While El Capitan packs some substantial new powers, it isn’t so much about big changes as it is about many, many small ones—from the capability to auto-hide the menu bar to a pointer you can find anywhere ①. It’s easier to enjoy change, however, when you know what to expect. Here are some of the most interesting features that don’t fit into one category or another.
① It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s your pointer swelled to giant proportions to help you find it. (Wiggle the mouse or rub your finger on the trackpad to see this.)
New System Font
Yosemite brought us the Mac’s first new system font since the 21st century began, Helvetica Neue, knitting iOS and OS X’s typography together. But the times they keep a changing—and Apple keeps creating more devices.
El Capitan shares a new typeface, San Francisco, with iOS 9 as well as the operating systems on the newest Apple Watch and Apple TV ②.
② El Capitan bids goodbye to Helvetica Neue (top), replacing it with San Francisco (bottom).
Does the font name ring a bell? When the Apple Macintosh first debuted in 1984, it shipped with a bitmap typeface called San Francisco ③.
③ Apple’s first San Francisco font, circa 1984. (Image thanks to Wikipedia user Chowbok.)
The Magically Magnifying Pointer
For those times when you lose track of your pointer, El Capitan can help. Wiggle the mouse or shake your finger back and forth across the trackpad and the pointer swells so you can see it. It’s a little feature, but a big help.
Flattened Spinning Beach Ball of Death
Known not-so-fondly as the Spinning Beach Ball of Death, the round rainbow pointer you see when your Mac stalls gets an overhaul, too. The new one is flattened and stylized to match El Capitan’s look ④.
④ OS X’s spinning beach ball of death, before (left) and after (right).
Auto-hiding the Menu Bar
The menu bar is an omnipresent part of OS X, always at the top of your screen unless you’re in full-screen mode. But what if you find it gets in your way?
Yosemite let you fade the menu bar, menus, and Dock to black in Dark Mode. (Go to System Preferences > General and choose the Use Dark Menu Bar and Dock.)
El Capitan gives you a new choice—you can auto-hide the menu bar, much as you can hide the Dock (see the “Hide the Dock” bullet item in Try More Dock Tweaks).
Go to System Preferences > General and select Automatically Hide and Show the Menu Bar. The menu bar vanishes, only popping into view when you move your pointer to the top of your screen.
Resuming Stalled Copying
It’s probably happened to you: You’re copying a big honkin’ folder full of files when—after 10 minutes or more of your time—a warning appears that says one of the files is in use or unavailable.
What happens next? The entire copy procedure—no matter whether OS X hiccuped at the first file or the last—is cancelled. If your system goes to sleep or drops the connection while you’re copying something big (say, a backup), it’s the same deal: you get nothing.
El Capitan adds a resume feature to the copy process, which allows OS X to pick up where it left off instead starting over from scratch.
Copying a File’s Pathname
Sometimes it’s useful to know a file’s pathname, in other words, its exact location in your file system. You might need this information for a command when you’re geeking around in Terminal or it may be a helpful to send the pathname to a coworker looking for a file.
Control-click a file in the Finder and, while the menu is still visible, press and hold the Option key. The Copy “Filename” as Pathname item becomes visible. Choose it, and then paste the information wherever you need it to go.
Clicking Silently
Whether you’re surreptitiously clicking during a conference call or working in a dark hotel room while your spouse sleeps nearby, a tiny El Capitan change may help you make new friends…or at least not make any new enemies.
On a laptop with a force-touch trackpad, a new option lets you click silently: Go to System Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click and select Silent Clicking. (Only the newest laptops have a force-touch trackpad. Read more about the feature on this Apple support page.)
A Redesigned Color Picker
El Capitan spiffs up the Color Picker, a system-wide tool that lets you choose colors for text and objects in apps like Notes and Pages.
Most notably, the Crayons view has been replaced with Colored Pencils ⑦ To see the Color Picker in an app that supports it, press Command-Shift-C.
⑦ El Capitan’s Color Picker includes subtle changes, most notably a Colored Pencil picker in place of that old standby, Crayons.
Two-factor Authentication
Apple is offering a more robust security add-on for your Apple ID in El Capitan and iOS 9. Previously, Apple offered a somewhat inconsistent two-step verification option. Now, it’s more thoroughly integrated and easier to use. With this feature on, a hacker not only needs your password to break in, but also access to another one of your devices.
How’s this different from the previous two-step version? The code sent to your secondary device is now longer (6 digits instead of 4), and Apple’s behind-the-scenes methods for trusting devices, sending the codes, and displaying the codes have changed.
Here’s how it works: When you sign in to a new device or Web browser using your Apple ID, you must verify your identity by entering your Apple ID password and a 6-digit verification code. The code displays automatically on all iOS 9 or OS X El Capitan devices you’re currently signed in to. Enter it on the new device.
You won’t need to verify a device again unless you erase it, change your password, or remove it from your Apple ID’s trusted device list.
To see this list on your Mac, go to System Preferences > iCloud and click Account Details. You must enter your Apple ID password and answer security questions.
New Dictionary Languages
Perhaps you parlez Français as well as English, or you commonly write memos in Mandarin. No matter what the language, when you need to look up a word, now you’ve got a good chance of finding it in the Dictionary app.
To add new languages, open Dictionary (in the /Applications folder) and choose Dictionary > Preferences ⑧. Select the boxes for any languages you would like to include, from Norwegian Bokmål to Hindi.
⑧ Dictionary offers you many more language choices.
Chinese-language Timesavers
A lot of people live in China—about 1.35 billion at last count—and Apple is clearly paying attention. El Capitan adds more Chinese-language specific tools, including a new Chinese system font, Ping Fang, as well improved support for writing Chinese characters on the Mac trackpad with your finger ⑨.
⑨ El Capitan makes it easier to write Chinese characters directly on a Mac’s trackpad. (Even if you’re a novice like I am.)
The Trackpad window now reflects the proportions of the actual Mac trackpad to make writing more natural. It also lets your write more than one character at a time.
