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Advertisement So you’ve seen the keynote and read all about the OS X is dead, long live macOS., but you’re too impatient to wait till October. Fortunately, you can add some of the upcoming features with the right third party apps. Keep in mind that third party integration can’t hope to match what Apple can do with features baked right into the OS, but also that many of these applications are mature products that have been providing added functionality for some time. New Wallpaper Probably the simplest thing you can do to make El Capitan more closely resemble Sierra is switch out the wallpaper. IDownloadBlog has the, including a 4K version. How to read pocket app for mac offline. It’s a small change, but it’s a pretty wallpaper for those of you who stick to Apple’s stock offerings. Acrobat pro for mac.

Replicating Siri Functionality With Sierra, Siri has finally made it onto the desktop. The smart assistant can do pretty much everything you’d expect from the iOS version, with a few Mac-specific features baked in (like the ability to perform Spotlight-style searches). While full-blown Siri functionality is currently absent in El Capitan, you can add voice commands to your Mac using the existing dictation functionality. It’s easy to set up — just head to System Preferences > Dictation & Speech and enable both Dictation and Use Enhanced Dictation.

You’ll need to wait for a download of around 500MB to complete, then head to System Preferences > Accessibility > Dictation to set it up. You can even change your computer’s keyword phrase to Siri in this option. For a good look at what Dictation Commands can do, You once needed expensive software and a lesson in patience to control your Mac with your voice, but now you can do it with little more than Apple's latest free upgrade to OS X. While much of Siri’s web functionality is absent, the feature allows you to dictate messages or emails, launch apps, control windows and more. With dictation enabled, simply double tap your hotkey to get your computer to listen.

Combine this with Spotlight searching, which Better plan your day, quickly find what you're looking for and multitask like a boss — here's a look at seven excellent OS X features that you're probably not using., and you can pretty much search your computer with your voice. You can even drag and drop results from the Spotlight window, just like Siri will allow in Sierra. Another feature of Sierra’s digital assistant is the ability to drag results into your Today screen, where they function as widgets that will automatically update (think sports results, or currency conversions). If you’re happy to settle for basic widgets, you might find that El Capitan can already The Dashboard is dying. Most users ignore it, and not many developers are building things for it. Replace all of your Mac's Dashboard widgets using the new Today view in Yosemite. You can even Looking for more widgets for Yosemite's Notification Center?

There are quick ways to monitor your system's status, find out what's on TV, control your thermostat, and much more. That even the upcoming Siri won’t be able to do (battery status, current CPU loads, and more). None of these tweaks quite replicate the usefulness of telling Siri to “add lunch with Serena to my Reminders” or “book a table for 2 at 7pm” — but they do go some way toward adding voice control to your Mac computer.

Share Your Clipboard Universal Clipboard in Sierra will seamlessly integrate your macOS and iOS clipboards — just copy on one device to paste on another. By including this functionality at an OS-level, Apple is likely to overcome many of the limitations caused by existing shared clipboard applications, but you should still consider them. Our two favorite tools for the job are Command+C ($3.99) and ($2.99), and we’ve covered Transferring the contents of your Mac's clipboard to your iPhone or iPad usually involves sending yourself an email or message, but that's cumbersome and inefficient. Both are paid apps, and both manage a shared clipboard between your Mac and iOS device in different ways. Command+C uses Wi-Fi, and thus requires your Mac and iPhone to be connected to the same local network, which can be a problem in some situations. Scribe uses Bluetooth low-energy (LE) to connect your devices, which may drain your battery a little quicker is the other option. While Command+C only allows you to paste once, Scribe is a multi-item clipboard manager which is arguably more powerful. Whichever you choose, neither is likely to be quite as effective as the upcoming macOS Sierra, but both do what they advertise. Optimize Your Own Storage Just like iCloud Photo Library before it, Sierra comes with a feature called Optimize Storage that promises to help you create free space on your Mac.