OS X 10.11 El Capitan improves upon and adds to the big changes 10.10 Yosemite brought us. You’ll find updates—some substantial, some subtle—to key apps as well as more integration of the OS X and the iOS experiences. Use the links in this chapter to jump straight to the new feature you’re most interested in.
Interface Changes
New system font: The New System Font, San Francisco, is part of the same typeface family used in iOS 9 and the Apple Watch. (If you’re using a Chinese system, you also have a new system font, called Ping Fang.)
Find my pointer: Perhaps the most likely new feature to wow the crowd in a demo, you can now shake your mouse to show the pointer (see Figure 1 in the next chapter, as well as The Magically Magnifying Pointer).
Menu bar auto-hide: You’ve long been able to select a checkbox in the Dock System Preferences pane to make the Dock appear only when you want it, and now you can do the same with the menu bar (see Auto-hiding the Menu Bar).
Mission Control: If you haven’t yet learned Mission Control, this update may make it worth your while:
Split View, a feature shared with iOS 9, lets you fill your screen with two “full- screen” windows, so you can minimize distractions and quickly position the windows (see New! Split View).
Invoking Mission Control now shows all your windows, but without per-app grouping as in the past. To restore grouping, see Group Windows by App (Again).
Spaces, which are kind of like customized desktops, are easier to create with the new Spaces Bar (see Put Everything in Its Space).
Dictation: Invoke dictation using just your voice—“Computer, start dictating!” Also, ten new built-in Automator Dictation workflows let you navigate the iTunes Store and more. (See Talk to Your Mac—and Let It Talk to You.)
Fundamentals
General speed: When Apple introduced El Capitan at WWDC in mid-2014, the company claimed that El Capitan launches apps up to 1.4 times faster, switches apps up to 2 times faster, opens PDFs in Preview up to 4 times faster, and displays the first messages in Mail up to 2 times faster.
Metal: A graphics API (application programming interface) introduced last year in iOS 8, Metal allows app developers to give their apps more direct access to the Mac’s graphics processor. This is especially interesting for developers of image rendering software—and game makers.
System Integrity Protection: Also called “rootless,” this feature makes an El Capitan Mac more resistant to attacks and malware, but it also limits what power users can do to their systems—unless they disable it.
For example, in OS X’s command-line utility, Terminal, you can no longer use the sudo command in protected directories, including /bin, /sbin, and /usr (except for the /usr/local). These are now off limits, even from administrative users, and can be changed only by Apple’s installer.
Two-factor authentication: Apple has beefed up security by adding two-factor authentication for your Apple ID in El Capitan and iOS 9. See Two-factor Authentication.
Trash changes: You can no longer choose Finder > Secure Empty Trash to remove all the files in your Trash and have their data written over on your hard disk. However, if you like to empty your Trash only occasionally (in case you change your mind and want to retrieve something), Delete Immediately lets you remove files from view without emptying your entire Trash can (see Tackle the Trash).
The three-finger drag option (in System Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click) that let you move a window by dragging with three fingers, is gone.
If you miss that feature, you can activate that behavior in System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad. Click Trackpad Options, select the Enable Dragging checkbox, choose Three Finger Drag from the pop-up menu, and then click OK. (With this on, you can three-finger drag anything, not just windows.)
Newer laptops with force-touch trackpads can be set so that there’s no click noise ①. For more, read Clicking Silently.
① MacBooks with force-touch trackpads become quiet as ninjas with the new Silent Clicking option.
System-wide Tools
Color Picker: The Color Picker grows up a little in El Capitan, replacing its Crayon tab with a Colored Pencils tab (see A Redesigned Color Picker).
Spotlight: As was the case with iOS 9, Apple put a lot of effort into improving Spotlight for El Capitan, though there’s still no Siri button on the Mac. New Spotlight capabilities include:
The Spotlight search panel can be dragged around on the screen.
Spotlight can find answers from a wider range of sources, including sports, stocks, weather, Web video, and public transit information (in limited cities).
It’s easier to enter complicated queries using Spotlight’s new natural language capabilities. Natural language searching also works in a Finder window search box, in Safari, and in the Mail app.
New ways to sort the Notification Center—Recents, Recents by App, and Manually by App.
A new default Calendar notification, Time to Leave, that sends alerts based on traffic between you and your destination. The checkbox for this is in the Calendars app; choose Calendars > Preferences > Alerts.
iCloud Drive: A new progress wheel lets you know when a file is uploading to the cloud. See New! Keep an Eye on Uploads.
Apple Apps
Here’s a look at what’s new, in order of importance.
Notes
Notes has been transformed into a useful note-taking app that syncs with iCloud and integrates with your iOS 9 devices. You can now create checklists and embed many types of media in a note—images, video, audio memos, PDFs, sketches (from iOS 9), maps, Web links, and more. Plus, you can view these embedded items by category, in the Attachments Browser. Learn more in Note Your Thoughts in El Capitan.
Safari
A new Mute button appears on any tab where an audio or video file is playing ②.
② Quickly mute noisy tabs in Safari.
You can now pin your favorite tabs so they’re always available.
New options help you customize how Safari Reader articles appear.
The Smart Search field can now handle natural-language searches, similar to those in Spotlight.
A compatible video playing in Safari now shows an AirPlay icon in its controller so you can stream just the video to an Apple TV without mirroring your entire screen.
Rolled out in 2014 as a replacement for Apple’s iPhoto and Aperture apps, Photos picks up a few new features as of Photos 1.1 in El Capitan, including:
Support for third-party editing extensions (purchased from Apple’s App Store).
More options for sorting photos, including by title and by date with the newest first and by title.
The Info window now includes an editable Add a Location field so you can assign (or re-assign) a selected photo’s (or photos’) location ③. You can also now drag the red pin on the map in the Info window to specify a location.
③ Use Photos’ new editable Add a Location field in the Info window to add, or change, location data for a photo.
Mail
You can now two-finger swipe left to delete a message, or right to mark it as unread, just as you can in iOS.
Mail adds a tabbed interface for quickly working between messages you’re composing in full-screen mode and the new Split View (see Tabs, Tabs, Everywhere.
Apple has added natural-language searching to Mail as well, so you can look for “mail from Apple” or “unread messages from today.”
Mail’s Data Detectors feature now may show a banner at the top of a received or sent message (but not a draft), offering to help you manage information in the message, for example by adding a phone number to an entry in the Contacts app.
Maps
The Share button in Maps adds an item for attaching a map to a note in the refreshed Notes app (see Adding a Map).
icon in its controller so you can stream just the video to an Apple TV without mirroring your entire screen.
button in Maps adds an item for attaching a map to a note in the refreshed Notes app (see 
