MacRumors

With the public release of macOS High Sierra, Apple introduced some additional features to its native Safari web browser. Here we'll cover just what they are and how you can customize them to make your web browsing experience a more enjoyable one.

Individual Website Settings

One of the most welcome new changes in Safari 11 is the ability to customize a range of settings for individual websites. Once these options are set up for a site, Safari applies them automatically so you don't have to bother with them again. Here's how.

1. Navigate to a site you frequently visit.
2. Right-click on the URL or website name that appears in the address bar, and select "Settings for This Website". Alternatively, click Safari in the menu bar and you'll see the same option under Preferences.
3. Select your preferences from the drop-down pane that appears below the address bar to control how the website behaves, either by checking the boxes or selecting a setting from the available options.

Safari's built-in Reader mode strips online articles of extraneous web page furniture to make them more readable. Reader is usually enabled by clicking an icon that sometimes appears in the far left of the address bar, but you can check "Use Reader when available" to switch to this by default.

The box next to "Enable content blockers" lets you set whether to activate any ad-blocking extensions you may have installed, while the Page Zoom setting lets you adjust the size that website fonts and images display, allowing you to make them easier to read and navigate.

With the Auto-Play setting, you can prevent websites from playing video the moment you visit a page, which should make browsing a lot less infuriating. The options are Allow All Auto-Play, Stop Media with Sound, and Never Auto-Play.

The last three options in the preferences pane let you choose whether to allow or deny the site access to your Mac's camera and microphone, and whether to enable location detection. If your preference is likely to change from time to time for these, set them to "Ask", and Safari will query you whenever access is requested by the site.

Safari Website Preferences Tab

Helpfully, Apple has added a new tab to Safari preferences for you to keep track of your individual website settings. You can access it at any time by clicking "Preferences" In the Safari menu bar and selecting the Websites tab.

Here you'll find lists of websites that are currently open as well as ones you've customized in the past, categorized by individual settings, where you easily can adjust them. You'll also see an additional setting in the General column listing your preference for websites you've visited that have prompted you about receiving Notifications.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention

Another new feature Apple has added in the latest Safari is Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP). Apple's own testing has found that popular websites can harbor more than 70 cross-site tracking and third-party cookie trackers that all silently collect data on users while making the browsing experience increasingly sluggish.

To solve this, ITP uses local machine learning to identify cookie types and partition them or purge the cross-site scripting data of suspect ad trackers, without affecting the functioning of helpful cookies like those containing localized data or login details, for example. The feature should increase user privacy as well as boost overall browsing speed. You don't need to do anything to enjoy the benefits of ITP – it's on by default.

Following this morning's public release of macOS High Sierra, Apple has updated its iMovie for Mac app with support for High Efficiency Video Coding, aka HEVC or H.265.

As outlined in our in-depth post on HEVC, HEVC is a next-generation video compression standard that's been introduced in both macOS High Sierra and iOS 11. HEVC brings high-quality video with better compression rates, for files that are approximately half the size of H.264, the previous standard.

With support for HEVC, iMovie is now able to import videos in the HEVC format on macOS High Sierra. Today's update also improves compatibility when sharing to YouTube, a feature introduced in iMovie for iOS a couple of weeks ago.

Though iMovie has been updated with HEVC support, Final Cut Pro X, Apple's professional video editing software, has yet to gain support. iMovie can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for free. [Direct Link]

All iOS devices and Macs on High Sierra will support HEVC playback, with encoding/decoding hardware acceleration available on newer iOS devices and the latest 2017 Macs for faster performance and less battery drain.

In other Mac-app related news, iBooks Author, Apple's free app for creating iBooks, has also been updated following the release of macOS High Sierra. iBooks Author, includes support for wide color gamut images and the ability to add images and video from the Photos app using the Media Browser or drag and drop.

Apple's native Photos application got an update with the release of macOS High Sierra, including new library browsing features, a reorganized editing window, enhanced image recognition, and some additional tools to help make your photos look even better. Keep reading to find out what's new in the Photos app.

Browsing the Photos Library

Apple has tweaked the main Library interface in Photos. Whereas previous versions of Photos let you use tabs along the top of the screen in place of an optional sidebar, Apple has now fully embraced the latter as the main navigation area, and has also added a draggable selection counter to the browser that you use to move or export batches of photos.

The new sidebar is divided into five sections: Library, Devices, Shared, Albums, and Projects. The Library section is where you can select from different browsing options, including Memories, Favorites, People, Places, and a useful new option called Imports, which organizes your photos based on when they were imported into your library.

The Shared section contains links to any shared albums you've created, while likes and comments appear in the Activity feed. The Albums section meanwhile contains two collapsible sub-sections called Media Types and My Albums. Media Types contains auto-generated views of your photos filtered by Selfies, Panoramas, Live Photos, and the like, while My Albums contains all the albums you have manually created. Lastly, Projects is where any books, cards, calendars, prints, or slideshows you're working on appear.

The Editing Window

The Photos app also got a reorganized editing window in High Sierra. In addition to the sidebar, there's now a toolbar along the top of the screen with three tabs that let you toggle through three different editing sidebars, making for a less cluttered interface all around. Notice too that the One-click Enhance option is now an icon at the top right of the screen, next to the Done button. 

The Crop tab corrals the traditional crop functions in the sidebar, while the Filters tab is home to an enhanced selection of image filter presets, each with three variations to choose from – Vivid, Dramatic, and Black and White.

Selecting the Adjust tab switches the sidebar to all the usual advanced editing tools, including two new ones, Curves and Selective Color. The triangle beside each tool allows you to expand it for more options, or collapse it to make room for others.

Live Photos

Apple has introduced additional tools for editing Live Photos, including the ability to manually select the static image that represents the clip. This is achieved by adjusting the slider at the bottom of the editing window and selecting Make Key Photo.

You can also now trim Live Photos, and even apply effects such as a Boomerang-like back-and-forth effect and an ethereal Long Exposure style, similar to when a shutter has been left open for a long time. The icons at the bottom left of the editing window let you mute the clip or turn off Live Photo entirely.

Third-Party Photo Editor Support

Lastly, Apple has enhanced the integration of its native Photos app with third-party apps, which should come as good news to those looking to broaden their editing options.

For example, it's now possible to open a photo in a third-party app right from within your Photos Library. Not only that, any edits that you make within that third-party app are automatically saved back to your Photos library.

A number of popular third-party apps have already announced their support for Apple Photos, including Pixelmator Pro, Aurora HDR, Luminar, and Creative Kit. Several photo printers have also signed up, including Whitewall and Shutterfly. You can find more apps that support Photos by checking out the new dedicated section in the Mac App Store, which can also be accessed from within the Photos app.

A major new version of iStat Menus, a popular Mac system monitor for power users, has been released today for macOS High Sierra.

One of the biggest new features in iStat Menus 6 is configurable notifications for a wide range of events, based on CPU, GPU, memory, storage disks, networking, sensors, battery, power, and weather.

iStat Menus now has a Notification Center widget for CPU usage, memory, top CPU and memory processes, load averages, disk space, and uptime.

You can be notified, for instance, when your public IP has changed, if your internet connection is down, if CPU usage is above 60 percent for more than 10 seconds, or even of daylight saving time changes.

iStat Menus 6 features an all-new weather menu with the current temperature and conditions, hourly and weekly forecasts, notifications, and more. Weather-related notifications can be configured.

The update also introduces new ways to color and style the menu bar icons, dropdown menus, and graphs, including light and dark backgrounds.

Another key feature is hotkeys support for opening and closing dropdown menus using your keyboard, including time, CPU, GPU, memory, storage disks, networking, sensors, battery, power, and more.

Other changes include improved accessibility, localization, AirPods battery level support, dropdown menu reordering, automatic fan set switching based on events, and many other new features outlined in the version history.

iStat Menus is built into the macOS menu bar, providing power users with convenient access to system information, such as CPU and GPU usage, memory stats, fan speeds, temperatures, disk usage, and battery life.

iStat Menus 6 is available now for $18 on developer Bjango's website. Existing users with version 3.0 or later can upgrade for $9.99.

macOS High Sierra was publicly released on the Mac App Store today. iStat Menus 6 is also compatible with OS X El Capitan and macOS Sierra.

With the official release of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, Apple introduced support for a new image format called HEIF, which uses the file extension HEIC. Apple sees HEIF as a worthy successor to the JPEG format. So what makes it so good that it can replace an industry standard that's been in use for almost 25 years?

What is HEIF?

HEIF stands for High Efficiency Image Format and can be considered the still-image version of the HEVC video codec that Apple's ecosystem now officially supports. (You can learn more about HEVC here.) The HEIF standard wasn't made by Apple – it was developed in 2015 by the MPEG group, which also invented the AAC audio format used in iTunes.

Benefits of HEIF Over JPEG

As the name implies, HEIF is a more streamlined method of storing image data and offers better quality than the traditional JPEG format. For example, HEIF supports image transparency and can capture a more extended color range than JPEG (16-bit versus 8-bit), which should increase the accuracy of photos taken on Apple's latest iPhones. At the same time, a HEIF-encoded image should be around half the file size of an equivalent-quality JPEG, so users will be able to keep twice the number of shots on their Apple devices (or in iCloud) before they max out their storage capacity.

In addition, HEIF files include a 320x240 embedded thumbnail that's four times the resolution but only twice the file size of a standard JPEG thumbnail. HEIF images can also be rotated and cropped without altering the image or re-saving them, all of which makes working with HEIF files that much faster than JPEG on both Mac and iOS devices.

HEIF also brings other benefits that JPEG doesn't offer because it's unlike your typical image format. That's because it's also capable of acting as a container for multiple files. This should be a boon for anyone who takes bursts of photos or lots of Live Photos – which can be edited in multiple new ways in iOS 11 – but it also means HEIF could become a wholesale replacement for GIF.

HEIF Compatibility and Image Sharing

Currently, Apple only supports HEIF image encoding on iOS devices with a minimum A10 Fusion processor, so that includes the 2017 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and of course Apple's new 2017 range of iPhones. Owners of these devices can check their camera is encoding photos in HEIF by going to Settings -> Camera -> Formats, and ensuring the "High Efficiency" option is selected. The "Most Compatible" option means photos will be encoded in JPEG format.

HEIF is supported on all Macs capable of running macOS High Sierra, and many macOS applications work natively with HEIF, including Photos, Preview, and Quick Look. This means macOS users might consider converting their JPEG image files to HEIF for greater storage or network benefits.

The transition to HEIF within the Apple ecosystem should be mostly transparent, but if users need to move HEIF content outside of that ecosystem, it's worth looking into transcoding options (JPEG, for example) to provide the best backwards compatibility for other users. Happily, iOS 11 will auto-convert HEIF images to JPEG when they are shared to devices running earlier versions of iOS, non-Apple devices, and popular social media sites, or when they are passed over to apps that don't yet support the standard.

With the arrival of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, Apple is supporting a new video format called HEVC, which replaces the previous standard most commonly used on Mac and iOS devices, namely H.264 / AVC. So why has Apple adopted the HEVC format, and what difference will it make to the end user?

What is HEVC?

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265, is a next-generation video compression standard developed by a group of encoding experts called the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding. The HEVC video format has been in existence since around 2013, and HEIF is the still-image version of the standard that both iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra also support. (You can learn more about HEIF here.)

Benefits of HEVC

Apple's decision to adopt HEVC basically means two things - higher quality video and better compression rates. The HEVC standard enables a video to be compressed into a file that is about half the size (or half the bit rate) of H.264 / AVC. To put that another way, a HEVC video file offers significantly better visual quality than an AVC file of equivalent size or bit rate. While results vary depending on the type of content and the encoder settings, videos encoded in HEVC typically exhibit fewer compression artifacts and offer smoother playback than videos encoded using AVC.

According to Apple, HEVC can compress 4K video files to up to 40 percent smaller file sizes than AVC without losing quality, which means users who upgrade their devices to iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra will be able to take the same high-quality videos without using up as much storage space. At the same time, transferring high-resolution video files between devices and over networks will require significantly less bandwidth, a key advance considering new 4K iTunes content launched for the new Apple TV 4K.

Compatibility and Support

To capture and encode video in the HEVC format, iOS devices need to have at least an A10 Fusion processor, so owners of iPhone 7 or later and 2017 iPad Pro are fully able to take advantage of the standard. To check if your device's camera is capturing video in HEVC, go to Settings -> Camera -> Formats, and ensure the "High Efficiency" option is selected.

All iOS devices running iOS 11 and all Macs on High Sierra will support HEVC playback, with encoding/decoding hardware acceleration on newer iOS devices and the latest 2017 Macs offering faster performance combined with less battery drain. Readers interested in further transcoding details are advised to watch Apple's dedicated HEVC codec video presentation.