Never too old to learn... so far

[Xairbusdriver]

Yesterday I noticed something different on my Mac mini. It looked like the Dock was starting to reproduce by 'cell division'! There was a new 'mini-dock' on the left-hand end of the Dock. (see the beautiful image below) Had only one Menu item: "Open". Could not be moved or deleted.

A bit of searching revealed that Apple had added this "Handoff" function to the Mac, apparently in Mojave macOS 10.14. I may have read about it but had never used it. Frankly, that mini has only had a monitor around 9 months, until I got one, I simply used Screen Sharing for access.

I suppose it could come in handy when running apps that are 'compatible' on networked devices; Macs, iPhones, iPads. Another function I didn't know about, probably used by everyone else here!

BTW, the setting for this (on a Mojave Mac, anyway) is in the General prefs page, next to the last checkbox on that screen: "Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices"

A bit more info at this Apple page.

[kimmer]

Is this also in the very latest OS? I ask because I want to know if I'll bump into it in a few months when I get my new iMac.

[Xairbusdriver]

It probably is. But I'm not sure how it happened on the mini. The app involved was Safari and I don't remember opening it on the mini. It runs 24/7/365 with only one app 99.999% of the time and 0.0005% with Console. The rest of the time might include TextEdit which was not listed on that Apple page.

It is very simple to disable, however. Just uncheck the setting on your Mac. Done. It's always good to check a new installed app's (or OS's) Prefs. That is often where things change, sometimes for the better.

[jchuzi]

I second the motion. After installing a new OS (e.g. upgrading to Catalina from a previous OS), the first thing that I do is to go through all the preference panes in System Preferences to see what is new and, if necessary, modify the settings. Sometimes, my previous preferences don't survive the upgrade and I change them to my liking.

[Paddy]

I've seen this - mostly with Safari, as I don't tend to do actual work on my i-things. It's been handy a couple of times when I've hopped across devices to the same website. Other than that...not terribly useful for moi.