macOS 11: All the little things!

[macintoshmac]

I remember someone asking for it last year, so even this year we still have the nostalgic Macintosh name right where it was last year.

 

[sammy2066]

I have a feeling we will see a lot of refinements to other icons and overall iconography as the beta progresses.

Can’t say I’m a big fan of the rounded corners or the new icons (they’re neither flat nor skeuomorphic and seem like a love child of Forstall and Ive).

With this huge push for a common architecture and code base for iOS and macOS, why can’t they have consistent icons too?

 

[funkypepper]

Couldn't wait, had to upgrade to get the new shiny thing™.

For people that were wondering, yes it's still possible to hide the toolbar and sidebar for Finder, thankfully:

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Thank you! I wonder if the system actually respects the setting for stuff like external drives and such. Currently on Catalina it always forgets.

I wish they’d got rid of the .DS_Store mess, and remove the New Finder Window menu entry to make it truly spatial.

I wouldn’t mind two modes for Finder actually, one spatial and one navigational mode.

 

[thingstoponder]

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How are you running iTunes?

 

[snow755]

I got too say for beta Big Sur has been vary stable so far for me


well done apple

 

[Icaras]

Is the Notification Center at all pinnable? Or is it still forced to auto hide?

 

[thingstoponder]

Couldn't wait, had to upgrade to get the new shiny thing™.

For people that were wondering, yes it's still possible to hide the toolbar and sidebar for Finder, thankfully:

View attachment 926819

So the status bar is on the top now instead of the bottom? Is this only if you hid the toolbar?

 

[Watabou]

So the status bar is on the top now instead of the bottom? Is this only if you hid the toolbar?

If you show the toolbar again, the status bar goes back to the bottom, yeah (this is the same behavior as Catalina):

 

[Lunfai]

Is the Notification Center at all pinnable? Or is it still forced to auto hide?

Nope, very annoying I want to pin it like on iPad OS.

 

[Ansath]

Is the Notification Center at all pinnable? Or is it still forced to auto hide?

not pinnable

 

[Icaras]

Nope, very annoying I want to pin it like on iPad OS.

not pinnable

Thanks. Yea, disappointing. Definitely something to send feedback for.

 

[ErikGrim]

Can someone please post a screenshot of the music app? Has the player been updated like in iOS 14?

For all things Music app:

Music - Missing Features, Bugs, Issues & Troubleshooting

Hey, hey, hey! Album art and intelligent sorting by Artist/Year in list view is back (Music 1.1.0.129):

forums.macrumors.com

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Is there a new Time Machine look and feel?

Looks and work exactly the same.
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Can windows go beyond the menu bar? Or is that limitation still present?

Thankfully that fundamental part of macOS is still in effect.

It’s interesting how dev unfriendly Safari is. It doesn’t even have inbuilt JSON formatter.

Funny. I vastly prefer it to the un-navigable mess the Chrome one has become.
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Is the graphite highlight colour still possible?

Yes. And I still vastly prefer it.
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How are you running iTunes?

Retroactive

 

[baselinegrid]

Couldn't wait, had to upgrade to get the new shiny thing™.

For people that were wondering, yes it's still possible to hide the toolbar and sidebar for Finder, thankfully:

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Looks pretty slick actually!

 

[KALLT]

An individual note can be set to have a light background
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That’s in Catalina too.

 

[ZachNathan]

There is a new Battery system preferences pane and here are all the options that are supported on current MacBooks that can run Big Sur:

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Ugh what is with that battery icon! I think I just vomited xD

 

[martyjmclean]

Yes, it kept that setting for me after I updated but I reverted back to the default setting because it looked off to me with the new rounded corners like it has in iOS/iPadOS.
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Sheets are now presented as an attached modal window and no longer fly out of the parent window:

https://imgur.com/djjGrGd

Preference windows that change window size with different toolbar items have a new animation:

That's Amphetamine's animation, not macOS'.

 

[Kylo83]

Can you use stereo homepods as main output now?

 

[Killerbob]

I upgraded a what I would call "semi-complex" macOS installation, and bar a few issues with installation, it pretty much all works.

The 1st time I ran the upgrade it errored on me, but I just tried a 2nd time (download and the whole shebang), and this time it went through without issue.

I have tested most applications, and have only found a few that does NOT work;

• Dropbox (as reported)
• Little Snitch
• Onyx
• TinkerTool

And of course a bunch of “Incompatible Version”, but on most of these you can continue, and it seems to work;

• WinClone
• Carbon Copy Cloner

And then of course there a few “funny” things going on, but they are mostly graphics related. Like in MS Word text shifts between white and black, and when you go into LaunchPad, most of the time you have to ESC out (it doesn’t work to click outside any boxed…

But that’s really it, everything else worked…

 

[ErikGrim]

Can you use stereo homepods as main output now?

As noted many places: no.

 

[return2sendai]

Mojave till I die!

 

[Kylo83]

As noted many places: no.

Crazy it’s still not there, all I wanna do is use stereo homepods how difficult is it to add airplay 2 as a output why only in music

 

[ErikGrim]

Crazy it’s still not there, all I wanna do is use stereo homepods how difficult is it to add airplay 2 as a output why only in music

I agree. It’s bizarre.

 

[DinkThifferent]

I remember someone asking for it last year, so even this year we still have the nostalgic Macintosh name right where it was last year.

Is it just me or does it look like the finder icon has (have?) tears in his(their?) eyes?

 

[macintoshmac]

Is it just me or does it look like the finder icon has (have?) tears in his(their?) eyes?

Side effect of the elongated eyes. 😆

 

[Camperniki]

I just finished installing it on my 2018 MBP and noticed there is no way to get the battery percentage in the menu bar. What the heck?! I hope this is just a bug or oversight because if that is how it is in the final release that's disturbing.

Also, it re-enabled the boot chime automagically on my 2018. It's nice to have it back. (I tried enabling it before but after a software update it went away and I didn't bother re-enabling it).

I found that setting hiding in system preferences under Dock & Menu Bar.