The first thing you should do is update your system. To do that go: Apple menu () > About This Mac > Software Update.
Also upgrade your OS to the latest version to have a more secure OS. macOS upgrades are usually free so you might as well keep your machine up to date.
If this is a new computer there are a couple tweaks you could make to the System Preferences. These settings are all optional, consider them suggestions. Always choose the setting that makes the most sense to you.
- Login Options -> Change fast user switching menu as Icon
- Set up Password, Apple ID, Picture, etc.
- Point & Click
- Enable Tap to click with one finger
- Change Secondary click to Right corner
- Uncheck Three Finger Drag
- Scroll & Zoom
- Uncheck all apart from Zoom in and out
- Visual Settings
- Change position to Left and make the size of icons Small
- Other settings
- Remove workspace auto-switching by running the following command:
defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO
killall Dock # Restart the Dock process- General
- Change New finder window show to open in your Home Directory
- Sidebar
- Add Home and your Code Directory
- Uncheck all Shared boxes
- Remove the Display and Bluetooth icons
- Change battery to Show percentage symbols
- Uncheck fonts, images, files etc.
- Uncheck the keyboard shortcuts as we'll be replacing them with Alfred
- Add an iCloud account and sync Calendar, Find my Mac, Contacts etc.
- Enable repeating keys by pressing and holding down keys:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false(and restart any app that you need to repeat keys in) - Change the default folder for screenshots
- Open the terminal and create the folder where you would like to store
your screenshots:
mkdir -p /path/to/screenshots/ - Then run the following command:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /path/to/screenshots/ && killall SystemUIServer
- Open the terminal and create the folder where you would like to store
your screenshots: