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System Preferences - Under the Hood of Your Mac

New to the Mac? Had a Mac for years? Either way you need to know the "in's and out's" of the System Preferences of your operating system. Getting under the "hood" of your Mac need not mean getting you hands dirty. Don't worry, you don't need to be a computer geek or even slightly nerdy to master your Mac's look and feel.1

What this series will cover

Putting stickers all over the outside of your laptop is not the only way to customize it. In the next several blog posts, we will discover many obvious and also some hidden treats in the System Preferences. Want to control how often pictures change in your screen saver? Or perhaps you type the same response to emails, over and over again? Or maybe the screen dims too quickly for your taste. All of this is can be under your control. Apple sets your Mac's settings out of the box to work in a generally easy manner. But you are you, why don't you make your Mac work the way you want to? Well you certainly can!  Read on...



System Preferences - OK, Now What?

To get to all this Geeky Goodness, you have many options.
  • Click on the  icon in your Menu bar. (Look at the upper left side, yup, there it is!) Select System Preferences from the dropdown menu.
  • Click on the System Preferences on your dock.
  • Select System Preferences from Launchpad. This can be seen by tapping the F4 key on you keyboard or by pinching with five fingers on your trackpad. Try it. Is very cool. Start typing System Preferences and the icons will narrow down showing you relavant applications.2
  • Type System Preferences in Spotlight. This is the little magnifying glass icon at the upper right side of your menu bar.

Lesson One 

For our first lesson let's check out the System Preferences Pane. You know, the window that pops up when you click the System Preferences icon. In the header you will see forward and back arrows, a "Show All" button and a search field.

  • Back and Forward Just like a Web Browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera...) as you move through the preferences you have to option to 'go back' or forward to the last preference setting. When you apply a setting, for example a desktop background, it is instantly applied. No need to restart your Mac or silly foolishness like that. The change is made, pure and simple.
  • Show All This button takes you back to this window from anywhere in the system preferences.
  • Search This is a great feature that will save you a lot of time! As most of us don't go to these settings very often, entering a search term in this field will help you to find the setting you are looking for. As you type, the icons that are relevant highlight so you can quickly navigate to the correct setting pane.

The Icons

The first row groups general settings together. Here you can change your screensaver, location and visibility of your dock or even control what is searchable on your Mac via Spotlight. The next row is for the Input and Output settings of your Mac. (I/O) This is for Input devices like mice and keyboards, and Output devices like the monitor, speakers and printers. The next row covers network related settings. Next are the administrative settings. They are not for the faint of heart, but not too difficult to learn and leverage though.

What's Next?

In the next article, we will examine the General settings icon. Lots of geeky goodness here!
  1. Many of the settings mentioned in the upcoming blog posts may be advanced, but they can save you much time an effort as you use your Mac from day to day. Feel free to dig into them on your own. You may find some hidden gems not covered here. [^fn]:This is a great way to find any program on you Mac, by the way. For more information check out this article on Apple's Support Website.
    Written with StackEdit.
    ↩
  2. Many of the settings mentioned in the upcoming blog posts may be advanced, but they can save you much time an effort as you use your Mac from day to day. Feel free to dig into them on your own. You may find some hidden gems not covered here. [^fn]:This is a great way to find any program on you Mac, by the way. For more information check out this article on Apple's Support Website.
    Written with StackEdit.
    ↩
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