Latest Mac Beta Adds New ‘Edge Light’ Feature
Apple this week released new 26.2 betas for its panoply of platforms, with Wednesday bringing word of a new feature addition to macOS Tahoe. The new function is called Edge Light; what it does is create a virtual light ring surrounding the border of your Mac’s display. The controls are accessible via the menubar, with the idea being Edge Light helps people better illuminate themselves during videoconferencing sessions.
John Voorhees has posted a good first look at Edge Light for MacStories.
News of Edge Light’s advent piqued my interest because my little corner of the dining room where my makeshift “office” is located doesn’t get the best lighting. My desk is nearest a window, and that helps—as does my desk lamp—but the ceiling light isn’t very bright—especially at nighttime. I don’t do a ton of calls with video enabled for these reasons, not to mention my general social anxiety, but nonetheless Edge Light remains a cool (and clever) piece of software. It’s one of those “only Apple can do it” features.
Broadly, learning of Edge Light also serves as a sobering reminder of what I’m missing out on with not using an Apple silicon Mac as my everyday machine. I’m continuing to ride it out with my 2019 Retina 4K iMac for as long as possible—and I’m lucky my workflows aren’t more computationally demanding—but alas, this Intel iMac is starting to show its age. While it remains performant at what I need it to do day-to-day, the processor is definitely pokey, the fans blast, and, more pointedly, I’m irked by the nagging feeling that the aforementioned macOS Tahoe doesn’t support my machine and I’m feeling “behind.” I’m missing out on good-for-accessibility Apple silicon niceties like iPhone Mirroring and more—including the forthcoming Edge Light. But, life has been somewhat of a bear this year due to life stuff that I’m still working through, so revamping my desk setup has necessarily—understandably so—fallen by the proverbial wayside. What I’m saying is, I’m trying to give myself grace for not being on top of my game as usual; I do have two Apple silicon laptops available to me—one is an M2 MacBook Air, the other an M2 Pro 14” MacBook Pro—to “plug and play”—but that would mean redoing my desk setup, and I still lack the required mental/emotional bandwidth to tackle it. Moreover, from an accessibility perspective, I’d much prefer to dock one of those MacBooks with an external display. After 6 years of using a (still perfectly lovely) high-resolution, 21.5” screen, it’d be an adjustment for my low vision to shrink to 13–14”.
Things will happen when they’re supposed to—Edge Light just gave me more FOMO.
Rumors suggest Apple’s 26.2 software updates will ship sometime next month.
