Make Your Mac Look Different Than Everyone Else

There are some quick and simple settings you can use to change how your Mac's screen looks. Use them all to highly customize the look of your Mac. Or, just use one or two to make a subtle change.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can make your Mac look different than everyone else's. 
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Now your Mac may look something like this. That's using a lot of the default settings and a lot of people's Macs look like that. But if you want a change or just want your Mac to look very different than anybody else's that you see, you can always have it look something like this just by switching a few settings. 
So let's start off with the Desktop background. The wallpaper here is one of the standard wallpapers or you could be using one of the new Arial wallpapers that Apple has. But if you want something that is truly customized and it's your own you can set it to anything you want. Just go to System Settings and then look for Wallpaper. Now instead of dealing with any of the controls here you can just drag and drop an image into this box at the top. So I have here, in the Finder, an image. This is just something I downloaded from NASA's Images but you could download anything from any stock photography site or use one of your own photos. Just drag that in here and now you have a Desktop Background that looks very different and it's kind of your own. 
Next, in System Settings, let's change a little bit about how the colors in the windows look. So we're going to go to Appearance here. You've got the Accent Color and Highlight Color. Now it is set to Multi-Color. So apps get to choose their own thing. Notice here how the Notes App has  yellow as its primary color there. But we can change it and, say, we want purple for everything. Or pink, or red, or orange. So you can make it something very different. Choose your favorite color here. Then you can also choose a Highlight color that's different than that color. So you can choose a highlight color that's purple or blue instead of that. It is when you highlight text. Notice you can also choose it to match the Accent color or choose Other to choose any color you want for the highlight color. 
Now if you don't like how the window's tint for the background you can turn that Off here. But, a more drastic setting that will really change the look of things is found in Accessibility. If you go there and then to Display, then look for the Increase Contrast Setting. Turn that On. That, you can see, is going to force on Reduced Transparency and give your Mac kind of a retro look where everything is outlined with dark lines around all the controls. Then, of course, to top this off you can go back to Appearance here and switch into Dark Mode. So, this is really going to change how things look. I like how now you have a white line outlining everything. 
So far everything is in the same place but it looks a little different. Now, if you really want to change how things work on the screen a good way to do that is to switch into Stage Manager. So with Stage Manager instead of having all these overlapping windows or using multiple spaces to have all of your windows and maybe some Full Screen apps as well, you can simply go into Control Center here. Turn On Stage Manager. Now you're just going to be in kind of single app mode. You can combine windows and apps over here but to start with you just say have Notes by itself, Calendar by itself, Reminders by itself, the Finder by itself. Plus you get these Live View windows over here showing you what is there. It's different than putting things in the Dock because you actually see what the window contains. I have a tutorial on how to use Stage Manager. There's a lot more to it than just that but it is definitely does change how things look. 
Now notice the Dock here at the bottom. It has a nice solid color behind it now because of the increased contrast mode and it has a black background because I'm using Dark Mode. You can also move that to the left or right. Now when using Stage Manager, the Stage Manager App Sets are always on the left except in one case. That's when the Dock is put on the left. Then Stage Manager moves to the right which will make your Mac even different than other people that are also using Stage Manager. So to get to that setting go into Settings here, then go to Desktop & Dock section here. Then at the top, under your Dock Position On Screen, and position the Dock to the left. So now you can see the Dock on the left and Stage Manager goes to the right. When here you can also have it automatically hidden or Shown all the time. If it is on all the time it is a nice little Control Panel to basically give you access to all of your apps but also Files and Folders that you put at the right side, or in this case bottom of the Dock. 
Now let's add some Widgets to the Desktop. I'm going to click here on the Desktop Background and by default Stage Manager now clears everything away. I'm going to right click or two-finger click on the Desktop and go to Edit Widgets. Now I can add some widgets. So I can put some widgets here along the top and, you know, put whatever I want that seems to make sense for my use of the Mac. Now I've got a nice little set of controls here. Of course you can fill the whole Desktop if you like or perhaps maybe since I don't have a Dock at the bottom of the screen it might make sense for me to move all of these down to the bottom. 
Finally, let's change the Pointer so that also looks a little different. Let's go into Settings here and this is going to be under Accessibility and then you're going to go to Vision, Display, and there's going to be Pointer here. I can make the pointer larger. Probably won't make it too large. Let's make it just a little bit larger than it normally is to be unusual. I can change the color of the pointer. Make it something, like say, an orange to match the highlight color and maybe the outline color like that, say a gray like this if I want or maybe a black. So now even the pointer looks different than everybody else's. 
So you can see here without actually changing any functionality in Mac, this is all cosmetic appearance really. I've got something that looks very different than other people's Mac. Now you may not want to use all of these suggestions and go all the way to this extreme, but maybe a few of these are things you can use. Or occasionally switch into them when you feel like you to work in a slightly different environment. 
I hope this give you some ideas. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Make Your Mac Look Different Than Everyone Else”

Sheldon

6 months ago

Thanks bunches

Dbob

Fascinating.
There's so much we can do to personalize our Macs
without having to be a developer.
Thanks for a great and lucid demo.

Bill Bruckner

Hi Gary. I followed your steps, but when I go into dark mode, the menus and dock change to white letters on a black background, but the Mac windows for the Finder and System Preferences, for example, do not. Any idea why that would be?

Gary Rosenzweig

Bill: Not sure. Perhaps switch it back and forth and see? Or maybe try it with/without some of the other options I show?

Ed Angel

Great video! Thanks!

SherP

5 months ago

My Mac is soooooo colourful now! Thanks for this tutorial! Super fun!

Make Your Mac Look Different Than Everyone Else

Comments: 6 Responses to “Make Your Mac Look Different Than Everyone Else”

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