macOS Monterey (version 12) is the eighteenth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. The successor to macOS Big Sur, it was announced at WWDC 2021 on June 7, 2021, and released on October 25, 2021. macOS Monterey was succeeded by macOS Ventura, which was released on October 24, 2022.
The operating system is named after Monterey Bay, continuing the trend of releases named after California locations since 2013's 10.9 Mavericks.
macOS Monterey is the final version of macOS that supports the 2015-2017 MacBook Air, Retina MacBook Pro, 2014 Mac Mini and cylindrical Mac Pro, as its successor, macOS Ventura, drops support for those models.
Monterey introduced several new features and changes, including the following:
Shortcuts for the Mac
TestFlight for the Mac
Provisions to allow the planned introduction of Universal Control, which allows a single keyboard and mouse to control multiple Macs and iPads. It works on Macs with Apple silicon and some with an Intel processor, including MacBook Pro (2016 and later), MacBook (2016 and later), MacBook Air (2018 and later), iMac (2017 and later), iMac (5K Retina, 27-inch, Late 2015), iMac Pro, Mac Mini (2018 and later), and Mac Pro (2019). It works on these iPads: iPad Pro, iPad Air (3rd generation and later), iPad (6th generation and later), and iPad Mini (5th generation and later).
Support for the Apple Music Voice Plan Subscription.
Portrait Mode and Noise Cancellation features for FaceTime and some apps (in Control Center).
New Toolbar features and designs for Finder and the Preview app.
Have a Live Memoji and Animoji right on the lock screen.
A yellow privacy indicator on the menu bar for indicating if the Mac's microphone or camera is active.
Live Text, which allows a user to copy, paste, translate and look up text from images displayed by Photos, Screenshot, Quick Look, and Safari.
New Passwords Manager for Mac
New on-device machine-learning–activated keyboard dictation using Siri, and also now for almost unlimited duration.
