MAKING MORE OF YOUR MAC
While some Macs can’t be tweaked for better performance, most can
EVERYONE WHO USES a Mac is different, and revels in customizing its features to get it to work better for them. Each of these suggestions can help you tailor your system for each day, and your every activity.
POWER MANAGEMENT
While Monterey manages your notebook’s charging to extend its working life, you still make decisions about how to use that power. Low Power Mode is available on most supported notebook models to help eke out a bit more juice. The select few with an M1 Max in their MacBook Pro now get High Power Mode, to run theirs at full pelt. The Battery pane also lets you override Apple’s charge management when you need to start the day with a full battery.
LOGIN LOOKS
When you type your password to log into your Mac, your memoji’s face responds emotionally according to its correctness. Try deliberately typing the occasional incorrect password just to see its reaction. If you haven’t yet set your personal avatar to a memoji, open System Preferences and click on your avatar image at the top–left to edit it. Monterey adds more standard memoji, and you can always create your own from a photo or other source using that editor.
DODGE THE NOTCH
If an app doesn’t work well with the camera notch in the display, open the app’s Get Info window in the Finder and there check the “Scale to fit below built–in camera” box to change its behaviour. App developers can also control this behaviour in the settings they bake into their software.
COLOR THE POINTER
For many, the pointer isn’t always as visible as we’d like, particularly when it changes into an I–beam to edit text. One aid is “Shake mouse pointer to locate,” a setting in the Pointer tab of Display in the Accessibility pane. Below that, Monterey adds the ability to color
the outline and fill of the pointer to give it better contrast against the display contents.
CLOCKWORK
In Big Sur, changing the 12–/24–hour setting in the Dock & Menu Bar pane only worked when you adopted the setting standard for your region, that’s 24–hour for Europe, and 12–hour for the USA. Now you can choose freely which you want.
BLUETOOTH BLUES
Monterey fixes a bug in the Bluetooth menu which showed historic charge values for peripherals such as wireless keyboards, mice, and trackpads. In the past, to get current figures you had to open the menu twice in succession. Although you now only need to open it once to see the latest charge result, this may no longer display any value when you’re recharging the peripheral. Until it’s fixed, either disconnect the charging cable briefly, or use the item’s pane to discover its battery level.
APP STORE UPDATES
Monterey doesn’t address the App Store’s long–standing problem of not delivering app updates on time, with some still being hidden for a day or two after release. To force the app to offer all the updates that are available, first click on Discover and wait until it has loaded its front page, then select Updates and press Cmd+R. In a couple of seconds it should list every update it has available for you, rather than just the ones it likes.
FRUGAL MACOS UPDATES
If more than one Mac shares your local network, economize on its downloads for macOS and App Store updates by running the Content Caching service in the Mac that’s running much or all of the time. Set this in the Sharing pane. Once running there, that Mac should download each update once, after which that update will be supplied from that Mac, minimizing download time for most updates. This is important in Monterey, as the size of macOS updates tends to be large.
LOW RES AIRPLAY
To get the full benefits and highest resolution from AirPlay, you need to use a recent model which enjoys full support. However, older models can still connect and play movies and audio at reduced quality.
HELP HELP
If you haven’t opened an app’s Help book before, you may have trouble the first time you try in Monterey. First, if the app isn’t in one of the standard Applications folders, move it to one of them. If it doesn’t open properly then, quit the app when you can, wait a minute or two, open it again, and it should work. If you look at the Help book inside the app, you’ll notice it has changed to look like a regular folder now; that’s probably due to a bug that doesn’t recognize Help books properly.
ACTIVITY MONITOR
If you have an M1 series Mac, it’s easy and instructive to see what macOS decides to run on its Efficiency cores. Open Activity Monitor, select CPU in its main window, in the View menu select All Processes and sort the contents of the window according to the % CPU column. Then open the CPU History window from the Window menu. Efficiency and Performance cores are labelled there, and you’ll notice how routine system tasks like Spotlight indexing and Time Machine backups run only on the Efficiency cores, unlike your apps.