If you are looking for ways to make your Mac more personal, we are assuming that you are a new user. So in this article, we will start from the basics. Even if you are an avid Mac user, some of these tips that you might not know before will help you personalize your computer.
Set a Wallpaper
Start with setting up a new customized wallpaper on your Mac desktop to make it new again. To change the desktop wallpaper, go to General, click Desktop & Screen Saver, and then tap on Desktop.
Select an image from the default Mac desktop themes or pick a solid background color as per your preferences. Also, you can select an option from the Dynamic Desktop segment to set up a desktop that changes with the time of the day.
For custom desktop wallpaper, you can pick an image from the Photos library in the sidebar. You can also tweak wallpaper settings if you wish to change the image every hour. This way, you can run your family album or play the images from your most recent vacation.
Set Up Custom Color Scheme
With macOS Mojave or the latest versions, users are given the feature to mix and match different color presets for computer highlights and accents. As a result, you will be able to come up with a more defined color scheme.
To tweak these settings, go to System Preferences, tap General, and then pick any color under the Highlight color and the Accent color. The updated color scheme will apply and reflect immediately across menus, buttons, selections, boxes, etc.
You can also set the Appearance of your desktop by switching between the Light Mode and the Dark Mode from the same panel. If you select the Dark mode, the Dock, app windows, sidebar, and menu bar will turn darker.
Customize Your Dock
The Dock is the most dynamic feature available on Apple computers to speed up your work. It is the place where you can access the frequently visited apps and your favorite programs, files, folders, and more.
To fiddle around with the Dock can make it heavier over time which affects your system performance. Remove unnecessary apps or programs from the Dock and clear other storage on Mac as it might house resource eating elements. Cleaning your system frequently ensures that all the apps and programs, including Dock, menu bar, etc., work flawlessly without lags.
Reposition the Dock on your Mac screen, resize its icons, or set the icons to magnify to different degrees when you hover on them. To customize the Dock, go to System Preferences and navigate to Dock. If you wish, you can also replace Dock with third-party apps.
Redesign the Login Screen
Personalizing the login screen on your computer is fun and you can start by selecting and setting up a new profile picture. To do this, click System Preferences, tap on Users & Groups, and then click Password. Next, click on the profile image available near your user name and replace it with a new picture. Once done, click on Save.
If you want your computer to notify you when your screen is locked, click System Preferences, tap Security & Privacy, and then select General. Then tick the checkbox that says Show a message when the screen is locked.
For customized lock screen messages, click on the Set Lock Message option and type in your custom message to appear on the screen when locked, and click OK. You can see this message right at the bottom section of the screen just above the Restart button when you restart the system.
Give Your Apps a New Look
For all the apps installed on your computer, you can use built-in settings to personalize every individual app icon. Go to each app one by one and click on the Preferences option to view the customization features.
To customize the Apple Mail app, you can change the way your email messages appear by tweaking the fonts and colors. In the Mail app, click on Preferences and then select Fonts & Colors. In addition, you can also highlight each message by selecting the desired one, clicking on Format, and then picking any colors from the Show Colors option.
For Terminal, you can get a new skin by navigating to Preferences and then selecting Profiles. Pick any of the themes from the sidebar and click Default to set up your selection as the default theme. To ensure that the Terminal window displays the selected theme, you need to restart the app.