Voting is a right and a privilege, especially when it comes to the technology you use every day. It’s important to choose the options and functions that best meet your particular needs, including on your reliable (and nonpolitical) ol’ Mac.
Fortunately, there are several elective settings in macOS that you can consider before picking the choice that makes the most sense for you. While I can’t hand you an “I voted” sticker, people might notice a boost in your productivity when you make your choice. The good news is that you’re welcome to jump across the aisle at any time and choose the other side if something isn’t working quite right for you.
This might be one of the more divisive options when you talk with Mac users. Most computers display documents with black text on a white background because that’s how we typically read printed text on paper. Naturally, computers mimicked that color scheme from the paper world and applied it to everything on a digital screen. But there were always some folks who preferred a reversed view, with white text on a black background, which actually hearkens back to the days of ancient monochrome screens.
Today’s modern-day macOS now allows you to choose between Light and Dark modes. Fair warning: The Dark mode can be quite unsettling just because it’s such a stark difference. You can try it out for yourself by going to your Mac’s System Settings (under the Apple menu at the upper left) and clicking Appearance in the left sidebar. There, you’ll see graphical representative images for Light, Dark, and Auto. Clicking the Dark mode option will immediately blacken your entire interface. You can stay there or immediately click the Light mode so everything goes back to normal.
Going to Dark mode doesn’t mean that your Mac turns everything black—you’ll still see hints of color and other small adjustments to give you the best experience. Choosing Dark mode may be a generational difference, as I personally have to stay in the Light while my children have all gone over to the Dark side. It’s worth checking out this setting to see if you can get comfortable with your vote.
Another choice you have on your Mac is how you view all your open apps and switch between them. For many years, macOS has offered Mission Control, which temporarily puts all your open apps into miniature windows so you can see everything that’s open and running. Clicking on a particular app brings it front and center.
If you’re using a Mac laptop or an Apple keyboard, you can tap the F3 key to engage Mission Control. You can also swipe up on a Trackpad with three or four fingers (depending on your settings).
More recently, macOS integrated Stage Manager, which is a different take on the same idea but shows your current and recently used apps on the left side of your screen. The window you’re currently working on is front and center, but you can swap to another app or choose to arrange several apps into a group.
The Stage Manager idea came from the iPad, where I believe it works much better; I don’t think it translates well to the Mac. You can easily turn Stage Manager on and off, so I recommend you try it and see if it works for you. If you go to Settings and click Desktop & Dock on the left panel, you’ll see a toggle for Stage Manager. Even easier, you can click Control Center in your Menu Bar and select the toggle option from there.
Out of the box, all Macs have the Dock permanently stationed at the bottom of the screen. The Dock is an excellent tool for launching apps and switching between running apps, among other things, but it takes up more room than it should. The Dock steals half an inch from the bottom of your screen—this could be close to 10 percent of your entire screen real estate. On a huge monitor, that’s not a big deal, but I cringe every time I see a Mac laptop relinquishing so much crucial working space.
There are certainly Mac users who like having constant and convenient access to the Dock at all times, but you could be making much better use of that space. All you have to do is go into Settings, select Desktop & Dock on the left panel, and tap “Automatically hide and show the Dock.” This option automatically hides the Dock and gives you back that valuable space, but you can quickly bring the Dock back by simply moving your mouse cursor down to the bottom of the screen (which is what you would be doing anyway to select an app on the Dock). When you move your cursor back up on the screen, the Dock graciously gets out of your way.
A mouse was designed to be “clicked,” and so were trackpads. But when you’re using a Mac laptop, you can choose to “tap” the trackpad instead. It’s a small change, but it can make a huge difference.
By default, trackpads on Mac laptops require you to do a full click with your finger, but if you go to Settings and select Trackpad, you will see an option to turn on “Tap to Click.” Now, instead of having to click all the way down on the trackpad when selecting a file or pressing a button, you can simply tap. If you’ve never done this before, there might be a slight learning curve if you’re tap-happy, but try it so you can decide what works best for you.
For our last vote, we have three candidates when it comes to viewing your files in Finder. You don’t have to stay fiercely loyal to your initial selection—one view might work better for specific folders versus others, and it’s an easy switch.
The three options can be found by clicking View in the Finder menu at the upper left of the screen. There is also a separate button for each of these views at the top of your Finder window, which allows you to easily switch between views depending on what you’re currently working on.
First, you can view your files as what Apple calls Icons, but I think of them more as “thumbnails,” similar to how we view our photo roll. If it’s a document, you’ll see a tiny visual representation of the first page. You can make these thumbnails bigger or smaller with the little slider in the bottom right corner.
Next is List view, which, as you can probably surmise, offers a simple list of your files, but here you can add or remove columns and then sort your files based on one of those columns.
Last, we have the Column view, which is what I usually recommend for folks because it allows you to easily navigate through multiple folders. You click a folder in the leftmost column, and subfolders appear in the next column; you can continue all the way down to the file you need. Once you select a file, you’ll see all the pertinent information about that file in the rightmost panel. It’s a really helpful way to get a big picture of your files as well as easily navigate where you need to go.
There is actually a fourth option for viewing your files called Gallery, which is excellent for viewing photos but not the best for content-rich files that legal professionals usually deal with.
So, this election season, remember that you have a right to vote on what Mac system settings work best for you above the fruited plains of Apples!
