This New Split-View Feature In Mac OS X Is Freaking Awesome

OS X 10.11 includes major productivity and performance updates.

There is a new version of OS X (10.11), the operating system that powers iMacs and MacBooks.

Apple

It's called OS X El Capitan, and it was announced today at Apple's big annual conference, WWDC.

Apple

One long-awaited, amazing new feature in OS X 10.11 is SPLIT-VIEW.

Brendan Klinkenberg / BuzzFeed

You just drag-and-drop windows into two "zones" to automatically see two windows side-by-side.

In OS X 10.11, click on the green button and drag.

You can see any windows side-by-side, like Maps and Messages.

Apple

There are a ton of other features, too.

Multiple desktops

Pinned sites in Safari

- In Safari, you can now "pin" sites by dragging the tab to the left. When you reopen a window, "pinned" sites will be there.

- In Safari, you can also quickly find tabs playing music and mute them with one click.

- In Notes, you can now drag links from Safari to Notes. The new links show a preview thumbnail.

- Mission control makes window organization easier. Three finger swipe up on the trackpad to enable mission control and simply move app windows into a new "desktop" to make it full screen or drag it into another desktop window to automatically enable "split-view."

- In Mail, mark messages unread by swiping two fingers across trackpad and swiping the message away to delete.

- In terms of performance, El Capitan will improve app switching by up to two times and app launch up to 1.4 times.

Here's how to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.11:

- Developers get access to the beta today.

- Early adopters can download the public beta in July. (Sign up at beta.apple.com later today)

- Everyone else can download El Capitan for free in September.

But don't forget to backup your data!