Setup tips for new Mac users

A brand new Mac straight out of the box comes out pretty dialed. It works, it’s easy to use and for the most part, it’s nice and convenient. But with the amount of things we do on our computers, there are a lot of different ways to do things, and that includes some basic settings on your computer. Every user have their own preferences on how things should look or work, which is why it’s great that Apple gives you plenty of options to customize everything in macOS.

After being a Mac user for over 25 years I’ve set up more Macs than I can count. I’ve set them up for my own personal use and I’ve set them up for team members at the companies I’ve worked at. Laptops, desktops, you name it. Over the years I’ve developed some deeply rooted habits that I rely on when using my computer, so whenever I do a fresh install I like to change a few things.

Desktop and Widgets

Not the most important thing, but having a nice wallpaper is one click that can make your days a bit more pleasant. With macOS Sonoma, most wallpapers also double as screen savers. My favorite thing is the return of widgets. Apple used to have a great way to use widgets with Dashboard in earlier versions of macOS but for some reason they killed Dashboard after macOS Mojave. I’ve missed my widgets ever since so I’m happy to see them return in macOS Sonoma. Sonoma’s widgets and especially the selection for different widgets still isn’t as good what it used to be with Dashboard, but I’m hoping over time we’ll get there.

Customizing the Dock

Dock is the backbone of using a Mac. By default, there are quite a few applications in the Dock but I like to customize mine. I don’t go crazy simplistic with only 5 applications in the Dock like some people do, but I like to make sure any application taking up space in my Dock is something that I use frequently. Any applications that I don’t use regularly I can always quickly launch using Spotlight. I also don’t like seeing recent or suggested applications in my Dock so that’s one feature I always turn off.

Customizing Mouse Settings

Mouse settings, this is another pretty essential thing for any user. Enabling secondary click is one of the very first things I do and how it’s not the default option is flat our weird. I understand that Apple used to be the outlier with a mouse that had only one button, but I think we’re past that point and it’s okay to admit that people need the secondary click function.

Another mouse setting I have to change before anything else is disabling natural scrolling. Nothing natural about it with a mouse. I understand the logic if you’re using a touch screen or a trackpad, but with a mouse, I don’t see the point. I’ve tried to get used to it a few times but it always feels weird and after a while, I realize the juice is not worth the squeeze.

iStat Menus

When installing my essential applications this is one thing I always need to get up and running sooner rather than later. My job involves downloading a lot of files, moving data between drives and exporting videos so seeing all my network traffic, disk space and CPU/GPU load at a glance on top of my screen has become muscle memory to me.

Customizing Finder On Your Mac

Finder is really good straight out of the box, no need to change much about it. One thing I like to change however is to show the path bar and status bar on the bottom of every Finder window. I’m pretty sure this used to be the default view on older Mac OS X versions before Apple simplified it and made Finder cleaner with less information on-screen.

Another thing I always do is to add my most frequently visited folders on the side bar of Finder. Default system folders can be added from Finder settings but you can also add custom folders by dragging and dropping them into your side bar. I find this extremely helpful if there’s a folder somewhere deep in a larger folder structure and I need a shortcut to access that specific folder on a regular basis. Below is a quick demonstration on this.

Using Hot Corners

Hot Corners is an underrated feature that many people either don’t use or don’t know about. With Hot Corners you can assign specific functions to each corner of your screen and activate those by pointing the cursor into each corner. I use this to put my display to sleep, activate Mission Control, expose applications windows and to turn on my screen saver. Easy, convenient and exactly the kind of stuff that makes me love macOS.

Customizing Safari Settings

I spend a lot of time using Safari and just like Finder, it’s pretty good as-is. The only thing I always change in Safari is to disable it from opening safe files after downloading. When I download a song, a photo or a PDF I don’t want Safari automatically launching other applications to view and play the documents I just downloaded.

I don’t close Safari often but sometimes you need to restart or log out, so another thing I change is to set Safari to open with all windows from my last session. Work never ends, so having Safari serve me all the tabs that I left off last time is a nice convenience feature and I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want this to be the default setting.