Try This To Make Notification Center Widgets More Useful

I believe many people don't make use of Notification Center Widgets and the reason could be because they show too much information. Instead, try forcing it to show you some specific information that you need throughout your day.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Do you find Notification Center useful? If not, maybe try this.
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So Notification Center widgets are what you see when you click on the Time at the top right corner of your Mac screen. When you do that it brings up Notifications at the top, if there are any, and then these widgets below. Now I suspect that a lot of people don't use these at all. I think one reason is that they do too much. You can have widgets that do all sorts of different things. That can mean that when you want to do one of these things specifically Notification Center isn't where you go. So if you find that you don't use Notification Center widgets maybe instead focus your widgets on one specific task. Something that you do often. Let me give you some examples. 
Now to change which widgets you have click on the time at the top right and then click Edit Widgets. Now you can see a way to edit them. You can remove the ones from the right here by clicking the little minus button at the top left corner. Let's remove all of them. Now let's just add some that focus on one particular thing. For instance, if you only like to have the Time at the top right corner of your Mac it might be useful to click that Time and then see the Date. You can do that using Calendar Widgets. In fact, one of the Calendar widgets right here is just to give you a Calendar here with the current day highlighted. I can simply add that and now perhaps as a companion to that I can go to Clock Widgets and I can add a simple clock. I'm going to use the Clock Widget here as opposed to the city one and now you get the time and date. I'm going to change the order like that and just make it real simple. Just the time and the date. I'll click Done and that's what widgets look like. So I can click on the Date here and just see the clock and the calendar. As I mentioned, this is handy if you go into System Settings and then go to Control Center here and then scroll down to the Menu Bar, Clock, and click Clock Options. Have it only show the time instead of the date. So now you see the time here and any time you want to see the date you click there and you get the nice clock and the calendar. 
This is a really small thing for Notification Center widgets to do but it may actually be something that you use instead of just never using the feature.
Now alternatively you can have just Calendar shown here. So let's Edit the widgets again and get rid of the clock and get rid of this small calendar. Instead let's click on Calendar here to just see those and we can, say, choose the Up Next Calendar. That can actually change that to a medium size one which will go across or even large to give me this view. So pick which one you want. Let's say this one and let's Add it. So now if I click Done this is all I see when I go to Notification Center which may be perfect depending upon what you want. You just click the Time here and you get to see the date and you get to see upcoming events. 
Now if you Edit Widgets and then instead of clicking the minus button click the widget itself you actually get to customize what appears. So instead of mirroring the Calendar App and showing exactly the same calendar as you see there you can turn that Off. Then you can select specific calendars that you want to see. So, for instance, this could be one that only shows work events. So I turned everything else off and this is my work calendar. Now, this calendar here just shows work events. So I can just have one single calendar highlighted there. I can make it US Holidays if I want. I can make it my personal calendar or I can combine several calendars. But in addition remember you can add more than one of the same exact widget. So this could be my work calendar here. I'm going to add another widget that is exactly the same thing. But this one I'm going to customize by selecting just my personal calendar. So now I get my work calendar and my personal calendar separately. So this is what Notification Center looks like now. Anytime I want to see my upcoming events I don't need to launch the Calendar App. I can simply bring up Notification Center and see these two calendars and what is coming up very clearly. 
Now you can also use this with Reminders. So let's go to the Reminders widget here. There's just one but it has a small, medium, and large size. So let's use the large size and add that. If I click here you can see I can customize which list is shown. So if I add some things to this Reminders list I can see those items here. Even click on one to go directly to it. Yes, if I wanted to I could add multiple Reminder's Lists. So I could add a second one of the same size that points to a different Reminder's List or maybe use the small ones for other lists, arrange them however I want, and I could select exactly which list goes with each one even using some of these Smart Lists here, like what's due today. 
So you could see how you can just use Notification Center as a  quick way to view your Reminders and stop thinking of it as Notification Center and just start thinking of it as a shortcut to view Reminders. 
Of course you can combine similar things. So, for instance, you could go and add a Calendar widget, like say this one here, and then a Reminders widget, like say this one here and arrange them as you like. If you find that you're always launching both Reminders and Calendar to see what you've got going on today, well now Notification Center is a way to view both of those very quickly and easily.
Here's another idea. Use Notification Center as a way to view Stocks. So instead of going to the Stocks App or a website you can go and use one of the widgets here. For instance, there's the Watch List and you can go to the large Watch List, add that and then note you can click on the widget here, choose which Watch List to use, and this comes from the Stocks App. Choose whether or not you see more details and then Done. Then you see this list here of stocks. So how to set those up you go into the Stocks App, even if you don't plan to use it but instead want to use Notification Center widgets, and then you can setup these different Watch Lists here. There's the default one. You can create a new one and then you can usually Control click, or two-finger click or right click to Edit what is here. Say remove this from the Watch List. Refer to one here and once you find one you can Add it to the Watch List with a little Plus there. So you can highly customize these Watch Lists. Then you use those in your widgets. 
If instead of this format another way you might want to do it is to use the Individual Symbol here. So I can add those. I can Add multiple ones of those. Let's remove this large one here. Each one can show a specific symbol. So, for instance, I'll add four of these, like that. Let's leave this one alone. I can click here and I can change it to something else. Then I could click here and change this one to something else, and just continue to add these individual little widgets for each stock. I can see a little chart and information and everything. 
Now if you're not interested in stocks, you don't have a busy calendar, you don't have too many reminders, another thing you can do is just use this for weather. Look at it as a quick way to view the weather and you have several weather widgets here. You've got the small one. You've got the larger one which gives you a forecast for the next few hours. Then you've got the largest one here which also has the five-day forecast. So you can add whichever one you want and have it appear here. So I'll add this one for my location at the top. But I can add more. So I can go to the small one here. Add one or two of these and what I can do with them is I can click on them, change the location from my location to some other place that I care about. Like that. Customize this one as well. Now I've got the forecast for my location plus the current conditions in other places around the world. 
So I hope you get the general idea. One last one to use here is News. You can choose the Today widget which will give you a general news summary. But you can also choose a topic and put that there. You can customize the topic. So, for instance, let me choose the large topic here. Select that. Then I can click on it and I can customize the topic. I can pick a topic but I can get really specific too. Basically have this be a search of the news for a particular thing. So, for instance, I can type something in and pick, say, a sports team or particular publication. So I'll pick a team right here. Done. Then I'll see headlines having to do just with that team. So you can add multiple widgets here with different topics or just have Notification Center be quick way to view news on a single topic with just a quick click. 
Another tip here is that you don't have to click on the Time to bring up Notification Center. You can go to System Settings, Keyboard, and then from there go to Keyboard Shortcuts. If you look under Mission Control there is actually a way to set a Shortcut for Show Notification Center. So you can turn that On, double-click here and then I'm going to set it to, say, the F19. Now I can use F19 to easily bring up and Dismiss Notification Center. Note that in addition to what you set there you should be able to use the fn or Globe key on your keyboard and the N key to bring it up or dismiss it as well. 
So I hope if you haven't been using Notification Center until now I hope you try this single purpose idea to perhaps make it useful to you. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Try This To Make Notification Center Widgets More Useful”

Jane

2 years ago

So much useful information here, Gary, but how do we get the extra widgets that used to be around in the MacOS dashboard, e.g. unit conversion calculator (miles to kilometres, Celsius to Fahrenheit, etc)? Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

Jane: Use Spotlight for that. https://macmost.com/20-things-you-can-do-with-spotlight-besides-searching-for-files.html

Oh wow, just watched your Spotlight video, as recommended - I didn't realise Spotlight could do all that. However, those things aren't working for me - the tab key doesn't expand results, the maths calculations don't produce a result, etc. I have just upgrade to Ventura on a 2021 MacBook Pro. Thanks.

Jane: I was mainly pointing out the conversions. That video is pre-Ventura and Spotlight changed a bit since then. The math calculations should work though. Try those again. Also, check in your System Settings, Spotlight to make sure you have that enabled.

Thanks Gary - all working now apart from the tab key, but I can live with that :)

Phyllis Weintraub

This was great! Thanks Gary

Comments Closed.

Try This To Make Notification Center Widgets More Useful

Comments: 6 Responses to “Try This To Make Notification Center Widgets More Useful”

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