If you’re new to the Mac but something of an iOS veteran, this lesson will be a snap. And it should be, because Apple modeled Mountain Lion’s Mail, Contacts & Calendars system preference on the setting of the same name found on today’s iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. If anything, the Mountain Lion version is actually easier to use because it isn't crammed with additional settings specific to the Contacts, Calendar, and Reminders applications. Much as I love discussing the ins and outs of contacts, events, and reminders, our focus here will be on setting up email accounts on your Mac. Adding a service Launch System Preferences and, in the Internet & Wireless area, click Mail, Contacts & Calendars. If you took advantage of the offer to set up an iCloud account when you first configured your Mac, you’ll see an iCloud entry in the list of accounts on the left side of the resulting window.
See also: Mac White Screen Fix “Setting Up Your Mac” If your Mac become unresponsive during setup, first allow your Mac to complete the process. If it is taking too long (hours), then reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac to fix this problem. Mac 101: Getting set up More like this. Review: Refined iOS 6 highlighted by stunning Maps overhaul. This is a computer program that helps you with all the little settings your Mac needs so.
To the right of that list is a series of commonly used services, including (in the United States) iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Vimeo, and Flickr. At the very bottom of the list is an an Add Other Account. Your Mail, Contacts & Calendars system preference should look something like this. To use these services, you must first set up an account with them—something that you can’t do within this preference. If, for example, you wish to set up a Gmail account, launch a Web browser (Apple’s Safari is the default) and travel to. Create your Gmail account here, making a note of your username and password. Now that you have an account, let’s set it up.
Click the Gmail item in the Mail, Contacts & Calendars list. A sheet pops down with Name, Email Address, and Password fields. In all likelihood the Name field will be filled in already; if it isn’t, do so. Then, just enter your Gmail address (in the form [email protected]), enter your password, and click Set Up. Adding a Gmail account As long as your Mac is connected to the Internet, it will create the correct settings so that you can use Gmail’s mail, calendars, reminders, messages, and notes features. You’ll know that its efforts have been successful if a sheet appears that lets you choose which of Gmail’s features to use.
If you don’t wish to use all of the features—for example, you’d rather not sync your Gmail calendars and reminders with your Mac’s Calendar and Reminders applications (and I’ll talk about why you might not want to do this when I discuss those specific applications in a later column)—simply uncheck the ones you’d prefer to do without. When you’re done, click Add Account. You’ll see a spinning gear icon next to the enabled features, which indicates that your Mac is syncing Gmail’s data with the appropriate applications on your computer. You will notice as well that your Gmail account now appears in the list of configured accounts. If you’d like to use a different name for your account, select it, click the Details button to the right, and in the sheet that appears, enter a new name in the Description field and click OK.
The advantages of autoconfiguration So what exactly has happened here? If you’ve chosen to synchronize your email with Google, go ahead and launch the Mail application, which you’ll find in the Dock.
You have my permission to gasp when you see that a Gmail account now appears in Mail’s list of accounts. And that’s the beauty of the Mail, Contacts & Calendars system preference. In the old days, you not only had to know a load of arcane settings (details such as email server addresses and ports, which I’ll get to in a bit) but you also needed to configure multiple applications to put everything together. Now, in most cases, the Mac OS automatically takes care of those arcane settings and configures them in this single system preference. Adding even more accounts works much the same way: Click the plus button below the list of accounts, click a service, and fill in the appropriate fields. Among the preconfigured services, a Microsoft Exchange account requires more steps than the others. In addition to knowing your username and password, you must also know the server address for your account.
Since most Exchange accounts are created for business users, chances are good that the person who set you up with that account (someone working in the IT department, for example) can provide you with that information. About the other services While looking through the list of services, you’ll notice that some are completely unrelated to mail, contacts, and calendars.
Facebook and Twitter are for social networking, of course, and Flickr and Vimeo help you share pictures and video, respectively. So what are they doing here? Mostly it’s about tidiness. Sure, Apple could have added more preference panes to the System Preferences window and called them Social Networking and Media Sharing.
But really, Mail, Contacts & Calendars is about the accounts you have—services you’ve registered with for which you need a username and password. When you add Facebook and Twitter accounts, you have the ability to use those services within certain applications and the Notifications pane; likewise with Flickr and Vimeo. If you choose to share an image or video, adding Flickr and Vimeo makes the task easier since you can share that media directly from within a supported application.
3:00 Check for updates Has Apple released an update to since it built your MacBook? Find out by clicking the Apple button in the upper-left corner of your screen and then clicking About This Mac. You should be staring at the General tab of the About This Mac window. If so, click the Software Update button, which will launch the System Preferences to check for updates. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Show battery percentage Like an, a MacBook displays a small battery icon at the top of the display to show how much battery power remains. It's more helpful if next to this icon it also displays the percentage of battery you have left.
To show the percentage, click the battery icon in the menu bar and click Show Percentage. (If you don't see a battery icon, go to System Preferences Energy Saver and check the box for Show battery status in menu bar.) Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Set up Siri should be enabled by default, but if you would prefer to use Siri only on your iPhone, then you can disable Siri by going to System Preferences Siri and unchecking the box for Enable Ask Siri. If you plan on using Siri frequently, then you can use this Siri window to choose Siri's voice, language and a keyboard shortcut. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Customize the Touch Bar If you have a new model with the Touch Bar, then head to System Preferences Keyboard and click the Customize Touch Bar button and then simply drag the buttons you want to show up on the default view of the Touch Bar to the Touch Bar below the display. Don't worry, they'll make the leap from your display across the hinge and to the Touch Bar.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Sync folders via iCloud I find it incredibly useful to sync the Desktop and Documents folders between my two Macs and my devices. To sync these two folders, go to System Preferences iCloud and click the Options button for iCloud Drive. Next, check the box for the top item, Desktop and Documents folders.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Choose default browser Even though it uses more system resources than, I use instead of Safari because the favicons help me keep track of all of my open tabs. To set a default browser, go to System Preferences General and make a selection other than Safari for Default web browser. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Set scrolling direction A MacBook's 'natural' scrolling direction doesn't feel natural to me. If you want the two-finger swipe gesture to scroll vertically in the opposite way, head to System Preferences Trackpad and click on the Scroll & Zoom tab. Next, uncheck the box for Scroll direction: Natural.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Get your Dashboard MacOS lets you juggle multiple via Mission Control, which you can swipe through using the three- or four-finger swipe gesture. The Dashboard is a special desktop that lets you pin various apps to it for quick access to current weather conditions, your calendar, a calculator and other info. To enable the Dashboard, go to System Preferences Mission Control and change the Dashboard setting from Off to either As Space or As Overlay. The former sets up the Dashboard as your leftmost desktop, and the latter overlays it on your current desktop with the press of the F12 key. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Add and remove items from Dock Apple throws a number of stock apps into the Dock at the bottom of the screen. You can make room for the apps you use most frequently by removing others you don't need in the Dock. To remove an app from the Dock, simple click on its icon in the Dock and drag it to the desktop until you see Remove appear above the icon and then let go.
Poof, it's gone! To add an app to the Dock, open it and then right-click on its icon in the Dock and mouse over the Option line in the menu and click Keep in Dock. Matt Elliott/CNET Move the Dock The Dock sits at the bottom of your screen, but on a widescreen MacBook display, you might find it better to have it on the side. To move the Dock, go to System Preferences Dock and choose either Left or Right for Position on Screen. While you're there, you can also drag a slider to adjust the size of the Dock. You can also make it disappear from view when you aren't using it by checking the box for Automatically hide and show the Dock.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Stop auto-play videos Safari now combats two of the bigger internet annoyances: autoplay videos and ad trackers. Ad tracking is stopped by default, but there is a global setting for stopping autoplay videos that you'll want to enable. Open Safari's Preferences and click on the Websites tab. Choose Auto-Play from the left panel and for When visiting other websites at the bottom of the window, select Never Auto-Play or Stop Media with Sound (if you are okay with muted videos playing) and sit back and rejoice in the silence. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Enable Safari favicons Favicons are those tiny icons that show up on your tabs and bookmarks bar that make the browser more visually interesting and, more importantly, they're a great aid in keeping track of which tabs are which. Chrome has had them for some time, and now Safari does, too. To enable favicons for Safari, open Preferences and click the Tabs tab at the top.
Next, check the box for Show website icons in tabs. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Work the Night Shift Staring at a blue screen before bed can shift your body's natural clock and make it difficult to get a good night's sleep. With Apple's Night Shift feature, the colors of your display are shifted to the warmer end of the spectrum during the evening hours. Head to System Preferences Displays and click the Night Shift tab. You can set Night Shift to come on from sunset to sunrise, or you can select a custom time period. Use the slider to adjust the color temperature of the effect between less warm and more. Once you start using Night Shift, you'll wonder how you ever sat in front of a cold, blue screen in the evening hours.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Make your desktop dynamic With MacOS Mojave, that slowly changes its lighting throughout the day, going from a bright, sunny desert scene during the day and transitioning to a cool, dark screen at night. You can find it by going to System Preferences Desktop & Screen Saver. There are two dynamic wallpapers: Mojave and Solar Gradients. The dynamic Mojave wallpaper is one of my favorite features of MacOS Mojave. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Try out dark mode MacOS Mojave also delivered an honest-to-goodness dark mode for Macs. Go to System Preferences General and you'll see the Light and Dark options at the top for Appearance. On most of Apple's own apps, dark mode turns the background black and text white.
The Photos app and iTunes, in particular, look great in dark mode - the colors of your photos and album art really pop against the black background. Hopefully, third-party apps will allowed to get in on the dark mode fun soon. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Set hours for Do Not Disturb Along with overly blue screens, notifications have no place in my home after a certain hour.
As with iOS, MacOS lets you disable notifications in the evening so you aren't disturbed while watching Netflix or sleeping. Go to System Preferences Notifications and check the box Turn on Do Not Disturb.
By default, it's set for the hours of 10 p.m. But you can set your own Do Not Disturb Window. There are options to enable the feature when your MacBook's display is sleeping or when you are mirroring the display to a TV or projector (and presumably watching a movie or show or video).
You can also let calls come through (if you ) or just repeated calls, which might mean there is an emergency or something urgent to which you may need to respond. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Set app download tolerance level If you want to download apps from the web at large and not just from the Mac App Store, you'll need to tell MacOS to loosen up on the reins a bit. Go to System Preferences Security & Privacy, click the General tab and then click lock in the lower-left corner and enter your password to make changes. Next, for Allow apps downloaded from choose App Store and identified developers. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Choose how quickly your MacBook locks While on the Security & Privacy page, you can set the length of time your MacBook can sit idle before the screen locks. It's more convenient to set a longer time but also less secure.
The time period to set here doesn't start ticking until the screen saver begins, so you also need to set the length of time before your screen saver kicks in. Go to System Preferences Desktop & Screen Saver and you can select the style of your screen saver and also the time by using the drop-down menu in the lower-left corner. Originally published on Jan. 4, 2018: Added information about MacOS Mojave.