2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
El Capitan's evolutionary update is primarily a bug fix for the predecessor Yosemite, which turned out to be a step backward in terms of system performance and speed. An untrained user is unlikely to immediately find 10 differences in the updated OS: here they are all small, but very, very useful.
Split View
Let's start with the most obvious change, which has long been heard by those who are even slightly interested in the news of the Apple world. El Capitan introduces Split View - the same as for the new iPads, and has been in Windows for more than a year. It is convenient to work with two applications on one screen, and the spaces are scaled with a small black slider bar.
It works quite simply. We launch two applications with which we will work. Clamp the green circle in the upper left part of the window of any of the applications and select the area for the size of which it is scaled. Similar functionality is available in Mission Control.
Drag a window from your desktop to any open in full screen mode, and both programs share the workspace.
New Spotlight search
Its full functionality with built-in search, Wikipedia flashcards, weather and YouTube videos remains the domain of US or UK users (see the full list of countries at), but even with purely local operation, Spotlight has many features that you could not know.
A hidden music player, calculator, converter, and even natural language file search - these features are similar in many ways to what Yosemite offered, but few people know about them.
Start dictation by voice
This hidden feature of El Capitan is in the Accessibility section. In the "Dictation" tab, you can set a phrase after which the system starts listening to commands.
The system provides a lot of them by default, and if you wish, you can create the missing ones yourself. We say "Computer, switch to" Notes ", start dictation" and dictate the text of a new note.
It's not Siri yet, but doing basic things when your hands are busy is quite possible in El Capitan. And the quality of Russian speech recognition even in the days of Yosemite proved to be excellent. By the way, dictation is still called from anywhere in the system by double pressing the Fn button.
New Notes
The version for OS X in its functionality completely copies the mobile one - the need for third-party solutions is decreasing. Here came checklists and maps, photos and text formatting, informative cards with links to web pages and sketches drawn on the iPhone or iPad.
An interesting feature that has gone unnoticed by Apple and users is flight status tracking by number. We add it to notes or receive it in a mail message, and the system will offer to view the current state of the flight and the location of the aircraft on the map.
Improved Safari
The standard browser has been replenished with three useful options. In the new Safari, you can pin your favorite pages as much as you like. The idea, of course, is not new, but such a solution is more convenient than bookmarks or reading lists, and a tab in this form takes up much less space.
From what first came out, easy tabbed audio controls are a great tool to deal with annoying pages that automatically play music or videos. If something is playing in a tab, it is marked with a corresponding indicator icon.
Clicking on it mutes the sound of a particular page. In addition, the same icon is duplicated on the right side of the Safari address bar and controls the sound in all tabs. A long press opens an additional list of all pages where music is currently playing.
Settings appeared in the reading mode. In the additional menu, which is hidden under the "aA" button, you will find options for the background color, size and font family.
Minor improvements
- If you lose sight of the cursor, slide your finger across the trackpad as quickly as possible and the cursor will enlarge proportionally.
- Good news for Apple TV owners. Now, to play videos from Safari on a large screen, you do not need to stream the entire browser window. Instead, the function will fire on a specific video.
- You can now hide the top menu bar as well. To do this, check the appropriate item in the "Basic" section.
- Files can be deleted bypassing the Recycle Bin, just like in Windows. The Alt + Cmd + Delete key combination is responsible for this action.
- In the regular Photos, it became possible to edit the metadata of photos. Open the picture, press the Info button in the upper right corner and select or change the location of the photo, add keywords and mark the faces of friends.
What's your favorite El Capitan innovation? We are waiting for your opinions in the comments.
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