System Preferences

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How to automatically hide the Dock on Mac

Did you know you can set your Dock to automatically hide when not in use? This is a great way to regain a little bit of screen real estate on your Mac. In this post, we will show you how to automatically hide and show the Dock, and we’ll even share a pro tip to make the hide/show animation faster.

No Escape key on OLED MacBook Pro? Sierra lets you remap its function to a modifier key

With less than 24 hours away until Apple’s “Hello again” Mac event, images of an unreleased MacBook Pro found in the latest macOS Sierra 10.12.1 update have all but confirmed a rumored OLED touch bar replacing the row with hardware function keys.

The Internet immediately complained about the apparent loss of the hardware Escape key that seems to have fallen victim to these programmable OLED keys. While the OLED Bar could display a soft-Escape key in the left corner, users can now assign its function to one of the hardware modifier keys.

As Jeff Geerling first noted yesterday, the latest macOS 10.12.1 Sierra update now conveniently lets you remap an Escape action to a Caps Lock, Control, Option or Command modifier key—which wasn’t possible in earlier macOS editions.

Dark Mode discovered in Safari and System Preferences on macOS Sierra

It looks like iOS 10 may not be the only Apple operating system to include dark interface assets as Mac developer Guilherme Rambo tweeted out a number of screenshots showing a dark interface theme in several stock applications on macOS Sierra, including Safari and System Preferences.

This mode is different in appearance than macOS’s existing setting for enabling dark menu bar and the Dock in System Preferences → General.

11 System Preferences tricks every Mac owner should know

System Preferences, a built-in OS X application analogous to Settings on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, lets you customize the Mac to your liking.

You can, for example, adjust the size and location of the Dock, change your desktop background, set your computer’s clock to a different time zone, add or remove user accounts, dive deep into network settings and much more.

Whenever you feel like making changes to your Mac’s settings, System Preferences is the one app you’re most likely going to use. Despite it being one of the most-frequently used applications on the Mac, some folks are unaware of its less-visible features designed to make finding the right setting a breeze.

In this tutorial, you will learn about the most important System Preferences shortcuts and how you can leverage them to make the most from the app.

How to customize your view of System Preferences icons on your Mac

Like iOS’s built-in Settings app, the System Preferences application on OS X lets you customize the various aspects of your Mac to your liking.

For instance, you can adjust the size and location of the Dock, select a desktop background, set your computer’s clock to a different time zone, customize how your keyboard, mouse and trackpad work and much more.

With System Preferences, changing your computer’s settings happens in one easily accessible central place. Our recent tutorial has shown you how to manually remove a third-party pane from System Preferences if it stays intact after uninstalling its container app.

Today, we’re going to discuss customizing your view of System Preferences and teach you to organize System Preferences icons and show and hide individual icons from the view.