15 Ways To Customize the Look of macOS Ventura

In macOS Ventura you can change the look of your Mac's screen by using a new wallpaper, adjusting tinting and transparency settings, customizing the Dock and Stage Manager and much more.
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can customize the look of your Mac in macOS Ventura. 
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So by default macOS Ventura comes with a colorful yellow wallpaper and Menu Bars, Dock and Windows that look pretty much the same as everybody else's Mac. So here's how your Mac may look right now. But it can also look like this or this, or this, or even this. All you need to do to get any of these looks is use some of the settings I'm going to show you. Let's start off here with the Desktop Wallpaper. You don't have to use this default background or whatever you've been using up until now. You can go into System Settings and then scroll down the list here on the left and go to Wallpaper. This is a new name for this set of settings. Previously it was called Desktop Background. Now you can change your background. You can use one of Apple's. They have many dynamic desktops which will change colors during the day. You can use the Ventura one. You can use the Monterey one from last year. But there are also a variety of pictures and illustrations. So you can choose something like this, for instance. If you see the little cloud icon there it means that it hasn't been downloaded yet. Just click the little cloud icon and it will download and then it will switch to it. So you can see how things look very different with a background like this. This will actually change to different times of the day in this illustration based on the time day where you are. 
You can also choose for it to be not dynamic and just stick with the light image or the dark image. You could also choose from a variety of light and dark desktops. If you choose one of these, say this one, you can have it automatically change from light to dark, day and night, or you can choose the light or the dark one to stay on all the time. You can also choose from a variety of desktop pictures that Apple has used in the past or you can go with a solid color if you like. You can even pick any color you want by clicking the Plus button here and then choosing from the Color Picker over here. At the bottom of the list here you can choose from any photo that is in your Pictures Folder or a folder you've added here. You can add a folder by clicking there. You can also add a photo from any album in your Photos Library. So I can easily choose this as my Desktop background. Then it all looks like that.
Notice now the Menu Bar has a white text in it. If the wallpaper is dark enough the Menu Bar will automatically change to white text instead of black text. So you can still read it. Note, you can also drag and drop an image right into here. So I'm going to drag and drop a JPEG image right in there and it will set that as the Desktop background without me having to move anything anywhere or add anything to these buttons. 
Notice the Desktop background colors are adapted by the Menu Bar here at the top and also they are used to tint the windows. So these windows are slightly tinted from being pure gray to having a little bit of the green and other colors back here. So if I were to switch to another Desktop Background, like let's just go back to the default one, you could see the tinting changes to match that color. If I choose Monterey you could see the tinting changes again. But you can adjust that in one of two ways. The first is to go to Appearance. Under Appearance you've got Allow Wallpaper Tinting in windows. So you can turn that Off and the tinting is reduced. So you're still going to see definite tinting up here, notice how it is tinted a little bit yellow there, and some of it is also going to tine the windows a bit. So I change the wallpaper to Monterey you could see how it still affects it even with the wallpaper tinting turned Off. 
So another option you've got is under Accessibility. Go to Display and then you've got the Reduce Transparency setting. Turn that On and you'll see it actually gets rid of the tinting completely. The Menu Bar is now completely gray and the windows here are completely opaque. So just to compare here are three images. The one on the left shows Window Tinting Turned On and Reduce Transparency turned Off. The middle one has Window Tinting turned Off and keeps Reduce Transparency Off as well. The last one has Window Tinting On. It's not actually going to do anything because it has Reduced Transparency turned On here. That kind of overrides it. So you can pick which of the three you like. 
Now if you want to go even further than Reduce Transparency you can use Increased Contrast here in Accessibility, Display. If you turn On Increased Contrast its going to automatically switch on Reduce Transparency and it will also outline everything with high contrast lines. So you can see this creates a very different look. I think it is kind of Retro. It kind of looks kind of like how macOS looked back in the 90's. A lot of people may actually like this. Notice how even the buttons have shapes outlining them. If you like those shape outlines but you don't want to go all the way to the Increased Contract, if you turn that off and you can turn on Show Toolbar Button Shapes. You can see you see a slight outline for these buttons now. 
Now another option here is Menu Bar Size. You've got two choices. Default and Large. So if you find the Menu Bar items here too small for you, you can of course change your screen resolution. That is probably what you should do if you are finding a lot of things too small. But if you just want to change the Menu Bar size you could switch to Large. Now when you do its going to warn you that you have to Logout in order to see the changes. So this is what it looks like set to Default. Then if I change it to Large, logout and log back in, this is what is looks like with Large. Now another size you can change is back under Appearance here. There is Sidebar Icon Size. So you can see the Sidebar here in the Finder. If I change the size to Large you can see how the icons and the text there increase. I can also choose Small. Notice how it is affecting multiple apps. Finder is being affected but also here System Settings is being affected. Another thing you can change here in Appearance is switch from Light Mode to Dark Mode. So when you do that you'll see the windows take this dark appearance. If you're using a dynamic wallpaper that is also going to switch to the dark version of that wallpaper. So if you're using your own photo you wouldn't have a different version and it would stay the same. So using a picture here as my Desktop Background I can see that this is what it looks like with light and this is what it looks like with dark. You can see the Desktop Background doesn't change but the windows do. If you set to Auto then it is going to be lighter in the day and dark at night. 
Now another change you can make in Accessibility is the Accent Color. So you can leave it at Multicolor. What Multicolor does is it allows the app to decide what the accent color should be. So if I go, for instance, to Notes here you can see the Accent color is yellow. If I go to Mail here you can see the Accent color is blue. But I can set the Accent color to a specific color. So let's change it to purple. If I change it to purple you can see how the Accent colors change in various places here in System Settings. But also if I go into Notes notice how it is purple in Notes now and in Mail it is also purple. So it overrides the Accent color in each app to make it a specific one throughout the operating system. 
Now there is also Highlight Color. Highlight Color is what you get when you highlight some text. Like I'll highlight the text here in TextEdit. Now if you have the Accent color set to multicolor then the highlight color will match whatever the app wants. So an app here like TextEdit is going to use this light blue. You could override that and change the highlight color to something else. So I can make the highlight color look red, for instance. So now when I look in TextEdit you can see it is red. So I can set these separately. I could set the Accent color to orange and the Highlight color to say green. Now I could see green highlight there in TextEdit. But if I go to Notes I can see the orange accent color there and I can see the highlight color is green. That matches what I have set here. 
Another thing we can change in Appearance is Show Scroll Bars. Now normally scroll bars only appear when you're scrolling. So I have a lot of text in this window here. I don't see a scroll bar. But if I use my trackpad or my Apple mouse to scroll I can see it appear and it will remain there for a few seconds. So I can actually grab it and use it. But if I stop using it it goes away. I could have it turn on Always and then you could see how the scroll bar appears and stays there, both the vertical and horizontal scroll bar if the app uses that. So it changes kind of the look of all of these windows to have that scroll bar always there. Another thing you can change is the look of the Pointer. The Pointer you see here at as an arrow and it is just black with a white outline. But you can go here to Accessibility and then Display and there's a section here for Pointer. You can change the Pointer's size to make it larger like that. You can also change the outline color to something else. So let's go and choose a different color for the Pointer.  I'll choose a red color there and then you can change the outline color to something else. Let's do black. So now you can see it right here. Make the Pointer, maybe, a little bigger. Change the colors and it definitely creates a different feel when you're using your Mac. 
Now another thing you can change is how the Dock works. Here I've got it set to appear only when I move the Pointer to the bottom of the screen. You've got a lot of settings Desktop & Dock to change the Dock. So I can turn Off automatic hiding so the Dock is always there. I can also change its position. So I can make it on the right here or make it on the left as well. You can turn on Magnification to get kind of a retro look. So if you move it up here like that now look what happens when I move my Pointer over the Dock. You can change the general size but you can only make it as big as space allows. So I can make this a little bit smaller, like that, if I want. But I can only go so big because it will overrun the space. But you can get rid of some of the items in the Dock if you want to have more space to make it larger. 
Now in addition to having automatically Hide or Show the Dock, you can also automatically Hide and Show the Menu Bar. So the Menu Bar usually is there all the time unless you're using a full screen app. But you have the option right here to change that. Instead of having it Hide when it is in Full Screen mode you can have it Hide on Desktop Mode instead. You could see the Menu Bar is gone. But if you move the Pointer to the top it always appears. So it's simply there. It's just not visible. It gives you a little more space and maybe a slightly different look not having the Menu Bar there. You can also have it set to Always Automatically Hide. So now it will automatically hide both on a regular Desktop like this and in full screen mode. Or you can have it set to Never Automatically Hide so it will be there in Desktop mode and in full screen mode. Also, in the Menu Bar you've got the Clock here at the top right. You can find the settings for the Clock in Control Center. Under that at the bottom you've got Clock and then Clock Options. Click on that and then you've got some options here. Like for instance whether or not the date is showing. Like you can have the date Never Shown, Always Shown, or Only when Space Allows. You could have the Day of the Week shown if you want. You can switch the Clock entirely to analog like that. It takes up a minimal amount of space. There are various other options here. Like you can have the blinking time separator there to always have something going on in that corner. You can even have seconds displayed as well. 
Now a bit new feature in macOS Ventura is Stage Manager. Using Stage Manager definitely does give your Mac a different look. On your Desktop & Dock I'll go into here and turn it On. You can turn it On in Control Center as well. Now I can see Stage Manager in action putting these two windows over here to the side and I can easily switch them if I want. But you have Customization options. One of those is to turn Off recent applications which is a list here on the left. So if you'd rather not see that you can turn it Off. It is still there if you move the Pointer over to the left they will pop-out. You just use regular app switching techniques to switch between them never using that list. Also another thing you can do is you can put these over on the right. The only way to do that currently is to go up to the Dock's setting and position the Dock on the left side of the screen. When you do that the Dock's on the left, you can see it pop-out there when I move my Pointer over. You can see Stage Manager moves the App Set over to the right side. So you can turn off Automatic Dock Hide and you've got your Dock items here on the left and Stage Manager items here on the right. 
So that's a look at some of the ways you can customize your Mac in macOS Ventura. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
15 Ways To Customize the Look of macOS Ventura

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