Whenever I set up a brand new Mac for myself or a friend, there a few defaults I change. I thought I would share my list.
Right Clicking
I’m not quite sure why, but by default, a brand new Mac out of the box doesn’t have right-click enabled on the trackpad or mouse. Odd to me because the operating system makes use of right clicks. Anyhow, to change this I go to System Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click and enable ‘Secondary Click’. I like the ‘Click or Tap with two-fingers’ option, because it means that I can two-finger tap anywhere on the trackpad. Other options include bottom right click and bottom left click. Those are ok, but more limiting I feel.
Battery Indicator (Laptop Only)
I like seeing the percentage of battery I lave remaining. This has been more accurate to me than time remaining and isn’t enabled by default. To change this I go up to the status bar, right click on the battery icon and select ‘Show Percentage’.
Finder Sidebar
The finder sidebar is a little sparse to be my default. Whenever I set up a new Mac, I go to the Finder Preferences and enable pretty much everything for my sidebar, especially the hard drive.
Dock Folders
I like to keep shortcut to the Documents, Applications, and Download folders in the Dock. To add folders to the dock, you can open up Finder and drag them onto the dock to right of the vertical line and to the left of the trash can.
Dock Folder Look
I also like them to look like folders and display in a grid when selected instead. To change this I right click on each folder individually and select ‘Folder’ instead of ‘Stack’ and ‘Grid’ and instead of ‘Automatic’.
Dock Magnification
One of the first things that drew me to Mac was the delightful interface. The Dock Maginfication feature magnifies the dock item that you hover over, which makes it easier to see which item has focus. This feature is disabled by default now, but I really like it. I turn this on under System Preferences -> Dock.
Terminal
The terminal app is a way to interact with your Mac via the command line. I use the terminal quite a bit. I think it’s fantastic but I hate the default black on white look. I prefer a more Matrix-looking screen that harkens back to green and black terminals of my youth. I use Homebrew and and adjust the background transparency and blur.
Dark Mode
Dark mode can look pretty cool as long as the apps you use support it. Try it out and see if it works for you. To enable it go to System > Preferences > General and select ‘Use dark menu bar and Dock.’
These are some of the preferences I always change. What about you?
