macOS Mojave & iOS 12

Take a tour of the headline features of Apple’s major operating system upgrades, coming this autumn

- Adam Banks

This year’s operating system updates for the Mac, iPhone and iPad have been unveiled, and they look compelling. macOS 10.14 Mojave and iOS 12 are due for release in the autumn, and Apple released a ton of info about the updates during its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at the start of June.

So, dive into our analysis of what’s coming to your Apple devices later this year. The updates include much-needed improvements to the Mac desktop and Finder, a huge overhaul for the Mac App Store, several new apps (including Home, so you can control your smart accessories from your Mac at last), the ability to monitor how much time you’re spending on your iOS devices, a smarter and more proactive Siri to help you get things done faster in the first place, and much more.

Dark Mode and the desktop

Mojave delivers a dramatic new way to see your Mac

One of the few details we knew in advance of WWDC was that macOS Mojave will have a system-wide Dark Mode. We knew because developer Steve TroughtonSmith spotted an accidentally released preview of the Xcode development environment running in this mode. That got a cheer of its own from developers when it was shown officially during the keynote. For the rest of us, the new System Preferences option will affect macOS itself, its default apps, and third-party apps that choose to support it. (Apple’s Pro apps already have a dark interface.)

The impact of Dark Mode varies. In Safari, not much changes except the title bar, in which tool icons appear in white over grey. In Messages, blue and green bubbles stay the same but everything else becomes dark grey with white text, feeling very different from black on white. The Calendar app goes dark with neon-tinted boxes and reversed-out text. Striking? Definitely. Legible? Maybe not so much.

Dynamic Desktop