovation because of the bunch of features included. You will be missing out on a lot if you don’t tap into these great features.
Big Sur was released last year and is also known as macOS11 Big Sur. Everyone who’s got Big Sur has probably made the necessary adjustments to the interface and other major new features. The secret is the operating system being quite vast and there lots of new features that many will not notice. In other words, Big Sur will not be performing to maximum benefits for you if you don’t discover these new features.
- Charging Optimisation
Are you aware that if the battery is fully charged all the time is not a wise decision? If you want your battery to last longer then it’s advisable to charge it to about 80 percent most of the time. Monitoring the battery level is probably something that is so easy to forget because there are more important issues to handle. A solution was provided by Apple, one of the great features about Big Sur is called “Optimise charging battery”. This feature monitors when you plug and unplugged your MacBook over a period.
The feature analyses the data and makes adjustments to the battery as it charges. If you unplug your machine, you’ll have a fully charged battery. If your machine is a turn-on, charging will be put on hold from time to time. The battery juice is reduced to extend the battery’s life span.
The Magic Behind macOS Big Sur
- Monitor your Password with Safari
One of the biggest disadvantages of this digital age is data breach which mostly happens in one blink. There has been a news break about the massive data breach whereby millions of usernames and passwords were compromised. Safari is your new security agent for your data because it now has a feature that informs you if your data has been compromised. Go to preferences in Safari and check under the password section for a checkbox labelled “Detect Password” which has been compromised.
If keychain works in conjunction with Safari this feature will use cryptographic techniques to run through your data and see if any has been compromised. If this is the case, Safari will suggest a new secured password.
- Pinning your Conversation
IOS 14 offers the option to pin your text conversation to the top of the list in the message app. This is also possible with Big Sur; you just need to right click on the conversation in your list and select pin in the pop-up menu. You’ll find the conversation centred at the top of your list, which makes it easy to find. The good thing is pinned conversation are sync across devices, conversation will also appear on your iPhone or iPad. Right click to undo a pin and select undo.
The Magic Behind macOS Big Sur
- Have more Control with Centre Shortcuts
You might think that there’s nothing new with the new Control Centre if you’ve already seen it in IOS. If you’re unable to locate it, click on the icon with the stacked pair of on/off switches next to Siri in the menu bar. It works the same way, just like in the iPhone, a set of controls will appear when you open it up such as brightness and WI-FI. To activate one of them click to access any of the controls, you need to click and hold on to the name and drag it right to the menu bar.
You can also learn how to customise the switches and options in the control centre. Go to the dock and menu bar since there’s no edit button in the control centre. Dock and menu bar in the system preferences, this control have limited customisation options compared to the IOS version. We are hopeful that there will be more options in the future with subsequent updates. There are currently seven permanent modules:
- Screen Mirroring
- Display
- Sound
- Media controls
- Do not disturb
- WI-FI/Bluetooth
- Keyboard brightness
If you activate the UI accessibility, the features below will be available for use:
- Voice over
- Invert colours
- Head pointer
- And more
Battery – You get a view of the percentage of life span battery on your MacBook, you will get more information about the power source if you click on it. You’ll also get to see Apps that consumes more energy. There’s also the option to open the battery system preference.
Fast User Switching – Change the user who is logged into your MacBook with this feature.
The Magic Behind macOS Big Sur
- Tint your Wallpaper
Changing the appearance of your device from time to time could be interesting to suit personal preferences. You might already be familiar with light and dark appearance modes, macOS Mojave has this feature, the feature can be expanded in Big Sur to make it easier on the eyes. Tap system preferences in the general tab and here comes an appearance section at the top of the window with a setting called “Allow in light mode, you get a grey hue in the windows if you activate the tint. The light mode offers the option to switch between a grey and a white tint, less apparent in the dark mode, windows will toggle between dark and pitch black.
- Get feedback as you type
Speech content is the new name given to the speech setting in the accessibility system preference in Big Sur although not a new thing. The main thing here is the feature allows you to set your MacBook to announce character as you type which is called “speak typing feedback”. Type a letter and MacBook will pronounce the letter, press the space bar after typing and your system will pronounce the word. This feature is not there yet because if you type really fast the system might struggle to keep up. It’s quite good for Apple app such as:
- Notes
- Pages
- Messages
The implementation of the third party app, is most likely not available.
- Safari sneaks view
Working under pressure sometimes could lead to having multiple pages open in Safari, which could make things more difficult. If you hardly find yourself in this situation good for you because most don’t. If you move your cursor over a tab, you’ll find a preview thumbnail of the web page therefore you don’t have to click in and out of tabs to find the right one.
- The signed system volume
There was something new when upgrading to macOS Catalina, there were two storage volumes on the Mac, one was called Macintosh HD whilst the other was called Macintosh HD -Data? Apple decided to do something new by implementing a read only system volume. Macintosh HD was a read-only system volume, and Macintosh HD – Data was used for storing files and data. There’s been an upgrade to this in macOS Big Sur, the Macintosh HD volume is now a signed system volume that adds cryptographic protections which helps to maintain the integrity of the operating system.
This update also makes the software safer and more reliable; it also allows for the operating system to be restored without having to do an overhaul re installation. The protection is built into the installation process therefore nothing is required on your part. On the other hand, if you use third party backup software, you’ll have to confirm to ensure that it’s compliant with the single system volume. The backup system will fail to make a volume backup that can be used to boot your system if it’s not compatible.
- Get the News update in the Notification Centre
Apple revamped the notification centre with the invention of Big Sur, the notification now supports widgets, small and simple items that give access to controls or information. You can also add items such as:
- Reminders
- Calendar
- Podcast
- Other Apps
One of the Big Sur downsides was news wasn’t available as a widget, but the 11.1 updates now make news widget available. If you like to keep track of the news, it’s a great widget to have especially If you’re an Apple news + subscriber. If you previously configured your widget and forgot about it, install the big update, and then try to add it to the notification centre.
- Discover how your Data are handled by Apps
Apple doesn’t joke when it comes to data protection, that’s why they want you to be aware about how your data is being used. MacOS comes with lots of features that ensures that your privacy concern is top priority. Apple introduced a special feature with Big Sur, there’s a section on the app page called App privacy. The section exposes the type of data a particular app is harvesting and sending to Developer.
- Receive Air Quality updates via Siri
Siri’s updates on Mac are less frequent compared to Siri’s update on IOS, Apple is constantly adding more features to Siri. An example is the air quality report that has been available on iOS which appears on Siri on the Mac with the Big Sur 11.1 update. If you ask Siri about the air quality of the location, you’ll get a report card donating various data and indexes used to measure air quality. A click on the report card will open the location report on the BreezoMeter website.
In Conclusion
I hope you’ll find these tips, tricks, and hidden features quite useful. I strongly believe that all these additions are the things that really makes these products worthwhile. Product designs might look good and attractive but won’t offer nothing compared to hidden features that gives value for money.
