Screen Time
Catalina brings Screen Time to the Mac,
accessed from System Preferences. As
well as monitoring usage of apps, you can
use the features below the line on the left
to restrict usage or enforce downtime.
This replaces the previous Parental
Controls; most of the features from that
are now under Content & Privacy.
Rather than logging in with your
Administrator account and then setting
up restrictions for each user account,
you’ll need to log in as the user account
you want to set up. Click Options, at the
bottom, to set a Screen Time passcode
to prevent changes. The Communication
Limits feature, which (as in iOS and
iPadOS) restricts who the user can
contact via FaceTime and Messages,
is missing, but coming in macOS 10.5.4.
Notes
In the Notes app, you can now create
folders to organise notes, and share them
with others in the same ways as individual
notes, via the People icon. You also have
a new option to set Permission to ‘Only
people you invite can view’, rather than
‘Only people you invite can make
changes’, to avoid unwanted edits.
Remember: only notes stored in iCloud
(not On My Mac) can be shared; if you
don’t see an iCloud section at the left,
you’ll need to tick Notes in System
Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud.
Find My
The revamped Find My app combines
Find My Friends and Find My Mac, with
tabs for People and Devices. In the latter,
you’ll find your Apple products, possibly
including some you junked; ≈-click these
and choose Remove This Device.
Features are largely unchanged, but
behind the scenes, recent devices now
send out a secure Bluetooth ‘beacon’,
even while locked and sleeping, that only
other macOS and iOS products can read,
giving Apple a better chance of locating
your lost items from data relayed silently
by other users’ nearby kit. To enable your
Mac to be found in future, go to System
Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud and then
tick Find My Mac.Image Sequence
In the new version of macOS’ QuickTime
Player app, File > Open Image Sequence
lets you convert stills into a video file –
a previously supported feature that wentmissing some time ago. This is great for
compiling time lapse photos or animation
frames into a video file.Remove downloads
In Finder, your iCloud Drive appears
under an iCloud heading in each window’s
sidebar. While browsing this, you can
≈-click a file and choose Remove
Download. This deletes the file
from your Mac, but leaves it in iCloudScreen Time brings iOS’ monitoring options to the Mac and replaces Parental Controls.Mac unlock
Any Apple Watch can be used to unlock
your Mac (see bit.ly/applemacunlock),
and in Catalina it can also approve other
macOS password requests. This requires
a Watch Series 1 or later running watchOS 6
or higher. Make sure your Mac has Wi-Fi
and Bluetooth turned on, and your Watch
is charged up and connected to the same
Wi-Fi network and has a passcode set up.
In System Preferences > Security &
Privacy > General, you should then see an
option labelled ‘Use your Apple Watch to
unlock apps and your Mac’. Tick this. Alerts
requiring an Administrator password will
tap your wrist; just double-click the side
button to authenticate the action.More Catalina fixes and features
Get into brand new features like Screen Time, Sidecar and more
FEATURE Catalina tips & tricks
32 | MACFORMAT | APRIL 2020 macformat.com @macformat