Where To Find Things In the New macOS Ventura System Settings App

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's figure out where to find things in the new Systems Settings App in macOS Ventura.

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So in macOS Ventura the System Preferences app has been around in macOS for years. It has been completely replaced by a new Systems Settings App. This does the same thing that System Preferences did but it looks completely different. It looks a lot more like the Settings App on the iPad and the iPhone than it does the old System Preferences app. However, a lot of things have moved around and it may be difficult to find some settings in the new Settings App. 

Now in the old System Preferences app in Monterey you start off here at the top level seeing all the different categories of preferences. You can't actually change anything until you select a category. Let's start off by going into the General Category here. Then you'll see some of the settings that don't quite fit anywhere else. This is kind of like a miscellaneous section. Now in the System Settings App in Ventura there's also a General Section there. But that is not related. That's much more like the iPhone and iPad General Section where there are lots of different subsections for General Settings. Instead most of the stuff that you used to find in the General category in Preferences would now be in the Appearance Category in System Settings. You see here if you compare them everything from System Preferences General, from Appearance settings to Scroll Bar settings, are what is exactly here in the Appearance Section which you will note that things are a little different. For instance instead of checkboxes we have now got Switches that look a lot like the iOS switches. 

Menu items are more modern as well. But other things like these little icons you can select and these radio buttons stay the same. 

So what about the other parts of the General Preferences here. Like Default Web Browser and Preferred Tabs. Well, Default Web Browser is in a different location now. You'll find that under your Desktop & Dock in System Settings. If you scroll down here, under Windows & Apps, you'll see Preferred Tabs When Opening Document, and you'll see the options there. Default Web Browser is also here and you could select that. So that's under Desktop & Dock now. You'll also find here under Menu Bar, Recent Document Applications and Servers. You can select a number there the equivalent to this in System Preferences, General. 

Handoff, however, is in its own section under General. General has basically more categories in here. So instead of making this list longer some of them are tucked in under General. There's AirDrop and Handoff. This is where you'll find the settings for Allow Handoff. 

Now back here under General you've got the Settings here for your Apple ID and iCloud Account. So you have Apple ID here. You click there and you get to all the settings that have to do with iCloud. It is its own little section in here. You get the same thing here in System Settings. But you just click right here, this category, and then you'll have all the same things. Here's iCloud and you can dive down into that and find all of the same things. This is also where you'll see all your devices. Here they are in Preferences. They are just further down here in the list in Settings. This is also where you'll find the iCloud Storage that you see here in both. They just put it at the top now. You've got your Optimize Mac Storage setting and you have individual settings for things like, for instance, iCloud Drive. 

Back in System Preferences we had one category for Desktop & Screen Saver. You go into here and they are two separate sections. Desktop & Screen Saver at the top. But now in System Settings they each have their own top level category. So you have Wallpaper here which is the same as Desktop. You could do the same things here. Here you choose from the different types of desktops including colors. You can drag your own image into here just like you could here in System Preferences. Instead of having this list here on the left you would now Add a Folder like this and it would add it to this list here. You can also add a photo album right there. If what you've chosen has options, like dynamic light & dark, you can select them here rather than over here. Now instead of going to a subsection in Desktop & Screen Saver for Screen Saver options you now have a top level section here for Screen Saver. You have all the same options here. Of course now you also have a new Ventura specific screen saver. 

Dock & Menu Bar under System Preferences were together and you had this list here on the left. The first item gave you all the preferences for the Dock. But in System Settings now the Desktop & Dock are together here. You could see you have all those same Dock controls and the Menu Bar controls as well if you are looking for those. Plus you have the new control for Stage Manager here. Back in System Preferences the list would continue with Control Center items. You could select something and determine whether it is also shown in the Menu Bar as well as Control Center or for other things whether it is in either the Menu Bar or Control Center. Now you've got a separate section here for Control Center and you have all those same items. But now you've got this little pop-up menu here to choose instead of checkboxes. 

Mission Control used to have its own section there. But now its under Desktop & Dock and if you scroll down you have a whole section here for Mission Control. There's those four same checkboxes, they are now switches, and you have a button here for Shortcuts where you can control the three different types of shortcuts for Mission Control. Here is where the Hot Corner's button is. So that is under Desktop & Dock now rather than Mission Control. 

In System Preferences we had Siri and Spotlight as two separate sections here with all the controls for each. Now you've got that in one section, Siri & Spotlight together. You'll find all of the Siri controls here. You'll find the Spotlight controls with all of the same checkboxes here and you've got a button now that gets you to Privacy, the same section as this, where you can exclude folders from Spotlight Search. 

So Language & Region is top level in System Preferences. For System Settings it is now under General. So we will finally get to look in General here for something and we've got Language & Region and we will find those same settings there. Note here you've got General Settings and Settings Per App and here you've got that as a list that you could click this Plus button here and Add an App and Add Custom Settings. 

Notification and focus were together in System Preferences. You can see them as two different tabs here. Now they've each got their own section. So you've got Notifications right here. You've got options here for Notification Center at the top. Then you've got each of the different apps and you could dig down into a specific app and look at the Notification options for that app. Then the Focus Section of Notifications & Focus is now right here just under Focus and you can add Focus options there. You can Edit them here. It's all the same set of settings, just displayed in a different way. 

Internet Accounts allows you to add email, Calendar, Notes accounts, things like that. You could do that here at the System level and they would just be available in those apps. You have the same thing here. It's just a little further down, Internet Accounts. You have the same options. You can click Add Account and Add a New Account. 

Passwords in System Preferences allows you to get access to your passwords and you could see the list here and access them without having to go into Safari. You've got the same thing here just a little further down. You've got Passwords and you've got the List. You can get the info by clicking on the little i button right there. You can edit with the Edit button. 

Users & Groups has its own top level section in both System Preferences and System Settings. Now the List is featured at the main part here and you could Add an Account. You can get Info on a specific account like that. That's where you would go to change the password. But how about Login Items. Login Items isn't here in Users & Groups anymore. It's now under General and has its own section login item. It's got the List right here but it has a new feature in System Settings. It also shows Launch Demons. These are things you are usually hidden. They are not here in Login Items. But when you install an app and it asks you Should the app launch automatically every time you login and you say yes and it doesn't appear here it is usually doing it at the System Level as a Launch Demon. It's hidden from you. It's hard to get access to but now with System Settings in Ventura we have this List here and we can turn them On and Off without having to use the Terminal or Edit Files in your Library. Note though that it shows the name of the developer, not the name of the app. So I'm already seeing people panicking over things they don't recognize here because they know the apps they are using very well but they may not recognize the official name of the developer of that app. So if you see something you don't recognize here, just Goggle that name and you usually will be able to pretty quickly associate the name of the developer with the App that you know you are using. 

A big section in System Preferences is, of course, Accessibility. It gives you access to all sorts of subsections in here for accessibility. Unfortunately this hasn't changed too much. There's an Accessibility section right there. You will see the same List and you'll be able to dive into individual sections and see the same controls, the same buttons. 

The Screen Time Section here is at the top level in System Preferences and you'll find it as well in Screen Time in System Settings. You'll notice the List here mirrors the List over here. If you click Options you'll see those options here and you'll simply see them at the bottom of the list. Then you could dig down into each individual section and you get basically the same information, the same controls. 

Now in System Preferences there was a top level category for Extensions. This allowed you to look at the various different categories of extensions. Like extensions for photos editing. Extensions for Quick Look. Finder extensions. Then see which apps you had that also included extensions and you can enable or disable them. Now you won't find that here. It's now under Privacy & Security. Then in here if you scroll down you'll find Extensions all the way at the bottom. This is where you'll find those categories and then be able to turn On and Off different extensions. Now Security & Privacy takes you to this section here in System Preferences. We have General, FileVault, FireWall, and Privacy. Now you have Privacy & Security here in System Settings. This looks a lot like the Privacy Section here in System Preferences. If you're looking for some of the other things here you have to scroll down past the Privacy List and you'll see, for instance, Allow Apps Downloaded From here. You'll see FireVault Settings here. But Firewall, if you use that, that's now under Network. You find Firewall there. 

You'll find Software Update now available in General Software Update. Then you've got the Advanced button here that is equivalent to hitting the Information button there including the new option for the Rapid Security Response Updates where you can get security updates without having to reboot. 

In System Preferences we had a Network Section and under the Network Section you had all of your network options here and you had an Advanced button and you could set things up specifically like that. If you wanted to control Wi-Fi you would select 

Wi-Fi here on the left then you could set the Wi-Fi network, turn it On and Off, and all of that. Now in System Settings you have separate categories for Network which is now a List. You can Add a Service to this list. You can Edit existing services. But you also have a separate section for Wi-Fi. You can see it takes you to the same place. So Wi-Fi looks like this at the top level but if you go into Network and select Wi-Fi you get to the same location.

The Sound controls are a little different in that we had different sections here for Sound Effects, Output and Input. Now the top is Sound Effects. Then Output and Input are two sections here at the bottom. 

Keyboard settings on System Preferences now map to a Keyboard Section here in System Settings. You've got a lot of the same things but it is in a List format. So instead of having Keyboard and then Text, you've got Keyboard and under that Text and then you've got Text Replacements as a button and that brings up that control there. 

Input Sources is also a button where you can access that and you've got Touch Bar Settings, if you have a Mac with a Touch Bar, and Keyboard Shortcuts now under a button as well. Dictation though is just a section here at the bottom of the main list. 

I know a lot of us access Keyboard Shortcuts and Text Replacements all the time. It is a shame to see these buried down in Keyboard underneath buttons you have to click.

Trackpad and Mouse Settings can be found here at the top level. So let's take a look at Trackpad Settings and compare them, You can see that the videos that previously demonstrated things have now been replaced by these little animated illustrations. We still have the same three sections, Point & Click, Scroll & Zoom, and More Gestures with just more modern switches and controls. 

Now Displays, if you go to Displays here, you can see I've got two screens. So it's going to show me the two screens. I need to go to Display Settings in order to access the settings for each one. On this Mac I only have one screen attached. So when I go to Displays it shows me that display and I've got the controls for it right underneath. If I were to add a second display here you would see that I would simply click the Display and then get to choose the Settings for that display. So you still find all the controls in the same place but it's another Update, the second version of macOS in a row where the Displays' control have received major changes. 

We've got Printers & Scanners here and it's pretty straight forward in either one. If you want to add a printer to the list you simply click the button here just as you would click the Plus button there and you can add a new printer. You can select a printer from the list, set the default paper size. You can dig down into the individual printer settings just like before. 

Now what you see for Power is going to depend on the type of Mac you've got. Here I see Energy Saver because this is a desktop Mac. A Mac Studio. The equivalent though on this machine, since it is a MacBook, would be the Battery. You're going to see all the different battery controls here because this is a MacBook and you would see the regular Power and Sleep Controls here. So it is a little hard to compare these two. But either way you find the Energy Saver or Battery Settings at the top level. 

For Date & Time Settings it's at the top level in System Preferences. But now it's in General under Date & Time. 

Sharing Settings are also under General. So you find them right in there. You'll be able to switch On and Off all the things here that were on the left before. Add You Host Name is now at the bottom. If you want to add shared folders and control which folders are shared you click the i button for File Sharing. That's where you get to all of those. So it's the same thing here. You go and select the item that you want and you'll see the options appear on the right. Now you've got this i button that you click and you get to those settings. 

Time Machine controls are no longer at the top level but under General and Time Machine. You have the same set of options here for excluding different folders. Finally Startup disk that is now under General as well. You can select it there.

At the bottom of System Preferences you may find more Preference controls for specific Apps that you have installed. The same thing here in System Settings. You'll find those listed at the bottom. 

A notable new addition here is a whole section for Lock Screen. So Lock Screen had settings that were taken from other places. For instance under Security & Privacy here's Show a Message When the Screen is Locked, Require the Password after a certain amount of time. You've got your When Switching Users settings here which before would have been under Users & Groups. Login Options. If you have Touch ID you'll find the controls for that under Touch ID & Password. There's a top level item for Game Center if you use that. You've got, of course, Wallet & Apple Pay if you have Touch ID on your Mac. 

Another change is that System Settings now includes system information that previously would have been found by going to the Apple Menu and About This Mac. You can see all of this here and you can go to different sections in here under Storage. You can go to Manage to go to the special Storage  Manager. Then in Overview you would click System Report to go to the special window that gives you all seeds of information about your Mac. Now in System Settings you could still get to it but by going to the Apple Menu, About This Mac. But when you click More Info it is actually going to take you to the About section inside of General. So you can just go to System Settings, General, About and get to that information there. If you scroll down you could see the different sections like Display Settings and here's the Storage Manager. Also there's the button that takes you to the System Information.

One of the best changes now is that Search works a lot better which is just at the right time because this is when we're going to be searching for things that we can't find because we're used to looking for them in a certain place in System Preferences. So, for instance, if you can't quite remember where Mission Control is you can just Search for it. You'll find the results are a lot more inclusive than they used to be in System Preferences. For instance Hot Corners, you can see exactly where you can get to it. They're in Accessibility and also Desktop & Dock. You can see how it brings it right up.

So definitely System Settings is going to take some getting used to especially if you've been using System Preferences for years and years and you have this built-in memory of where things are. But also keep in mind that people coming to Mac from the iPhone and iPad are now going to find it much easier to find Settings because they match where they are used to looking. Plus, I think, another big advantage to System Settings is since everything is in kind of a List it is going to be easier for Apple to add new Settings. Before a lot of the Preferences' sections had a specific design and to add a new switch somewhere meant redesigning the entire section. But now that most of it is in kind of a List View they can easily add new Settings in the middle or at the end of a section. So hopefully we'll get some new Settings' controls that will help us customize our Macs even more. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.