Change These Mac OS Defaults for Increased Productivity

We all know that iPhones are very restrictive and make you use your own phone in a certain way, but Mac OS provides a vast amount of flexibility which you should definitely update based on your own personal preferences. Below are just some examples which I always change when I get as new PC (or reset my current one).

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Some advanced options will require you to open the Terminal application on your Mac. You can do this by opening /Applications/Terminal or search for it in Spotlight CMD+Space and Type “Terminal”

Customize Your Dock

The dock might be the most interacted component of your Mac. You should change how it behaves so that it is more friendly, and makes you more productive. The smallest changes you can make are already in your Settings app in the Mac, which include:

Basic Options

Image captured by Aman Bhimani.

• Automatically Show/Hide the dock (this gives you more screen real-estate!)
• Changing the speed at which the dock shows up if hidden
• Magnification options when you hover. If you find this annoying, then change it!

Advanced Option: Add a Spacer

You can add a artificial icon to your dock to add a spacer between your most used applications, and the recent applications. This provides some basic organization to your Dock.

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}' && \
killall Dock

To remove the space later, you can right click, and press “Remove from Dock”

Advanced Option: Show Only Active Apps

If you prefer to not use the Dock to “start” applications, but only to manage the open apps, you can run this command.

defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool true && \
killall Dock

To reset this property, run the opposite command:

defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool false && \
killall Dock

Customize Your Finder

The default finder is great, but it can be extended to a very flexible and powerful application you use several times a day. Here are some useful options you can enable

There are already some great options you can configure in the UI, you should definitely go through these.

1. First arrow is about always looking at a “list” of items instead of icons. This helps scan through the files quickly.
2. The second one may be Grouping or Sorting that you want to change.
3. “Calculate all sizes” is a very helpful one — it will show you the size of an entire folder, summing up all the files inside it recursively.

Also make sure that you click on Use as Defaults so it can be applied to all your folders.

Show Path Bar

This is typically useful if you are inside a nested folder structure, and need to see where exactly a file is located on your hard drive. It doesn’t take much space at the bottom, and can be helpful at times. From the Finder window menu at the top bar, you can click View → Show Path Bar to enable it.

Advanced Option: Show File Extensions

This is really helpful when you download some files from the web, and you have no idea what you just downloaded. Some fishy websites will let you download .dmg files which can install unknown software, but the website says you downloaded an image. To enable this, you can run:

defaults write -g AppleShowAllExtensions -bool true

Advanced Option: Show Hidden Files

If you are a developer or an advanced user, almost all configuration related files are “hidden”. By default, Mac OS will hide any files and folders which start with a period, example: “.config/config.txt”. To see all hidden files:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true

Advanced Option: Show Path Bar

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowPathbar -bool true

Advanced Option: Always Search Within Folder

Usually when you start a search from a folder in Finder, you want to search in that specific folder, not all of your Mac files. This command will make sure that it always searches that particular folder and it’s sub folders.

defaults write com.apple.finder FXDefaultSearchScope -string "SCcf"

Advanced Option: Speed up Animations for App Expose

When you are switching desktops or apps by using the “App Expose” which is usually a 3-finger or 4-finger drag up, it has a long animation which can really add up if you use it often. Reduce the speed with this command:

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.05

Advanced Option: Disable .DS_Store File Creation

You may need this if you are working with many external USB Drives across multiple platforms like Microsoft’s Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. These metadata files (.DS_Store) are only useful on Mac OS.

If you want to disable these on Network Drives:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true

If you want to disable these on all External Media (USB):

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteUSBStores -bool true

Expand Save and Print Dialogs by Default

This one can save you many clicks. By default, the “print” and “save” dialogs are very small with some default options selected, like Desktop. These four commands will expand those for you.

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool true && \
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode2 -bool true && \
defaults write NSGlobalDomain PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool true && \
defaults write NSGlobalDomain PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint2 -bool true

Customize Your Keyboard

This one can be annoying based on your experiences with Mac OS and other operating systems. There are many useful features you can enable or disable based on your preferences

Advanced Option: Disable AutoCorrect

After this, you can never blame anything on autocorrect!

defaults write -g NSAutomaticSpellingCorrectionEnabled -bool false

Advanced Option: Key Repeats

This one is crucial as well, if you try to delete a word or letters, you can use shortcuts, but by default pressing “delete/backspace” multiple times in a row seems to be faster than holding it; this is definitely odd. You can make it faster by the following commands:

Key repeat (default is 2 or 30 ms)

defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 0.5

When the Key repeat starts (default is 15 or 225ms):

defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 10

Disable Auto Capitalization and Automatic Periods

This is useful if you are a developer, or if you have developers on your team. It will save you a lot of headache if you just use a text editor.

# Disables auto capitalization
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticCapitalizationEnabled -bool false
# Disables "smart" dashes
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticDashSubstitutionEnabled -bool false
# Disables automatic period substitutions
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticPeriodSubstitutionEnabled -bool false
# Disables smart quotes 
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticQuoteSubstitutionEnabled -bool false

Honorable Mentions

These didn’t really fit in any other category above, but they are still very good to have and know about.

Always Show Scrollbars

This is the default behavior in Windows. If you have web developers on your team, please ask them to enable this setting, at least. It will give a consistent experience across Mac OS and Windows, so they can see all the scrollbars which the website they are working on may or may not have.

Options are: Always, Automatic, WhenScrolling

defaults write -g AppleShowScrollBars -string "Always"

Enable Three Finger Drag

This may feel weird at first, but it will increase your dragging speeds by two folds! All you have to do is hover over something, and you will start dragging the window with 3 fingers. Instead of pressing or clicking down, you only need to drag with 3 fingers.

You can enable this in System Settings → Accessibility → Pointer Control → Trackpad Options… → Enable Dragging.

Safari Default Web Page

If you use Safari, make sure that your home page is about:blank instead of Apple’s website. Google is not needed as your home page either, since the URL bar can also do searches on Google for you.

defaults write com.apple.Safari HomePage -string "about:blank"

That’s all folks!

If you have your own shortcuts or productivity tips for Mac OS, or personalization items that you perform when getting a new Mac, let me know! I would love to try them out. Hope this helps.