5 macOS system settings to configure for productivity
When you set up your new Mac, it doesn’t necessarily come with sensible system defaults. When you want to focus on something or get something done quickly, these default configurations can obstruct your productivity flow. Shaving off every second that is possible to get your task done more quickly can add up if you do the same thing hundreds of times a day. Every time you get distracted by something in your peripheral view screaming for your attention or you getting interrupted in your workflow because your default system settings are slowing you down.
I have set up 5 system preferences to configure on your macOS for optimal productivity. These are the essentials for you to get started on feeling productive and mastering your Mac and not the other way around. These tips are easy for you to get started with macOS.
1. Dock placement
The default position of the dock is on the bottom. However, placing the dock on the bottom of the screen makes you sacrifice vertical screen real estate. Ideally, you want to be able to view as much information as possible vertically and many apps and websites are optimized for this vertical view. Inside System Preferences, select Dock & Menu Bar en Select Left to place the dock on the left.
An extra tip for even more screen real estate is to select Automatically hide and show the dock. Do you need to keep your dock open at all times to view all the open and running applications? It might be better to just focus on what you’re working on, without being distracted by which applications are open and which ones have a red bubble attached to them.
2. Keyboard settings
Inside your System Preferences, navigate to Keyboard. The default settings for Key Repeat and Delay Until Repeat aren’t set to sensible values. In my opinion, the delay is too big for when you want a key to be repeated. My recommendation is to set these settings to the fastest and shortest option. This way, we can shave off every second that would have been spent waiting for the action to happen.
3. Trackpad settings
Inside System Preferences, check out Trackpad. For some reason Tap to click has been disabled by default. We want to reduce the friction of selecting something on your screen. You don’t want to push hard on your trackpad to do a left-click. Just a simple tap will do.
While still inside the Trackpad settings, click on the More Gestures tab. The App Exposé function is disabled by default. App Exposé allows you to view all the windows of the same app. You can have multiple finder windows open, or multiple windows of the same browser. Please do switch this on for more navigational conveniences inside the same app. 😁
4. Accessibility settings
Another very useful option missing in the default configuration of macOS is the three-finger drag for the trackpad. Why make it more difficult for yourself to select text and move around windows by first clicking on your trackpad before you can drag it around. Use your three fingers for this action. You would expect this to be buried somewhere inside the Trackpad settings. This setting has been moved to a very weird place, making you question why Apple has made it more difficult to activate this option.
Inside your System Preferences, click on Accessibility. In the left bar, select Point Control and then click on Trackpad Options….
A small dialog will open op. Make sure to check Enable dragging and select three finger drag in the options menu.
5. Finder settings
When you’re navigating inside your file tree structure inside Finder, it’s easy to get lost on where you are inside the deep tree structure. Maybe you would have to go up a few folders to know in which directory you stored something. This can be solved easily if Finder showed the Path bar. Also handy is showing you the number of files selected for example and other metadata of the folder that you’re working on. This can be solved very easily. Make sure to have Finder open and in the menu bar on top select View. Make sure to check Show Path Bar and Show Status Bar.
