System Preferences Overview

In this lesson for macOS Mojave on the Mac, I look at System Preferences. The System Preferences are where you can set the default behaviors for your Mac. You do this through Preference Panes. If you want to change how you Dock behaves, you go to the Dock Preference Pane, you want to set up your mouse, you go to the Mouse Preference Pane.

Accessing System Preferences
System Preferences us just another application on your Mac. To open it, you just need to open the System Preferences application, which is located in your Applications folder. There are easier ways to open it though. You will always find your System Preferences under the Apple Menu in the upper left corner of your display. Also, by default, System Preferences is located on your Dock, so you could also just click on it in the Dock.

Preference Panes
When you open System Preferences, you will see all your preference panes. These preference panes control various features of your Mac. Just click on a preference pane to open it. When you are finished, you can click on the left arrow at the top of the window, or click on the button with the 12 dots on it. This will bring you back to all your preference panes again.

Changing the View of your Preference Panes
When you open System Preferences, you will see all your Preference Panes. They are categorized into 4 rows. If you want to arrange them alphabetically, you go up to View in the Menu Bar and select Organize Alphabetically.

Selecting a Preference Pane to Open
There are various ways to choose a preference pane to open. You can click on them when looking at all your preference panes, You can also click-and-hold on the button with the 12 dots. When you do this, a list of all the preference panes will show, just select the one you want to open. You can also go to View in the Menu Bar to get to this list. If you have System Preferences in your Dock, you can also click-and-hold on the System Preferences icon in the Dock to see a list of all your Preference Panes.

Searching Preference Panes
At the top left of the System Preferences window is the Search field. Just type in here what you are searching for. The Mac will highlight the preference pane and also show you a list of result. You can use Windows search terms here, as an example, you can search for, and the Mac will show you Desktop Pictures.

Hiding Select Preference Panes
You can also hide select preference panes by going to View again in the Menu Bar and selecting Customize. When you do this, each preference pane will have a checkmark. Just deselect the preference panes you want to hide. When you are finished, click done at the top of the window and the preference panes you selected will be hidden.

See this Lesson Action
To see this lesson in action, take a look at the video above.