A Look At the new macOS Ventura System Preferences Redesign

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the new System Preferences, or should I say System Settings, in macOS Ventura.

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So a major change coming in macOS Ventura later this year is a complete redesign of System Preferences. They're now actually called System Settings. Apple didn't show much of this at the Worldwide Developers Conference Keynote so let me show you how it looks so far in the first beta. 

The first thing you'll notice is that if you go to the Apple Menu and look for System Preferences they are now called System Settings. This puts it closer inline with iOS and iPad OS where they are called Settings. This name change actually goes across different apps as well. So, for instance, if we go to another app like Reminders, I look in the Reminders Menu you can see it is Settings, not preferences any longer. But I'm sure other apps, third party apps, will take longer to update that menu item. So when you go into System Settings this is what we get. It will look very different than it did before. It looks a lot closer to how the Settings app looks on the iPad with a list of Setting Categories on the left and then whatever you select the Settings are shown on the right. 

A lot of other things have changed as well. So here you can see by default it goes to Appearance. This is the thing that's closest to the General settings from before. Here you could see you could change the same things but they are arranged in a different way. In the new System Settings App things are very linear. They go from top to bottom in a list. This is great because it is going to make it a lot easier for Apple to add and modify settings. Instead of having this arranged preference pane there's just a list now and you'll be able to scroll up and down. That means Apple can add things easily to the bottom or in the middle of this list to update things without having to do a major update to System preferences. 

In addition to General changing mostly to Appearance, we've got other things that have changed as well. For instance Siri and Spotlight are now grouped together in one and you can see how this one does actually need to scroll. You can see Menu Bar & Dock is now changed to Desktop & Dock. Here as well you can scroll. Whenever you need to go deeper there's usually a button. Like Clock Options. I click here and you could see it brings up the same clock options we had before but now using the new List Interface here will also make it easy to add new things here at the bottom and also to expand and show more things depending upon the option you've chosen.  You can see Desktop and Screensaver is now two separate things. There's Wallpaper instead of Desktop and Screensaver is its own control there. Lock Screen now contains things like how long until your screen goes to sleep. Under Keyboard instead of having four different tabs across the top everything is in one list with buttons to go deeper. So, for instance, if you wanted to modify Keyboard Shortcuts you would click here and it would bring up a kind of mini-window here with a list on the left and then the shortcuts you could set here on the right. Other things are also moved into here like for instance the ability to change the modifier keys or turn on Keyboard Navigation. That's all part of this list inside of the Keyboard Settings. Then Text Replacements is a separate little window here. There is still room here at the bottom for 3rd party preference windows and they'll, of course, will look the same for now although developers will probably update them for this new look. 

Another big change here is now we have General. So General works a lot like it does in iOS and iPad OS. You can dig down into smaller subcategories here. So, for instance, Software Update is inside of General and Login Items also inside of General. There are other items here that is very similar to how this works on iOS and iPad OS. I think this is a good thing because a lot of new Mac users are coming to the Mac through the iPhone.  The iPhone is their first Apple device. They like that so they get a Mac and then are surprised when System Preferences is vastly different than the Settings App on their iPhone. 

Notice you've got About right here and you get information here which seems to duplicate what you would get if you go to About This Mac. But notice now About This Mac is smaller and it only has this one more Info button here. If you click that guess where you end up? In the About window here in System Settings. The button for System Report is now down here and it takes you to the same system information  app.

So how about getting to the Storage Manager. Instead of going here in the Apple Menu through About The Mac you can now look in General and there is Storage. This will bring up the Storage Manager as before. So it will give you list here showing all of the different categories and what is in them and allow you to manage them. Clicking the i button and getting a list. Just like you could before but instead of going to About This Mac and then going to Storage you would now go into System Settings and then General, Storage and then it is all right here and you can manage things just as before. You have the same kind of controls for things. 

The Accessibility Settings are always a large area with lots of settings and you can see how they look here. You can dig down into the individual categories there and you by and large have all the same controls as before but now they are just arranged in this list format. Of course you also have Search right here. So if you don't know where something is it is easy to Search for it. For instance, where did Mission Control go? Let's take a look. If I search for that you could see it's under Desktop & Dock. Let's go into there and then we can see Mission Control is actually down here at the bottom of Desktop & Dock. 

So to compare a lot of this with how things look in macOS Monterey and earlier here's: Appearance versus the General system preferences. 

Notifications versus the Notifications & Focus from Monterey. 

Here's what Focus looks like in the new Ventura. 

Here's Keyboard in Ventura versus Keyboard in Monterey. 

Here's Trackpad in Ventura versus the old System Preferences Trackpad in Monterey. 

So I hope that gives you some idea of the direction Apple is heading in with new System Settings in macOS Ventura. I think this is basically how we'll see it in the final version but things may change. Things may shift around in there. Controls may change slightly. We'll have to track this over the summer and see what we end up with in the final version of macOS Ventura in the Fall. Thanks for watching.