Settings you should tailor

Loads of goodies await in System Preferences

Unless you’re new to the Mac, you’ve probably dipped into System Prefs before, but look closer. Although its many panes may bewilder newcomers, it’s a treasure trove of settings and alternative behaviors, many of which can improve your Mac experience.

Secure your Mac

In Security & Privacy, set whether your Mac requires a password to access after it wakes from sleep or the screen saver has started. You needn’t choose Immediately on a desktop Mac at home, but it’s a sensible choice on a portable Mac. Either way, pick a short duration.

Elsewhere, this pane enables you to restrict your Mac to running apps from the App Store, or also permit those installed from identified developers. This feature, known as Gatekeeper, no longer has a more general option to allow apps from other sources, but you can override it on a per–app basis: hold Ctrl and click the relevant app in Finder, select Open, then confirm.

Looking good

With modern Macs’ Retina displays, you no longer get a large range of supported resolutions to choose from, just a bunch of ‘looks like’ presets for the internal display. For external ones, though, hold Opt and click Scaled to see resolutions by dimensions. Add EasyRes (Free, easyresapp.com) to access these for all displays.

You may also want to stop your display being powered up all day. If so, adjust settings in the Energy Saver pane. You can decide how long the display takes to turn off, whether disks spin down, and if your Mac will wake up for network access.

Time it right

The clock in the Mac’s menu bar initially shows the day of the week and the time. The Date & Time pane has options for this. In the Clock tab, you can opt for a tiny analog clock if menu bar space is tight; if you stick with digital, you can add the date and seconds, or go the other way and remove the day.

Ac ess all areas

System Prefs’ Accessibility pane is mainly designed for people with impaired vision, hearing or movement. However, it can also be quite beneficial to everyone.

For example, ‘Reduce motion’ (located under Display) removes many transition effects, including those for full–screen apps (entering and exiting, and also moving between workspaces created in Mission Control). 'Reduce transparency' makes semi–transparent areas solid.

The Accessibility pane, by nature of its name, is one many Mac users never even open, but it’s worth exploring as it’s full of options that can benefit a wide range of people.

On some Macs, you can access extra resolutions for the built–in display. Where you can’t, add EasyRes.