Make Big Sur work for you
Get more efficient access to macOS’ bits and bobs
Big Sur brings a revamp for those funny little icons that sit at the top– right of your screen challenging you to remember what they do without the aid of text. Obviously, text would take up too much room. Cleverly, Big Sur spaces out the icons, taking up too much room. It’s no good complaining to us, we don’t make the rules. Fortunately, it’s now easier to turn these little helpers on and off, and with many of them duplicated in the new Control Center, off can be a very practical option. Meanwhile, notifications and widgets have a whole new relationship. Aww.
DRAG RACE
Here’s a cool feature of Big Sur’s Control Center that you may not have noticed. Click the icon with the little sliders to drop down Control Center, then click any panel within it and drag it up to the menu bar. It turns into a little icon that you can drop in any position you want, pushing the others aside, and you can now access this feature directly from the menu bar. The same feature is still in Control Center too, though, which seems a bit pointless. So just drag it off Control Center and drop it. See what happens? Nothing. You can’t remove the default Control Center items.
What’s much more useful is not to add more menu bar icons, but remove the ones that are now in Control Center, decluttering your menu bar. Rearrange the menu bar by Cmd+dragging icons. To remove one, Cmd+drag it off to the Desktop, wait for a cross to appear, and drop it.
CONTROL YOUR CONTROLS
Go to System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar. The default Control Center modules are fixed, but you can uncheck Show in Menu Bar to kill their icons. Below are Other Modules that can be added to Control Center and/or the menu bar. Last are items that appear in the menu bar only, but can be removed. Ditch Siri (it’s easier to launch by saying “Hey, Siri”) and Spotlight (Cmd+Space). Oddly, macOS’ Input menu icon, which lets you access the Emoji & Symbols picker and the Keyboard Viewer, is missing here: it’s turned on from System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources > Show input menu in menu bar. And you’ll need to look in System Preferences > Users & Groups > “Show fast user switching menu as Icon” for that option. Third–party apps with menu bar icons aren’t listed; check their own Preferences, but typically they’ll always show their icon when loaded.
PUT ON NOTICE
The Notification Center icon at the right of the menu bar is replaced in Big Sur by the clock, and clicking this drops down a single view showing current notifications above widgets. Or open Notification Center by swiping left with two fingers from the right of your Magic Trackpad. You can also set a key combo in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control – yes, Mission Control, don’t ask why. To stop widgets getting pushed off the screen, only three notifications appear, with a “more” button if necessary. To use these slots efficiently, notifications for the same app are grouped in stacks. Click any app in System Prefs > Notifications to dictate how its notifications appear, if they’re grouped, and whether they show a banner or alert before you open Notification Center.
THIS UI SHALL EXPLODE
To dismiss a notification, click the “x” that appears at the top–left when you hover over it. Clicking on the body of a notification takes you to the relevant item in the app it belongs to, unless the notification is grouped, in which case the group spreads out below; you can now click the same or another notification to open it, or click Show Less to collapse the group again. When you hover over them, some notifications show an Options button at the bottom–right from which you can perform basic operations. Some notifications also show a chevron at the top– right, which you can click to preview the item in situ without switching to the app. This is great for skimming incoming emails.
FIDGET WITH WIDGETS
With the separate Today view gone, widgets now always appear as soon as you open Notification Center – they’re just pushed down a bit if you have notifications. This makes them handier than ever for quick access to info. Drag widgets to rearrange, or click Edit Widgets at the bottom to add others. For new widgets, go to the App Store and search for “widgets”; results will include apps not updated for Big Sur, but click “Widgets get an upgrade” for a selection of apps with new-style widgets. Once the app is installed, find it in Edit Widgets. Widgets come in small, medium, or large; set the Calendar app’s Up Next widget to Medium for a monthly calendar view. You can add any widget multiple times: for example, a small Lists widget for each of your Reminders lists will show more at a glance than one large widget.