Transcription
There's a few things that I always do when I get a new Mac, and I was about to go through them but thought this time I'd do it on camera.
Let's start with Finder, specifically the sidebar, because most of this is stuff that I don't use, and we can change that by coming to Finder settings, sidebar, and choosing what we want visible. For me, I don't want to see tags, movies, music, pictures, and none of the iCloud stuff. AirDrop is also completely pointless to have here, and I'll show you why in a minute.
Okay, much better! Now I replace these with my most used folders, and these folders are everywhere from external drives, like the video I'm currently working on, to folders I have in the cloud.
So let's now fix the folder windows. First, I changed the view to list. I don't know how people use anything other than this; it's way easier to navigate, and you can easily see all the important details like file size and date modified. I also like date modified to come up first, and I shortened the column so that it shows the date in a more simplified format.
All right, so you know when you're deep into multiple subfolders to the point where you're no longer sure where you are? Well, you can fix that by coming here to view and enabling "Show Path Bar." This also lets you easily move between the different folders. While we're here, I also enable the status bar so that I always know the size of the folder I'm in.
Up top, we have the toolbar, which by default comes with these functions, but we can customize them by right-clicking and selecting "Customize Toolbar." First, I get rid of tags and groups because I don't use them, as well as get info, because you can get that just as easily by right-clicking on a file. Then I add AirDrop so I can just click to AirDrop a file, and this is why I removed it from the sidebar earlier.
I also customized the share button by clicking it and then edit extensions, getting rid of all the stuff that I don't use. Much better!
And then there's this search box, but this searches the entire Mac. If I'm seeing this, I definitely want to search this folder and not the entire Mac. We can change this by coming to Finder settings, Advanced, and under "When performing a search," I change it to search the current folder.
All right, so you know when you're opening a file, like a song, and it opens up in Apple Music? We can also change that by specifying which app to use for each file type. Just right-click the file, get info, and under "Open with," you can choose the app you want to use and then press "Change All." Now every time you open that file type, it'll always use the app you just specified.
Okay, so by default, when you open Finder, it opens up in Recents. Personally, I would rather it open on my Documents folder, and to change that, we just come again to Finder settings, General, and choose which one we want from here.
The next thing I do is customize the Recents folder because there are two things I don't like about how it's set up by default. The first is that it doesn't add folders, just files, but most of the time, I just want to get to a folder I was just in, not a specific file. Secondly, it lists every file you've ever opened, so by the time you've had your Mac for a while, your list is going to be huge.
Since the Recents folder is just a smart folder, we can actually create our own version of it. To do that, we just come here to File, New Smart Folder. I want it to search this Mac, and then I'm going to press the plus sign and set the last open date to be within 7 days. Now it'll show everything we've opened in the past week, and I don't want it to show any apps here, so I'm going to press the Option key, and you see the plus sign turns into three dots. I'm going to press it and select "None of the following are true" and "Kind is Applications." That's it.
Now I'm going to save and name it "Recents," toggle on the option to the sidebar, and remove the old version.
I've never been big on wallpapers because honestly, I just never used to see them. I was always going from one window to the other, so there was never a reason to see my desktop. But that all changed with the new widgets because now you can actually add widgets to the desktop, and not just the widgets on the Mac, but also any widget you have access to on your iPhone.
So if I right-click anywhere on the desktop and click widgets, it'll show up a bunch of widgets from apps installed on my Mac and on my iPhone. The best part is that a lot of these are interactive. So let's start with the first one I use, which is my calendar. I use Fantastical, but there's also one for the stock calendar app. I'm going to pick this one here, and because Fantastical widgets are interactive, I can just press on different days and see what I have going on on that day. I can also move it around and even adjust the size.
Then I have my HomeKit folder to run different scenes, and this is also interactive, so I can immediately see what's going on around the house, like what lights are on. If I want to, I can turn them off from here. The same goes for the garage door.
I also have the weather widget as well as a battery widget to keep track of my AirPods and my mouse's battery. Lastly, I have a folder for the shortcuts I use on the Mac. I have a full video coming on these, so make sure you're subscribed.
Now I can just spread up with my thumb and three fingers to go to my desktop and see all I have going on. This basically gives a whole other level of functionality to the desktop. When you open up an app, you see that the widgets turn monochrome. They are only colored when you're on the desktop, but if you want to always keep them in either monochrome or in color, you can do that by coming to System Settings, Desktop and Dock, scroll down to widgets, and choose from this drop-down menu. For me, I like to have them change automatically.
Then for those widgets that I still want to see but not every time, I just put them in the Control Center here on the right. For me, that's just a widget from this app called Parcel that shows when my deliveries are coming. To keep the desktop always clean, I go under Finder settings and uncheck these options here so that every time I plug in an external drive, I don't see them on the desktop.
While we're on the topic of keeping things tidy, one tool that does just that is the sponsor of today's video, CleanMyMac X. When I'm done with the video, my Mac is a mess. It has b-roll and massive files, as well as screenshots and screen recordings everywhere. This is where CleanMyMac X comes in. It starts with a smart scan that does cleanup, malware removal, and speeds up your Mac all in just a couple of seconds. Then it has Space Lens that helps me see what's taking up space on my Mac, and I can then decide what to keep and remove.
It also has a ton of useful maintenance tools like the app updater that lets me easily update every app on my Mac, even the ones that are not in the Apple Store. Or if I no longer use an app, I can use the uninstaller to uninstall it the right way without leaving any trace of unwanted library files.
CleanMyMac X lets me focus on producing more while embracing the mess. You can get a 7-day free trial and 20% off by using my code from Sergio or by using the link in the description. So let's now move on to the Dock, and the first thing I do is get rid of all the apps and adjust the size. Then we can right-click the dock to go to the dock settings, and I actually prefer it on the bottom. I know it's technically smarter to have it on the sides to maximize the vertical space since we have less of it, but I just can't get used to it.
Then I change the way apps are minimized from the Genie effect to scale. This gets rid of the animation and makes it snappier. Also, you know how when you minimize an app it takes up a new space on the dock? If you're like me and don't want that, you can change it here by toggling on "Minimize windows into application icon," and now every time I minimize a window, it'll go inside the app's icon instead of cluttering the dock.
I also toggle off the option to show suggested and recent applications, as otherwise they won't leave the dock when you quit them.
All right, so if we scroll to the bottom, we have Hot Corners. This is a feature that lets you hover to the corners of your screen to toggle on different actions. So if you set your bottom right hot corner to be a quick note, then every time you move your cursor to the bottom right, you'll trigger a quick note.
But a lot of people get frustrated with this because it's easy to accidentally trigger a function. To get around that, you can actually bind modifier keys on your keyboard so that a function only gets triggered when you hover to the corner while holding a specific modifier key. To do this, you just hold a modifier key like Command or Option when you're choosing a function. For me, I use Command, and the only hot corner I use is quick notes on the bottom right.
So let's now move on to the menu bar, and the only change I think is an absolute must is to show the battery percentage. You can do that under System Settings, Control Center, Battery, and then turn on "Show Percentage." I have no idea why this isn't turned on by default.
If we scroll up, we can customize what's on there. For me, I add Bluetooth, and I remove the Spotlight search.
All right, so in the trackpad settings, I increase the default speed because it's just way too slow. I toggle on "Tap to click," which honestly should just be on by default. Then I come here to scroll and zoom and toggle off Natural Scrolling. If you leave it on, when you swipe down on the trackpad, the screen goes up. If we turn it off, the screen moves in the same direction as you swipe, which feels much more natural to me.
The last thing I change on the trackpad is under Accessibility, Pointer Control, and then Trackpad Options, and that's to enable "Use Trackpad for dragging," and change the dragging style to "Three-finger drag." Now I can move windows around by just dragging in with three fingers on the trackpad.
So let's now move on to System Settings. The first thing I do is customize the Spotlight search, and I don't mean installing a replacement, but rather what you want Spotlight to index. By default, it'll show you everything, including stuff you'll likely never use, like code headers, tips, and JSON files. Thankfully, we can customize it by coming here to Settings, Siri and Spotlight, and now we can toggle off what we don't want to be indexed.
This not only makes finding easier but makes it snappier too because it doesn't have to index a bunch of useless stuff. By the way, this affects Spotlight replacements like Alfred and Raycast as well.
All right, so if you have an Apple Watch, you definitely want to set it to be used for password unlocking. You can do this under Touch ID and Password, and then at the bottom, you'll see an option to toggle on your Apple Watch. Now every time you open up your Mac while you're wearing your Apple Watch, it'll automatically unlock. While we're here, depending on what I'm doing, it's sometimes easier to use Touch ID with a different finger or even a different hand, so I add multiple fingerprints here. If you have multiple people using your Mac, you can add their fingerprints here as well.
Also, I frequently connect to my network via an Ethernet cable, and if you do that as well, then you definitely want to prioritize that over Wi-Fi. To do that, just go to Network Settings, right-click to set service order, and place your Ethernet connection on top.
All right, so I'm okay with autocorrect on the phone, but not on the Mac. To turn it off, we just come here to System Settings, Keyboard, and edit your input sources. For me, I turn all of these off but the full stop after double space. By default, the Mac goes to sleep in 2 minutes, which is just way too quick for me, so I change this to 20 and toggle off "Show Username and Photo."
There's a couple of things I change in the display settings. I don't like to have it automatically adjust brightness, and I turn off True Tone. I do a lot of video editing in Photoshop, so I need the colors to be as accurate as possible. If you work a lot at night like I do, then you're definitely going to want to enable Night Shift, which automatically makes your screen warmer when it's nighttime.
But if you want more control over it, I definitely recommend Flux instead, which is one of those apps I install right away that drastically improve my Mac experience. There's a ton more of these apps, but they deserve their own video, which is exactly what I did, and you can find it right here. So I'll see you there.