MacOS Big Sur's New Control Center Feature

Learn how to use the new Control Center in macOS. With one menu bar item, you can control Wi-Fi, sound, Do Not Disturb, displays and more. You can choose which items are also shown independently in the menu bar.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at the new Control Center in macOS Big Sur.
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So let's take a look at one of the most notable new features of macOS Big Sur and that's Control Center. Control Center you can find in the Menu Bar and it replaces a bunch of the Menu Bar icons or status menus that you would normally see at the top right. Instead of having a bunch of those they're combined now in this one right here called Control Center. If you click on that Control Center is revealed. It looks at lot like Control Center in iOS and performs some of the same functions. So before we had different Menu Bar items here for things like WiFi, Display, Sound but now they're all combined here in one and you can control them just with this one item. So let's take a look at what we've got. 
We've got here a group that controls network activity. So we have WiFi here, Bluetooth, and AirDrop. Now like a lot of these if you click on them and they will go into a deeper menu. So let's click on WiFi here. As you can see it takes me into a new set of controls where I have a button here to turn WiFi on and off. I have my preferred network. I have other networks that I can click on and see a list and I can go to Network Preferences and System Preferences. Now to go back up I can either click here or I can click just here where there is no control and it will take be back up. 
Now there's a big button here for Do Not Disturb and I can simply click it quickly to turn  on Do Not Disturb and click it again to turn it off. But there's also a little arrow here that if I click that I go into more controls. So, for instance, I can turn on Do Not Disturb for a limited amount of time if I want or go right into System Preferences for finer controls. For Keyboard Brightness it's just a button in here. But if I click it it goes down and gives me bar that I can adjust. Screen Mirroring will give me a list of devices that I can mirror my screen to. In this case I have some Apple TV's. Now Display Brightness is a control that is right here and I can adjust it without digging down deeper into Control Center. But I do have this little arrow here that I can click and now I can go deeper and you could see here I have not only the display brightness but I have Dark Mode on or off and Night Shift on or off. The same thing with Sound. I have Sound control here and I also have the ability to click here into choosing which device the sound is coming out of. My internal speakers, some airplay devices, and a Home Pod in my case. 
For Music I have a set of music playback controls here.
Now a lot of these items can actually be made into regular Menu Bar buttons if you'd rather they be there. You can do that without even going to System Preferences. For instance if I wanted to add WiFi here I could simply click, drag and drop and I get a WiFi indicator up there. I could do that with most of these. For instance Do Not Disturb I can drag up here and now I have a quick Do Not Disturb on or off button but I also notice that if I click on it I have access to all these other settings. 
If you didn't like the idea of having to dig down into the Display Settings to turn on Dark Mode or Night Shift, well, you don't have to. You could drag Display up here and now with this control I could click and have access to Dark Mode and Night Shift in one last step. So the same could be done with anyone of these. I could bring Sound up here. I could bring Music up here. But there's another way to access these controls and a little bit more as well. That is to go to System Preferences and then go to Dock and Menu Bar. Here, if you look at the left sidebar you could choose which settings you're looking at. So by default you have Dock & Menu Bar here. Instead of that go down below and you've got Control Center. Click on anyone of these and it will show you Control Center here and highlight the item that you have selected. Then you'll have choices here. So for instance for WiFi I have Show in Menu Bar. I can uncheck or check that and you could see it appear or disappear from the Menu Bar. I don't have the option to remove it from Control Center. Anyone of these under the Control Center heading I could go into and Show or Hide in the Menu Bar but it's going to stay in Control Center. 
Now for some of these I have further controls for when it's in the Menu Bar. So, for instance, for Do Not Disturb I can have Show in Menu Bar, Always, or Only When Active. So only when I turn on Do Not Disturb will it appear in the Menu Bar and then I can use it to turn it off. For Screen Mirroring I can do the same thing. I could have it shown in the Menu Bar but Only When Active. If I scroll down here the same thing with Sound. So only when Sound is playing I could have it in the Menu Bar if I want or have it there always and Now Playing as well. 
Now under Other Modules you've got some other things here. Accessibility Shortcuts isn't in Control Center. But I could add it by checking here. It's just a button. I could also have it in the Menu Bar. I could do the same thing for Battery. I could have that in the Menu Bar or in the Control Center as well. I can choose whether or not percentage is shown in that button too. Fast User Switching I could have that either in the Menu Bar, Control Center, or both. Then there are a few items here like Clock, Spotlight, Siri, Time Machine and I could decide whether or not they are in the Menu Bar. But there is no place for them in Control Center. So now that I've added these three I could see them in the Control Center at the bottom just as simple buttons. But since I did select to have the percentage here for the battery it shows me that. So the Battery Control at least has some information in it and if I click on it it'll take me deeper down here and show me some more information. If I click on Fast User Switching it takes me into Fast User Switching controls and if I click on Accessibility it gives me the Accessibility Shortcuts. 
Now I know I'm going to be asked about Keyboard Shortcuts. Is there a way to have a keyboard shortcut bring up Control Center. The answer is NO. Which kind of makes sense because even if you had a keyboard shortcut bring this up all these controls here use the cursor. So you need to use your mouse or trackpad and click on things. So it really doesn't help to bring it up with a keyboard shortcut if you need to use your mouse or trackpad to do anything with it at all.
So that's a look at Control Center in macOS Big Sur. Since this is a completely new feature it's going to take some time to get used to it. Now that you've upgraded to Big Sur it's worth it to spend a few minutes playing around with it and try to use it as much as you can over the first few days until it becomes natural to access those controls there.

Comments: 7 Responses to “MacOS Big Sur's New Control Center Feature”

Russ Winkler

4 years ago

Not a biggie. Thanks Gary, for all the stuff you do here and everywhere else. I had a "Show Emoji & Show Keyboard Viewer Symbols" shortcut in the top menu bar before installing Big Sur. How can I remove that shortcut now? I don't see it in system pref's under keyboard or under accessibly controls. I didn't see it in the control center either. Maybe I missed something, Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

Russ: Do you mean: System Preferences, Keyboard, Input Sources, Show Input menu in menu bar?

Yes! It was there under system pref's -->Keyboard-->Input Sources! Thanks! You are the King! I bow before you...

Ray Whitehead

Gary, enlightening, informative and useful presentation as always. Since installing Big Sur my menu bar is considerably smaller than it was before and much smaller than the one shown in the presentation. Is there an adjustment some where to determine its size?

Ray: I'm using the standard menu bar. But my screen resolution is set to 2560x1440 (720p x2) to make it perfect for sharing video captures. You probably have yours set to your native resolution. Go to System Preferences, Displays and use a scaled setting to get it larger.

Jotta

Hello! Is there any shortcut to bring up control center? Seems like either a missing (and welcome) feature or something I'm missing. Please and thank you

Jotta: No. I think I mention that in the video. The reason there isn't a shortcut is that you have to control the items there with the cursor. So brining it up with a shortcut as step one, wouldn't make any sense.

Comments Closed.

MacOS Big Sur's New Control Center Feature

Comments: 7 Responses to “MacOS Big Sur's New Control Center Feature”

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