and on your other synced devices
(normally the deletion would sync,
removing the file everywhere).Reminders
The Reminders app has significant new
features which are really handy, including
multiple Reminders lists to organise
your tasks, automated smart lists and
subtasks. The downside is that to make
all this work, it needs to upgrade the
reminders in your iCloud, making them
incompatible with earlier versions (see
bit.ly/appleremindersupgrade).
You’ll be invited to upgrade
Reminders when you first run the new
app. If you’re still using other devices that
can’t be upgraded to macOS 10.15 or iOS
13, or are sharing reminders with other
users who are, you can opt to Upgrade
Later, skipping the new features for now,
to keep everything working. Another
innovation is that you can tag a contact
in a reminder, and when you next contact
them via Messages you’ll be reminded
to mention it.Sidecar
Sidecar, which lets you use an iPad as a
second screen, is great, but setting it up
has a lot of pitfalls. You must have iPadOS
(the iPad equivalent of iOS 13), and your
Mac must be running Catalina. However,
every Mac or iPad that supports theseversions will work with Sidecar: see bit.ly/
applesidecar. Both devices must be
signed in to the same Apple ID in their
iCloud settings, and set up to use Apple’s
two-factor authentication: see bit.ly/
mf2fa. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Handoff must
also be active on both devices: see bit.ly/
applehandoff. Miss any of these steps and
Sidecar may show an unrelated error.App Store login
In System Preferences > Apple ID, you’ll
see there’s an App Store Media &
Purchases item below iCloud, but it may
be greyed out. If so, you can’t sign in to
your account here; instead, open the
App Store app and go to App Store >
Preferences to enter your Apple ID. The
System Preferences item can then be
accessed to set when a password is
required for App Store downloads and
purchases and whether Touch ID can be
used instead (on Macs that support it).Reduce effects
Catalina shouldn’t normally run slower
than your previous macOS – it may even
make some things faster. But a subjective
speed-up, at least, can be a side-effect
of enabling two options in System
Preferences > Accessibility > Display:
Reduce motion and Reduce transparency.
Reduce motion replaces the dramatic
animations seen when invoking MissionControl, for example (press £, use the
Touch Bar icon or swipe up with three
fingers on a Magic Trackpad), with a
simple fade. Reduce Transparency makes
the menu bar and window bars solid
rather than showing through a blurred
version of what’s behind them.The brilliant Sidecar feature lets you use an iPad
as a second monitor via USB or Wi-Fi.
QT clever
QuickTime Player gains a Picture
in Picture button at the right of its
play bar. This floats the video
window in the corner of the screen,
on top of other apps; you can drag it
to another corner, or resize it. This
feature was already available when
playing video in Safari, but the way
it was accessed, from a ≈-click
menu, clashed with features in some
websites, including YouTube. You can
now click the audio icon at the right
of Safari’s URL bar, while playing
media, to get a contextual menu and
select Enter Picture in Picture.macformat.com @macformat APRIL 2020 | MACFORMAT | 33