Hands-On Mac 165 Transcript

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0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Hands-On Mac. Let's take a look at setting up and managing extensions in macOS Sequoia. Stay tuned Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. Welcome back to Hands-On Mac.

I am Micah Sargent, and today we are taking a look at extensions in macOS Sequoia. These are the tools that you can use to kind of well extend your system. That's why they're called extensions. Different apps, different services that you install will offer different functionality that is based in your macOS and not necessarily tied to the app itself, so you won't have to launch the app necessarily in order to make use of these. And I wanted to kind of talk about each of them so you could better understand what they all do and how they work. So let's head over to macOS to take a look. All right, here we are on macOS and you can see that I have launched the system settings pane and I have gone into general and then login items and extensions. We've talked about login items in the past and what these allow in the background options are.

We're going to scroll down to the extensions pane and take a look at these actions dock tiles, file providers, finder, photos, editing, quick look, sharing and spotlight. So, starting at the top we have actions. If we click the little eye button to the right of actions, you will see a pop-up window that shows you that these are the action extensions that are installed on this system so they allow you to do things like add custom quick actions in your context menus. So if I choose to toggle on ivory, for example, and I choose done here, I'm going to go into my examples folder that we worked with a lot and I am going to select an image, right click on it and look in quick actions and see if there's anything that pops up here. So we don't have anything that pops up here, but these are some of the things that you could end up seeing in this quick actions pane or the services pane. So here we've got our basic functionality that we'd expect rotate left, mark it up, create a PDF, convert the image or remove background. If we come back into actions, you can see that markup is turned on because that is an action that you are able to do in this context menu when we right click on this and choose quick actions. So those are some of the sort of basic functionality that's built in, but this is accessible across the entire system in terms of files that are actually able to make use of these actions. So in this case, being able to share to Ivory, for example, if the Ivory app was installed for this user, or, with markup, of course, being able to mark up an image.

Next is dock tiles, and this is an interesting one because it's going to depend on your system. Dock tiles, according to Apple, allow you to customize the dock by adding spacers, set quick actions see previews and actions and more. So dock tiles will actually make a difference down here, where we looked before at the dock. Being able to show certain files in the dock and have them pop up exactly as we would expect, is all dependent upon what we have in this Doctile section. So for Setapp, for example, which is here, being able to see a preview of this extension is part of this system. So here I can see that for the Setapp app, I've got a Doctile plugin that's specific to it, paramute, which is an app for being able to process a file and change it, change the file type. What Paramute does is, when it's running, it will actually show a status bar right there in the dock tile and give you information about how long it is until the file is complete, and then Arc, being able to change the way that its icon looks in the dock as well, is all part of dock tiles.

Now there are actually two that are missing from this extensions pane because I don't have apps that make use of these, and so I want to talk about those Camera extensions and color panels. Camera extensions are a tool that lets you use Ecamm, for example a former sponsor on the network to have a virtual camera. You would see the camera extensions option here in this extensions pane, and color panels allow you to select and view colors, copy and paste color codes, create palettes. So these are special tools that kind of give you access to color information, as you might expect on your Mac. You may also see a couple other options here that are not appearing in this kind of default setup Drivers, which, of course, are custom drivers to give apps and, in particular, hardware access to system functionalities.

So if you are using a tool that needs drivers, you would see that information here. And endpoint security extensions, which enhance security functionality by monitoring system events for potentially malicious activity. Now, I'm using Apple's words for this so that you can kind of understand how Apple describes it, but essentially what that does is if you have a tool that's specifically integrated with the system to look for changes to the system and then let you know if something has installed something in a location on your Mac. That's what that tool is for File providers. I think these are very cool. It's essentially a way for you to see local and remote files whenever you're in Finder. So if you click on Finder and you move down to locations, that is where you will see this pop up. So in this case I can click the eye and I see Coresync and I see Finder Helper. This is for Google Drive in one case and Adobe in the other case, and so these help the system to be able to display those external options of accessing files. So here you might see Dropbox, you might see Google Drive, you might see your Adobe Creative Cloud as part of the file provider's location.

Finder extensions are those basic tools that let you do different things with your files. Now, this will depend on the type of file. So if you don't see the option, then it means that that file is not able to do one of these things. But if I turn this off, rotate left, markup and trim and just keep, create PDF, convert image and remove background, I'll click done here. Now, when I go to one of these files and I go to quick actions, you'll see that those other options have been removed. And I go to quick actions, you'll see that those other options have been removed. So I need to go back into here and choose Finder and turn those back on. Now you can create new Finder actions by Finder extensions I guess is the best way to put it by using the automator tool, and that will allow you to do things like create custom, and I actually have an earlier episode of Hands on Mac that kind of walks you through the process of doing that.

This is how Apple describes those Finder extensions Enhance search and organization functionalities for files, documents, images and more. And then, of course, you turn on the extensions that you want from the Quick Actions menu on the desktop and in the finder and also in that finder preview pane. So if you have preview turned on, we'll go up to view in uh, while we have finder in the front and we choose show preview. Now, if I were to select this image, the options down at the bottom are available to me per the options that I've chosen in that finder menu. Next is an option called media. So it says these add new controls for playback, editing and sharing. Extensions can also be used for playing various formats. So if you have uh special files that wouldn't otherwise play on your Mac, then that is where you would see the media option appear that gives you access to files that wouldn't otherwise uh media, files that wouldn't otherwise be able uh to be read, and so that is the reason why media would uh by chance open on your Mac. I have to tell you, I wish that I had a tool that would allow me specifically to sort apps that I could use based on what extensions they have, because it would be cool to see exactly how different apps kind of handle this.

Network extensions is another one you might see here. This is especially if you are working with a VPN or a content filter. You will see that network extensions option appear where you can then go in and say, no, I don't want that network extension turned on, or yes, I do uh photos projects. So this is uh the ability to add photo project to your Mac. Um, this is specific the Photos app. There are apps that have integrated with the Photos app that let you create things like books and you know canvas, prints and mailers, and so you will see in this extensions menu those specific apps that you've downloaded that in many cases don't have an app of their own but are an extension of the Photos app itself. So that's Photo Projects.

Photos Editing is another option that is separate from that where these are apps that are able to edit photos within the Photos app. So in the Photos app you're able to make edits via markup, but you're also able to make edits via Pixelmator Pro if you have that app installed. So if you have photos apps installed, those are going to be your options to do that, both in the photos app and then, of course, you know, just doing those direct edits to those files. So you can open the photos app. You can say I want to edit with the Pixelmator Pro app and what it does is it tries to give you that view within the photos app so you don't have to leave the photos app. Oftentimes it will be kind of a slimmed down, trimmed down version of the app that you're using.

Quick look extensions Very cool. What they allow you to do is a quick look, of course, is the ability to select a file. We've talked about Quick Look before I can select a file, hit spacebar and that will show me a quick version of that file. If you're working with files that would otherwise not be able to be viewed because your Mac is not able to display that, this will instead allow you to see those files. So a great example of this would be maybe like a 3D file that is specific to an app that you use to create a 3D file or a custom file. If you're using an app that creates custom vectors, for example, and your Mac would otherwise not be able to display them, a Quick Look extension created by an app would allow the Mac to display those simply by hitting the spacebar. So the options that are installed here include InDesign, so an InDesign file could be displayed with that spacebar.

Bear the Notes app. Cleanshot 10, which is an app for capturing screenshots and screen recordings. Drafts. The app Fantastical to see an event very easily. Keep it, which is an app for collecting files and links. News Explorer, another kind of RSS app. Parcel, which is for delivery, so quick looking at delivery is very easy to do. The Tips app from Apple itself, so that you can quick look that information. All of those are quick look options, and toggling those on or off will give you the ability to see or not see certain files with a simple press of the spacebar.

Sharing this is kind of the big one. This is the one where you're going to see the most options. In fact, if you look here, it shows several options and 30 more. Sharing is your share sheet. So what pops up in the share sheet on the Mac is going to depend on what you have turned on. Here there are two options. Well, actually there are a couple of options that are default extensions and those are not able to be turned off. So here you'll see them actually grayed out. Airdrop, mail and Messages are all untoggable, but importantly, you are able to reorganize these options. If you find yourself doing something more or less, then you may want to move that to the top, like copying a link at the top.

Airdrop yes, I don't use the reading list in Safari Mail. I don't use that app very much, but messages often is something that I use. I might save it to my notes so I can bring that up. Adding to photos is something I often do. Opening in news rarely, so I might turn that off. Reminders I would turn off and then you can also see the other options here as well. I would turn on shortcuts, but add to Photomator, add to an app called Play, annotate it, contact suggestions, so of course those are who you might send it to. You can have that on or off, whether you bring it into drafts or free form, if you pin it to the screen, if it's a, this is specific to clean shot, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and then I can click done to move out of that. So your sharing thing is going to be probably the most jam packed section and that's what you'd find there.

A few other options that are available here as well include smart card readers. This is especially common if you are using a machine that belongs to a business where you use a smart card to authenticate yourself. Those extensions will appear here and allow you to manage, if you have access to this smart cards and certificates to authenticate and to complete tasks across apps. So knowing how those smart card extensions work and being able to make changes to those is all available via that smart card readers extension, spotlight, which is showing up here. These enhance search functionality and in many cases what it means is that these apps are giving Spotlight access to their own databases. So if I click the eye icon, I can see that the Keep it app is saying hey, look here as well. When you're searching for files, pixelmator Pro, look here. When you're searching for files, transmit, look here. And Xcode, look here. And then also in Spotlight, being able to display the content from these apps where otherwise it would not appear. So it's kind of a mixture of Quick Look and then Search, together, saying check these places, I'll feed you all of that information and let you look for it here, but also I will give you the knowledge that you need to be able to display, to translate what's being shown so that you can show it to the user. And, of course, toggling those off would make it so that Spotlight does not look in those places.

And, last but not least, this is becoming an increasingly uncommon one it is Touch Bar. If your Mac has a Touch Bar, then you can turn on the extensions that you want to access from it. So this is the ability to say you know, these are the extensions that I want to be able to view in my Touch Bar whenever I am in a specific app. So, dear friends, dear listeners, dear viewers, that is a look at extensions, how to manage extensions and, I think, more importantly, just to understand what each of these extension types are.

There are loads of different apps that make use of these extensions, and you may see some and not see others because, again, it all depends on what apps you have installed and the extensions, uh, for which of which they make use. So, uh, that is a look at extensions and macOS Sequoia, of course it is. Uh, you know it's. It's also something that you would want to know for previous versions of macOS as well. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Hands-On Mac. Of course, you can always email me if you have questions, micah, at twittv, and I look forward to being back next week with you for another episode of Hands-On Mac. Bye-bye.