7 Quick Ways To Access System Settings on a Mac

Learn how you can quickly get to the sections of System Settings on your Mac that you need the most.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you some quick ways to access System Settings on your Mac. 
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So sometimes there are System Settings that you need to access often. It can take several steps to open up System Settings, navigate to the right setting section, and find that setting. But there is some ways to launch System Settings and go directly to the right section.
The first one I'm going to show you is just using the Dock. So if you've got System Settings in the Dock, and I like to put mine all the way over to the left just for this purpose, you can click and hold and then a list of all the sections will appear. You can select one and go right to it. It's a little faster if you either hold down the Control Key or simply two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse. Then it comes up immediately. You can also use the keyboard to jump right to a section. So, for instance, I can jump right to Date & Time by pressing D and then Return to open it. If you don't have System Settings in the Dock you can easily add it there by going to your Applications Folder, finding System Settings right there, and then dragging it right into the Dock.
Now along the top of your Mac keyboard you may see a whole bunch of F keys. Some of those have special features as well, such as volume control, screen brightness, and things like that. You can use these keys as shortcuts to getting into System Settings by adding the Option key when you press them. Now you may need to hold the fn or Globe Key down depending upon your keyboard settings. So holding down the Option Key and pressing F10, usually the Mute Key, will bring up the Sound Panel. Doing the same thing with one of the brightness keys will go to Displays.
Now the Menu Bar icons here at the top of the screen also allow you to get to System Settings in some cases. So let's start with Control Center here. If I go to Control Center and then go to a subsection like BlueTooth by clicking on the little arrow to the right I can see at the bottom here this isn't really a quick way to get there. But if you decide to check your BlueTooth settings here first, and then decide you can't do what you want here, then it is really easy to jump right to BlueTooth settings from there. Of course, if you add an item to the Menu Bar, by dragging it like that, then you can just click right there and go to BlueTooth settings.
Now you can use the Shortcuts App to create shortcuts to get right to a section of System Settings. The way to do that, strangely, is to use Open URL. This you would usually use to open a webpage. But you can also use special URL's here to open apps and go to certain parts of an app including System Settings. So you want to start off this special URL with x--apple.systempreferences colon. You're still going to use System Preferences even though Apple now calls it System Settings. After this you want to put some special code to go to each individual page. Now you can search the internet to find codes that go here but you can also look on your Mac. Launch TextEdit and then go to File, Open. Then use Shift Command G to jump to a certain location. Where you want to go is System/Applications/System Settings.app. So you're going into the System Settings app. Then Contents/Resources/Sidebar.plist. If you go there it takes you right to the location of the file. You still need to click Open and now you're looking at this file. If you scroll down you'll see these strings here. Like, for instance, this one for Bluetooth Settings. If I were to Copy this one and then go back here to shortcuts and Paste it after the colon. Make sure you get rid of an extra space if it adds it there. Now when I run this Shortcut it will take me right to my Bluetooth settings. You can see there are all sorts of other paths. Most of which should work. Some may not so you have to try them first. Then you could save this as a Shortcut. You can set it up to Pin in the Menu Bar so you can access it here. You can set it up to be used as a Quick Action with a keyboard shortcut so you can access a System Setting section with a Keyboard Shortcut. You can even go to File and then Add To Dock to add it to your Dock.
Now you can also use Spotlight to get right to System Settings. So if I do Command Space and I search for Bluetooth you can see one of the results here, the very first one in fact, is System Settings. So I can just press Return and it will open up that section. If you don't see System Settings coming up when you search in Spotlight then go here in System Settings to Siri & Spotlight and make sure that you have System Settings checked here at the bottom of the list.
Now you can also use Siri to do this. So you just activate Siri however you want and then ask Siri to go right to the Section. Trackpad Settings.
Another way to go is to find the actual System Settings Section inside of the System. You can actually click on those and it will take you directly to that section. Then you could put aliases to that wherever you want. For instance, in the Dock. So I'm going to, in the Finder, do a New Finder window here and I'm going to go to the top level of the Computer. I'm going to go into my hard drive and I'll see Library here. But I don't want Library. I want System. Under System then I'll go into Library there. This is the Read Only System Library. But if I scroll down I will see Preference Panes. If I look under there I'll see all these different panes. For instance here for the Keyboard. If I double click on this, sure enough, it goes right there. The great thing is I can drag this somewhere, like to the desktop, hold the Command and Option Keys down and it will create an alias to it. That's probably not really useful. What's better is probably to move it into the Dock. So I can put it on the right side of the Dock and it will appear there as any file would. But now if I click it, it will work to go right there.
So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
7 Quick Ways To Access System Settings on a Mac

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