MacMost: System Preferences

Here are some System Preference settings you may not know about or be using. Learn how to change the menu bar clock, customize your language by app, show a message on the lock screen, access hidden screen resolutions and more.

The Status Menus are the icons you see in the top right corner of your Mac's screen. They give you control over various settings and special functions. You can arrange, add or remove them as you like.

When you get a new Mac, you'll be walked through some steps in Setup Assisant. After that, there will be a few thing you want to check and set up before you start using your Mac.

Here are some settings you may want to check out if you are concerned about security on your Mac. Not all of these are necessary, but you may want to consider them.

You can set your Desktop Picture to a variety of dymanic or static images that Apple provides. You can also use a soild color or choose from one of your own photos or an image file.

Each person using a Mac should have their own user account. This allows everyone to have things set up the way they want, access their own iCloud Account and prevents others from accidentally deleting or changing files. Enable Fast User Switching to make it easy for more than one person to use the same Mac.

Use Do Not Disturb to make sure notifications don't appear on yoru screen during meetings, online presentations or when you just want to get more work done. There are a variety of ways to turn on and off Do Not Disturb, and also a variety of settings to customize it.

System Preferences is where you go to change settings on your Mac. Settings are arranged by category in panes, but you can search for settings too. On the Mac, you access app preferences in the individual app.

If you don't like the colors or brightness of the macOS Big Sur default desktop wallpaper, you can create your own. It is easy to take the default image and tint it to your own color or even add more to the design.

The MacBook Pro Touch Bar can be a useful productivity tool if you take the time to train yourself to use it. The first steps are to learn what it is capable of and how to customize it.

There are more options than ever for customizing how macOS looks with Big Sur. The Menu Bar and windows get their color from the desktop, but you can also set them to ignore that. You can change the way sidebar icons and other elements look as well.

Notifiation Center Widgets in macOS Big Sur are more versatile and powerful thanb before, looking more like a real replacement for the old Dashboard widgets from years ago. Learn how to add, remove and customize them.

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.

Here are 10 new features in macOS Big Sur that you should check out right after updating. Get to know the Control Center, new Notifications Center, new sounds and set up things like your desktop background.

You can use a variety of apps to add a live clock to your Mac's desktop wallpaper background. Each app has it own style, features and settings.

New Mac users sometimes have trouble with scrolling. You can scroll using a trackpad, mouse, the keyboard or scroll bars. Learn how and see some preferences you can change.

In addition to keyboard shortcuts, there are hidden functions you can perform with your Mac keyboard if you know the right combination or setting. You can forward delete, bring up context menus and show hidden menu commands. You can even use the Caps Lock or second set of modifier keys for other things.

Instead of using the default desktop background wallpaper, you can easily set it to something to fit your style. You can use custom colors, your own photos, create your own gradient wallpapers and much more.

Watch if you want to add keyboard shortcuts for Launchpad, Do No Disturb or Notification Center on your Mac. You can also bring these up using gestures or Hot Corners.

There is a complete new set of alert sounds to choose from in System Preferences once you update to macOS Big Sur. These new sounds were created using the old ones. Also, learn how to save the old sounds now, so you can use them again in Big Sur.