Chapter 4: Setting System Preferences

Preferences make the world go round—or, at least, they are what make your Mac into your Mac. You can control so many aspects of your everyday computing experience that it’s worth a trip to the System Preferences window every once in a while just to remind yourself what’s there. Be sure to explore all the tabs of each preference pane, too, to make sure you know what all your options are.

The System Preferences command in the Apple menu opens a command center for preferences. It contains buttons for each preference pane, organized into categories.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to set preferences for everything from how your mouse or trackpad works to what size objects are displayed on your monitor. A couple of tasks—“Setting Trackpad Preferences” and “Monitoring Battery Use”—deal with preferences for laptop users only; if your Mac isn’t a MacBook, you won’t even see these settings, so don’t worry about them.