Apple has released new macOS Sequoia 15.1 software bringing Apple Intelligence and other new features following the operating system’s September debut.

To install an over-the-air update, click the Apple menu and choose the System Settings option, then go to General > Software Update and follow the instructions. Apple Intelligence requires an Apple Silicon-powered Mac, including MacBook M1 and newer, with Siri language and locale set to US English. It’s also available on the latest iPhone 16 lineup and last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max models.

You can enable Apple Intelligence in the system settings, but the feature is in beta and there is a waiting list. Apple Intelligence will expand its language support and gain additional features later in 2024 and 2025, including the creation of custom emojis from prompts called GenMoji and an AI image generator called Image Playground (pictured below ).

As part of the Apple Intelligence upgrade, Siri Assistant uses Apple’s Large Language Models (LLM) to better understand natural language queries. Siri will understand you better if you stumble over your words, maintain context for follow-up questions, and leverage your personal context. The digital assistant can also answer questions about your Mac’s features, such as finding and using specific features, because Apple trained the underlying AI model on its extensive support documentation.

Tap on Siri now kicks in when you press the Command key twice (and shows you suggested queries). You can now switch between voice and text typing more quickly for more private Siri interactions. The wizard works across all applications and parses complex queries into a series of chained tasks. For example, you could create an animated photo slideshow with a query like “Our family at the beach for the past five years, with upbeat music.”

Apple Intelligence offers writing tools to help you rewrite, proofread, and summarize text. You can change the tone to be friendly, professional, or concise, and long documents can be summarized as a paragraph, key points, list, or table.

Apple Intelligence summarizes notifications on the lock screen and emails in the Mail app instead of showing you the first few lines. It also powers contextual smart replies in messages and mail. Oh, and Reader mode in Safari can now summarize long articles!

When recording audio in Notes, the app automatically creates a searchable text transcript with a quick summary and key takeaways. This useful feature can save you a lot of time when recording lectures, keynotes, meetings, business presentations, etc.

Apple Intelligence also brings a new AI-powered object removal feature with seamless background replacement to the Photos app, called Clean Up. Clean Up lets you easily remove background photobombs and other unwanted objects by flicking them.

If your Mac is incompatible with Apple Intelligence, don’t worry; The update brings some notable improvements that don’t require the latest Macs. Mirroring iPhonewhich debuted in iOS 18.0 and macOS Sequoia 15.0, now supports drag and drop. You can drag iPhone items like a picture from the iPhone Mirroring window and drop them onto projects on your Mac, like a Pages document, and vice versa.

MacBook owners can now enable Low Power Mode to save battery power from the Battery menu in the macOS menu bar. In previous versions of macOS, this switch was only accessible in System Settings > Battery.

Like other Apple devices, Low Power Mode on your Mac extends battery life by reducing processor performance, suspending certain background tasks, reducing screen brightness, and limiting screen refresh rate to 60Hz on Macs that support ProMotion technology.

You can now hide the option to turn off noise cancellation in AirPods settings as part of Apple’s mission to improve people’s hearing. Another facet of this is the new features of the AirPods Pro 2 hearing aid available with iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1.

To get the latest AirPods features after installing the Sequoia update, connect the earbuds to your Mac, place them in the charging case, and close the lid. Your Mac will download and install the latest AirPods firmware overnight (there is no manual update process for AirPods).

Apple’s TV app on macOS Sequoia 15.1 introduces a proper watchlist under the Home tab. This section lists all the shows you’ve queued but haven’t started watching yet. At the same time, your Up Next now only shows videos you’ve started but haven’t finished watching, like on Netflix. As part of this change, Up next has been renamed Continue Watching.

The new Reduce Interruptions feature filters out any notifications that aren’t important, helping to keep those pesky alerts under control. All Focus modes now include a switch called “Intelligent Breakthrough and Silencing” that helps reduce interruptions in processing your notifications.

For more details on other under-the-hood changes and tweaks in this update, read the macOS Sequoia 15.1 Release Notes on the Apple website. Information on bug fixes and security patches will be detailed later. this Apple page.

Intel-based Macs do not support some Sequoia features which require modern equipment. Additionally, some macOS features are limited in terms of language support, as evidenced by Apple’s macOS Feature Availability Page.

Source: Apple