Apple’s macOS Sequoia is here, but is it worth an upgrade?
It has a few new tricks up its sleeve, though.
After months of teasing and testing, macOS Sequoia (macOS 15) has officially launched, bringing a fresh set of updates aimed at improving how you work across your Apple devices.
Released alongside iOS 18 yesterday, this update promises subtle but impactful changes, especially for those who use both their Mac and iPhone regularly.
If you have a compatible Mac—like an iMac from 2019 or later, or a MacBook Air from 2020 onward—you can download macOS Sequoia as a free update. It’s available through the Mac App Store or in System Settings → General → Software Update.
If you’re familiar with macOS Sonoma, which saw wide adoption, you’ll notice that Sequoia builds on its foundation with a few new tricks up its sleeve.
- One of those is iPhone mirroring, which extends the Continuity Camera feature from Sonoma. This addition allows you to interact with your iPhone apps and notifications directly from your Mac screen, providing smoother transitions between devices. Soon, Apple plans to expand this feature further by adding drag-and-drop file transfers between iPhone and Mac, which could make multitasking feel even more fluid.
- Another update aimed at productivity is window tiling. Unlike Sonoma's Stage Manager, which grouped open apps, Sequoia’s tiling feature gives you more control, letting you arrange up to four windows in whatever layout works best for you.
- On the privacy front, the Passwords app replaces Keychain, streamlining how passwords and credentials are managed. Now, all your logins sync securely across your Apple devices, making it easier to keep track of sensitive information without sacrificing security.
One highly anticipated feature not included at the launch is Apple Intelligence. Expected to roll out later this year, it will introduce AI-driven tools like text summarization and enhanced Siri capabilities. However, these features will only be available on Macs with M1 chips or newer, highlighting Apple’s focus on leveraging its custom silicon for more advanced tasks.
Alongside the major updates, macOS Sequoia also brings smaller tweaks to Safari and video conferencing, aiming to make the day-to-day experience of over 100 million Mac users a bit more fluid and responsive.
For me, having used macOS Sonoma, Sequoia doesn’t feel like a dramatic change, but it does offer some meaningful refinements. I think the bigger shifts will come with Apple Intelligence, but for now, Sequoia might still bring some useful improvements to how you work with your MacBook.