Dark mode, accent colour and tinted icons
Appearance settings go well past light and dark: accent colours, icon styles and even the colour of folders.
Tips tagged #settings
Stop apps opening on their own when you log in
The queue of programs that launch with your Mac is editable, and most of what is in it got there without asking.
Stretch the battery with Low Power Mode
Energy Mode trades a little performance for battery life, separately on battery and on the power adapter.
Stop your Mac reporting back to Apple
Usage analytics, data for developers, your searches and ad personalisation each have a switch, spread across three panels.
Let macOS update itself
One switch in Software Update and another in Privacy & Security keep the security fixes arriving without you noticing.
Look after the battery of a Mac that lives plugged in
Optimised charging and a charge limit stop a permanently connected laptop from sitting at 100% all day.
See what is actually filling your disk
Storage settings break the disk down app by app, and explain that mysterious System Data entry.
Stop the desktop appearing every time you click the wallpaper
By default a click on any visible scrap of wallpaper sweeps all your windows aside. You can restrict it.
Decide when the screen turns itself off
Separate timers for battery and mains, so the Mac neither locks while you read nor stays lit all afternoon.
Set up the Dock the way you want it
Hide it when you are not using it, keep only the apps you open, and stop minimised windows piling up on the right.
Pick a Finder view and make every folder use it
Four ways to look at a folder, four shortcuts, and one button that saves you setting them again folder by folder.
Force quit an app that has stopped responding
The Mac equivalent of Ctrl+Alt+Delete for a single frozen app.
Stack the windows of each app in Mission Control
With fifteen windows open, Mission Control is a mosaic you have to read. One checkbox turns it into piles, one per app.
Run a command by pushing the pointer into a corner
Each corner of the screen can trigger an action, and a modifier key stops it firing every time you reach for the scroll bar.
Warm up the screen when the sun goes down
Night Shift on a schedule, and True Tone all day, so the display stops being the bluest thing in a dark room.
Stop your desktops swapping places
macOS reorders Spaces behind your back, so desktop two is not where you left it. One checkbox freezes them.
Set up a Time Machine backup
Point macOS at an external disk once and it keeps hourly versions of everything by itself.
Fix the trackpad scrolling the wrong way
macOS scrolls like a touchscreen, not like Windows. One switch decides which way the page moves.