Apple Finally Releases macOS Big Sur with These 8 Exciting New Features

Today Apple officially rounded out its complete family of operating systems with the release of macOS Big Sur, marking the company's last major software update for 2020.
Following on the heels of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, and tvOS 14 — all of which have moved well into point releases already — macOS Big Sur made its original debut back in June at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, followed by a public beta program that began in August.
So while there aren't a lot of huge surprises in Big Sur, if you've been waiting for the public release, it's now here, bringing with it a brand new design that nudges it closer to iOS, support for Apple's new M1-equipped Apple Silicon Macs, and much more. Read on for 8 cool new things in macOS Big Sur.
An All-New Design
For the first time in years, Apple has added a fresh new coat of paint to its latest macOS release, not only giving it an even cleaner and more refined look but also adding several new UI features that will make iPad and iPhone users feel right at home.
Apple's first-party apps gain some new design consistency, offering up full-height sidebars and blending top toolbars in or even losing them entirely, which puts more focus on the app and its content and less on the surrounding controls. The Dock has also been similarly redesigned, and Apple's own first-party apps have all adopted a square icon design that's very clearly inspired by their iOS counterparts.
Control Center
Clearly borrowed from iPadOS, Big Sur now features a full control center that can be called up from the top right corner, providing options for things like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirDrop, Do Not Disturb, display brightness, audio volume, and playback controls. MacBook users can even access keyboard brightness controls from here too.
Not only does this put more options are your fingertips, but it will also help you keep your menu bar significantly less cluttered, since many of the controls that previously had to live there for quick access can now be tucked into the new Control Center, where they're only one more click away. You can even drag-and-drop controls between the Control Center and the menu bar.
Notification Center and Widgets
macOS Big Sur changes up its widget game a bit, and although you can't drop widgets on your desktop — in this regard, it's more like the iPad than the iPhone — you can now use multiple widget sizes and organize them in much the same way on macOS as you can on iPadOS.
Notifications are also now grouped right above the widgets, eliminating the two-pane view of the old Notification Center, which now simply floats out from the right-hand side of the screen, hovering above your desktop, rather than blocking it out. Notifications can also be even more interactive than before, and will group up and stack up just like they do on the iPhone and iPad.
Safari 14
Technically speaking, Apple's newest version of Safari stands by itself, and can even be downloaded for older versions of macOS, although of course it's the standard on Big Sur.
With Safari 14 on Big Sur, you not only gain better performance and better security, but if you've been envying the customizability that Chrome offers, you'll be happy to know that you can now fully change up your start page layout, adding new sections you want to see while removing those that you don't, and you can even add a custom background wallpaper.
The tab bar also gets a nice upgrade, allowing it to show a lot more tabs and letting you see what's in them at a glance, both by providing more prominent favicons once they get too narrow to read, as well as getting a preview of a tab's page simply by hovering your mouse pointer over it.
The App Store also now gains a dedicated category for Safari extensions, which will let you more easily find tools to enhance your browsing experience, and you can choose the websites where you want to use any given extension.
Safari on macOS also offers the same built-in translation features that came to iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 earlier this year, allowing you to instantly translate web pages between seven languages in a click without having to rely on Google Translate, plus a new Privacy Report feature will show you exactly what its Intelligent Tracking Prevention has been protecting you from.
Lastly, even though Safari was already the fastest and most power-efficient browser you could use on a Mac, Apple has taken that up an even bigger notch with more performance increases, boasting 1.5 hours more video streaming time and 50% faster website loading time compared to other Mac browsers like Chrome and Firefox.
Messages Goes Mainstream
Although we've always appreciated the fact that Apple provides a version of Messages for macOS, letting you send, receive, and respond to texts and iMessages without having to reach for your iPhone or iPad, the unfortunate fact is that the macOS version of Messages has really been an anemic step-brother to its more robust iOS and iPadOS versions, lacking support for many advanced features like effects and stickers and Memoji.
Fortunately, along with all of the others ways in which Big Sur is getting closer to iOS, Messages is also joining the family, introducing almost all of the capabilities of the mobile version to the Mac, including even the newest features like pinned conversations, inline replies, group photos, and mentions.
Of course, almost all of the other stuff that's been available on the iPhone since iOS 10 is now here as well, including effects, tapbacks, typing indicators, Memoji, image and GIF support, and best of all, a much much better search capability.
In fact, it seems like the only things we're really missing now in Messages for Mac are those that require specific hardware. For example, while you'll get Memoji stickers, you can't send live animated Animoji or Memoji since there's no TrueDepth camera on your MacBook, although of course we can still dream that a Face ID equipped Mac will arrive someday.
Better Maps
In keeping in line with the big Maps improvements that have come to recent versions of iOS, Big Sur gets a redesigned Maps app that removes much of the cruft of the old one while also giving you access to many of the new back-end features that Apple has added to its mapping platform.
For example, you'll now be able to make use of Apple's curated "Guides" right from you Mac, discovering new restaurants, shops, parks, and other entertainment venues, and you can even create your own curated lists and Guides and share them with your friends and family.
Apple's new iOS 14 Electric Vehicle routing features are also now available on the Mac, along with older iOS Maps features like Look Around and Indoor Maps. Basically, much like Messages, the new Maps app has gotten almost entirely on-par with its iPhone and iPad counterpart — you can even plan out cycling directions if you're fortunate enough to have them available in your city already.
AirPods Improvements
macOS Big Sur also joins your listening party with support for automatic device switching for your AirPods, letting you seamlessly switch the audio from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac without having to fiddle with a bunch of buttons.
You'll need the latest H1-equipped second-gen AirPods or AirPods Pro to take advantage of this feature, and while Big Sur sadly doesn't offer support for the new Spatial Audio features, we're hoping that will be coming in another update very soon.
Netflix and YouTube in 4K
Even though Apple released the Apple TV 4K and began offering 4K movies on the iTunes Store back in 2017, it took until last year's release of macOS Catalina before you could actually watch 4K movies and TV shows on your Mac.
Even then, however, that was limited to iTunes and Apple TV+ content. Other streaming services like Netflix and even YouTube left you stuck in 1080p, even if you had a 5K Retina iMac.
The good news, however, is that Big Sur finally rectifies this, adding the ability to plays shows from Netflix and other streaming services in 4K right in your browser, along with support for YouTube's 4K codec.
That said, there is a bit of a catch here: You'll need a T2-equipped Mac to be able to play Netflix in 4K, and this will likely apply to other streaming services as well. To be fair, that restriction isn't really new — it also applied to iTunes and Apple TV+ content in Catalina — and it likely has something to do with the necessary 4K hardware decoders being embedded in the T2 chip.