Four Solutions to Gotchas in macOS 14 Sonoma

ByEmily Dolloff

We’re seeing an increasing number of people switching to macOS 14 Sonoma, and for the most part, things are going well. However, Apple introduced some new features—and turned them on by default—that are causing some consternation. If you’ve switched to Sonoma or are planning to soon, here are four features you might want to know about.

Hide Windows when Clicking on the Desktop

The most immediately surprising thing you’ll notice when you upgrade to Sonoma is that clicking an empty area on the desktop moves all windows off to the side to give you full access to icons and widgets on your desktop. It’s not a bad feature, but if you’re accustomed to clicking the desktop simply to switch to the Finder, it can be off-putting. To keep windows where they are, open System Settings > Desktop & Dock, and under Desktop & Stage Manager, where it says “Click wallpaper to reveal desktop,” choose Only in Stage Manager.

Apple has introduced additional interlocking settings here, so you might want to play with them to see if they support your preferred working style. In particular, note the Show Items checkboxes—if you don’t like seeing all your desktop icons, deselect the On Desktop box to make those icons appear only when you click the desktop.

Print Queue Apps Are Now Part of Print Center

For many years, when you printed from a Mac, a print queue app launched to show the progress of your print job and quit automatically once the job was completed. Some people kept those print queue apps in the Dock afterward, perhaps as a way of accessing a multifunction printer’s scanner. Upgrading to macOS 14 Sonoma broke those Dock icons because individual print queue apps have been replaced by the new Print Center app.

Print Center now launches automatically to show print job progress, but you can also open it manually from the Application folder’s Utilities folder. It also offers options to manage the printer and launch Image Capture, Apple’s default interface for scanning. If you’ve been surprised by printing changes in Sonoma, take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with Print Center.

Gestures Can Trigger Fireworks and Other Effects

In Sonoma, when you’re in a video call using FaceTime, Zoom, Webex, or another supported videoconferencing app, making certain hand gestures will trigger special effects. (This works only on a Mac with Apple silicon or when using an iPhone as your webcam.) These reactions are fun… except when they’re not. A double thumbs-down gesture that generates rain during a therapy session may be utterly inappropriate, and causing balloons to fall during a serious business meeting just because you inadvertently made a V with your index and middle fingers might not be considered amusing. Here are the gestures and what they trigger.

To ensure you don’t accidentally generate a reaction with a stray gesture, click the green video camera icon that appears in your menu bar when using one of the apps that supports reactions. (You must be actively sending video—just having the app open may not be sufficient to make the green icon appear.) Then click Reactions under your preview so it goes from having a green icon to a gray icon. Reactions are now disabled. That app should remember your preference, but you’ll have to turn off reactions separately in every app where they’re available.

New Privacy Awareness Icons

That green video camera icon that appears in your menu bar when sending video in Sonoma isn’t the only one that can appear in that spot, and we’ve fielded questions from people who are surprised and confused by these icons appearing. Don’t worry; they aren’t an indication of malware on your Mac! Apple added them so you’d always be aware when an app was using your Mac’s camera or microphone, or recording the screen. You can think of them as an expansion of the tiny green LED that lights up next to the Mac’s camera when it’s in use.

The three icons you might see are:

  • Green camera, which indicates that the Mac’s video camera is in use. The microphone may also be active, but that’s not indicated separately.
  • Orange microphone, which shows that the Mac’s mic is recording audio.
  • Purple screen, which tells you that an app is recording your screen. Beyond screen-sharing apps, other apps like screenshot utilities can trigger this icon.

Click the icon to see what app is involved. You could even see multiple apps listed at the top, if several apps are recording the screen, for instance.

If you’ve switched to Sonoma already, we hope this quick tour of a few potentially confusing features has helped explain what’s going on. And if you’re still waiting to install Sonoma—which is fine!—remember to come back to this article when you decide to upgrade.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/fizkes)

Social Media: Some of the new default features in Sonoma have caused confusion. We explain why windows hide when you click the desktop, where printer queue apps went, how to turn off the new reaction gestures, and the privacy awareness icons.

Similar Posts

  • Never Save Your Work in These Locations

    In every job that involves interaction with the public, amusing “Can you believe…” stories about customers abound. They’re often triggered by seemingly reasonable…

  • Who cares about QR Codes?

    By now you’ve probably seen one of those odd-looking white squares with a bunch of smaller square dots that make up a random pattern inside–that’s a QR code. QR stands for “Quick Response,” and a QR code is a form of barcode, just like on the packaging of nearly everything you buy.

    Usually QR codes are used to store Web links–URLs–so an ad can display just the QR code instead an unwieldy and hard-to-type web address. But QR codes aren’t just for ads. They’ve appeared on business cards, in magazines and books, on coins and bills, and even on tombstones–any place it would be nice to help someone load a Web link into a smartphone but where there isn’t enough room for a URL or in situations where viewers won’t remember the URL later. And the links? They can display anything that can appear on the Web: text, photos, videos, games, and more.

    Only one built-in iPhone app can scan QR codes–the Wallet app in iOS 9–but it can scan only QR codes that are associated with Wallet passes, things like airline boarding passes, concert tickets, and iTunes gift cards. For QR codes that encode any other sort of data, Wallet shows an error. It would be nice if Apple would add general QR scanning capabilities to Wallet or the Camera app, but until that happens, you’ll need another app.
    There are numerous QR code scanning apps in the App Store, but if you need a recommendation, give TapMedia’s QR Reader for iPhone a try. It’s free with ads (remove them with a $1.99 in-app purchase), scans both QR codes and traditional barcodes on most commercial products, and displays the associated information within the app. It can even help you create your own QR codes.

    To use a QR code scanner, launch the app, allow it to access the camera when it asks, and then point it at the QR code. Good apps will scan nearly instantly, but if not, move the camera so the QR code is centered between the guides. If even that doesn’t work, move forward or back so the camera can focus on the centered code.

    Once the code has been scanned, the app will usually bring up an in-app Web browser to display whatever was encoded. For certain kinds of data, like books or grocery items, the app may go right to Amazon or a price comparison site. Good apps will also keep a record of sites you’ve scanned, so you can go back to them later, even if you can no longer scan the QR code.

    So download a QR code scanning app and keep an eye out for QR codes. Once you start looking, you’ll find them everywhere–it’s a modern-day treasure hunt!