Unlock Your Mac’s Potential: 5 Essential Tips for New Users
Welcome to the world of Mac! Getting a new M4 Mac mini or MacBook Air is exciting, but navigating a new operating system can feel a bit overwhelming at first. With a few key adjustments and by mastering core features, you’ll make your Mac experience smoother and more efficient. Drawing on expert advice, here are the top five things to do right after setting up your new Mac to enhance your workflow and personalize your experience. A lot of the customizations below are within your MacOS -> System Settings aka Control Panels.
1. Customize Your Trackpad Settings
- Adjust tracking speed so the cursor moves just as fast (or slow) as you like.
- Enable “Tap to click” to register taps instead of physical clicks.
- Explore gestures: swipe three fingers up for Mission Control or down for App Exposé.
- Enable three-finger drag: go to System Settings > Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad Options, turn on “Dragging,” and select “Three-finger drag” to move windows or items with a simple gesture.
2. Optimize Display Space and Master Window Management
- Use “More Space” resolution in System Settings > Displays to scale your screen for extra content.
- Tile windows by hovering over the green window button or dragging a window to an edge for split-view multitasking.
- Remove margins between tiled windows with third-party tools like Rectangle or Magnet for seamless tiling on smaller screens.
3. Customize and Clean Up the Dock & Menu Bar
- Remove unused apps: right-click an icon and choose Options > Remove from Dock, or drag it off.
- Hide recent/suggested apps via System Settings > Desktop & Dock by disabling “Show recent applications.”
- Auto-hide the Dock under System Settings > Desktop & Dock so it only appears when needed.
- Customize the Menu Bar: drag items from Control Center onto the Menu Bar (e.g. battery percentage, low-power mode) in System Settings > Control Center.
4. Master Spotlight Search
- Invoke Spotlight with Command + Spacebar.
- Launch apps by typing their names and hitting Return.
- Search files, emails, and more, or perform quick math and unit conversions.
- Refine search categories in System Settings > Spotlight to show only relevant results.
5. Learn Essential Keyboard Shortcuts
- Basic editing: Command + A (Select All), Command + C (Copy), Command + V (Paste).
- Paste without formatting: Command + Option + Shift + V.
- Switch apps: Command + Tab cycles through open applications.
- Text navigation: Option + Arrow to jump word by word; Command + Arrow to jump to line or document start/end.
- Screenshots & recordings: Command + Shift + 3 (full screen), Command + Shift + 4 (selection), Command + Shift + 5 (recording options).
OS Version Nuances/Notes
- Trackpad settings: Three-finger drag moved under Accessibility in macOS Ventura and later; older versions use System Settings > Trackpad.
- Display scaling labels: “More Space” appears in Ventura onward; earlier macOS label it as “Scaled” with options for larger text or more space.
- Window tiling: Native split-view was introduced in macOS Catalina; earlier versions rely wholly on third-party tools.
- Control Center: Added in Big Sur; users on Catalina or earlier customize Menu Bar items in System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar.
- Spotlight categories: In Sonoma, you can even exclude web search results; in older releases, Spotlight settings are under System Preferences > Spotlight.
- Keyboard shortcuts: Unformatted paste (Command + Option + Shift + V) is available in most apps on Big Sur and later; some legacy apps may not support it.
