The first public beta of macOS Ventura is available, discover what's new

macOS Ventura is now offered to registered users of the programme beta software from Apple. This first public beta will allow them to test the new features of the new operating system, and there are many of them!

Before jumping on this first public beta, it is worth warning: do not install it on a production machine! Use an external disk instead or create a virtual machine if you have an Apple Silicon Mac (our user guide). And if you really want to tempt the devil, back up your data beforehand.

Stage Manager clears the way.

This being done, the wonderful world of macOS Ventura opens its doors to you with its myriad of new features, starting with the most significant — and most visible — of them: Stage Manager. The window manager is not for all users, the Mac truckers may indeed not find their little ones there. But newcomers will discover another way to manage their application windows.

No longer say System Preferences, but System Settings! Apple has thoroughly revised the interface of this central macOS application, very clearly inspired by the iPad model. It’s a hell of a change that may destabilize some. However, Craig Federighi announced that Apple would keep tweaking these settings throughout the summer.

No revolution for Safari in Ventura, after the cagade of the new stillborn interface attempted by Apple last year with macOS Monterey. On the other hand, Apple has added the synchronization of website settings between devices, the synchronization of extensions and the possibility of sharing groups of tabs which otherwise gain start pages. Note that it is possible to tester Safari 16 on macOS Monterey.

Mail gains for its part several functions present in email software for a long time, such as deferred shipments, the cancellation of the sending of an email or the reminder of a message.

Among the long-awaited functions, this one was also at the top of the pile: the Photos app now identifies duplicates and offers to merge them! Memories created by the software can, as on iOS, be accompanied by background music from Apple Music. And then the interface of the image picker from the applications has been redesigned.

In recent years, Apple has made efforts to improve the Mac webcam, but it is still far from the quality of the sensors on the front of the iPhone. macOS Ventura makes it possible to transform the smartphone into a webcam thanks to the Continuity Camera function. Very convenient !

Difficult to go around all these new features, here are some others worthy of interest:

Several features announced during WWDC have not yet received their invitation cards, such as the Freeform app (interactive whiteboard), the new Game Center dashboard, the SharePlay function allowing you to play together…

Finally, be aware that macOS Ventura requires a relatively recent Mac, roughly speaking all machines released before 2017 are disqualified…

A handful of features exclusive to the Mac M1 and M2

Several functions of macOS Ventura remain the prerogative of Macs equipped with an Apple chip. This is the case of Live Captions, which transcribe the audio of applications into text, a feature that will in any case only be offered in English to begin with.

Inserting emoji “by voice” (by describing the emoji) is limited to M1/M2 computers, as is the reference mode which turns the 12.9-inch iPad Pro into a color control screen.