Mac 101 - System Preferences: Personal Settings - Part 1

Sunday, August 26th, 2007 | Mac 101, Tips

Today I will cover the first four groups of settings under the Personal category in System Preferences. These are Appearance, Dashboard & Exposé, Desktop & Screen Saver and Dock. Each of these groups allows you to control an aspect or two of the way your operating system looks and functions. Let’s begin with Appearance.

Appearance
As the name of this group indicates, here you can change the way windows, menus and scroll bars appear. First off you can change the overall look of buttons, menus and windows. Your choices are Blue or Graphite (a grayish looking color). Next you can select the highlighting color for selected text. Here you have several more options of colors, ranging from graphite to purple.

Beside changing the color of menus and buttons, you can also change some settings on the appearance of scroll bars. You can select the placement of scroll arrows and the action when clicking in the scroll bar. Here is where you can also activate smooth scrolling. I have this option deactivated because scrolling is smooth enough by default. Plus, when smooth scrolling is activated it requires your computer to work a little harder when you scroll. Further you can select the number of recent items to show on various recent item lists. And finally, you can select the font smoothing style. Mine is set to automatic, which works best for the main display. You may want to modify this setting if you’re using an additional display with your laptop or desktop.

Dashboard & Exposé
In Dashboard & Exposé you have two main settings. First, this is where you can set different functions of screen corners. For example you can set your bottom right corner to activate the screen saver. So, when you place your mouse in that corner the screen saver will immediately activate. Second, here you can modify the shortcut keys for activating Dashboard, clearing the open windows to view the desktop, as well as viewing all windows and application windows.

Desktop & Screen Saver
This one is pretty self-explanitory. This is where you modify the background on your desktop and set a screen saver. Your Mac comes with a set of images preloaded by Apple. You can also use images from your iPhoto library as background for the desktop. Beside these options, you can select a folder on your hard drive to use as a source of images. You can also have the background change automatically at a predetermined interval.

Your Mac comes with a set of screen savers. You can select them in this section of System Preferences. You can also use your iPhoto library as a screen saver. Pictures from iPhoto will be displayed as a full-screen slide show if you choose to use this option. Here you can set how long the computer needs to be idle before the screen saver comes on.

Dock
There are several options for the Dock. You can modify the size of the dock and the amount of magnification when you place your mouse over it. You can deactivate magnification completely, if you find it bothersome. In addition, you can select where the dock should sit. It can be placed along the bottom, where it usually is by default, it can also be placed along the right or left edge of the screen. If you prefer to have the dock out of your way, you can set the dock to automatically hide.

I will address the last 3 groups of settings under the Personal category in the next post as we continue to explore the Mac OS X Systems Preferences. Please return soon for the next edition of Mac 101. You can also sign up for email delivery to receive new content from this blog in your Inbox.

Next Lesson:
Mac 101 - System Preferences: Personal Settings - Part 2