Mac users have received a little gift in the form of a reskinned OS. The new OS X Yosemite was released last fall and without the scrollbars and glossy buttons that have been present in the past decade. But, more importantly it has new features which haven’t been entirely explored by the users.  In this article we’ll give you a helping hand and will list some of the features that will make your life easier while using this OS.

Messages

This application is similar to iMessages, Facebook messenger and WhatsApp, but it was created for the Macs (OS X) and its initial name was iChat.  Along with the upgrade to Yosemite this application has grown and is now pretty close to being spot on.

Getting text messages on your Mac

If you spend most of your time at home or in the office tied up to your Mac its easy to communicate with your friends or colleagues through Messages. But say you’re on your way home and you’re doing something important on your iOS device and want to continue once you’ve reach your destination.  As soon as your iPhone is in WiFi range and connected to the same network as your MAC the Continuity feature will automatically take effect.  With this feature you can move from your iOS device to your Mac and continue writing messages to your friends.  SMS Relay is the feature that allows you to send and receive Text messages on your computer, this is done through the green chat bubbles, in addition to iMessages’ blue chat bubbles.   Continuity SMS Relay also allows you to use your Mac to text other non-iPhone users, but you must use the same Apple ID (both on Macs and iOS devices).

How to set up SMS Relay on your iPhone

Go to your phone’s Settings app, tap on Messages, then on Text Message Forwarding and on the screen you’ll notice the list of devices that are sharing the same Apple ID. Select the devices you want your SMS texts to be relayed to by toggling to ON (it becomes green) next to all of them. Then a window will appear on your Mac with a code, enter it on your iPhone in the right window. After that you will start receiving green SMS text messages on your Mac.

How to send audio messages

Although the iphone already has the FaceTime feature with which you can make video calls over WiFi, Yosemite has another option which allows you to send audio messages to your friends.  Instead of having a real-time conversation you can record a short message and send it to your friends.  Let’s say you’re in a hurry, caught up at work and you don’t have time to explain tasks over the phone. Open the Message app and use this feature to record a message and send it right away. Go to the thread of the person you’re chatting to and look in the lower left corner of the application’s window for the microphone button. Click on it then record your message (there is no time limit) , to finish recording  simply push the red square stop button.  The last thing you must do is click the Send button and your recording will be sent.  If you change your mind and want to delete the recording instead of sending it, click on the Cancel button.

Sharing your screen with your friends

If you’ve used Skype then you know that this application has a feature that allows you to share your screen with a contact. Yosemite now has a similar feature, it comes in handy when you remotely want to help someone who may be having some computer issues . This feature is also very useful in teleconferencing meetings. Instead of chatting on Skype you can also use Messages, simply go to the thread of the person that you would like to give access to your screen.  In the upper right corner of the Messages window you will see the Details button.  Click on it, when the dropdown menu appears select the sharing icon that looks like two boxes that overlap.

Safari

This is Apple’s web browser which has a bunch of features such as a new Tab view, this gives you the option to share links on a social media account (by clicking the Share button from the toolbar, which looks like a box that has an arrow pointing up) it then allows you to see the entire website URL.  By going to the menu bar in Safari then clicking on Preferences> Advanced tab and finally the checkbox called “Show full website address”, which is next to the Smart Search Field.  If you want to close a tab there’s an X in the thumbnails that you will need to click.  To launch a new tab click on the empty tab thumbnail that has a “+” in it.