Mac OS Setup for Beginners

1. Introduction: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this course. Today, I'm going to show you how to set up a brand new Mc, focusing on productivity and minimalism. I've been a Windows user for more than 20 years and I switched to Apple and I know at first, it can be quite overwhelming, switching from one system to another. So hopefully, with this course, it's going to be easier for you. In the description below, you're going to find some of the topics that we're going to cover on this course. So if you're interested, please feel free to enroll, and hopefully, I'll see you on the other side. 2. Initial Setup and Bluetooth Peripherals: Okay. So now that we've unboxed our mac and plugged it in, we have to turn it on, so we press the on button that's behind the mac meani in my case. If you're using an apple keyboard or an apple mouse, you shouldn't have a problem. This does not mean that you can't use other brands for the keyboard or the mouse, if they're bluetooth. It just means that for the initial setup, you're going to need a wire or a USB receiver. In my case, I have this keyboard and this mouse. They're both blue tooth, but I'm using this keyboard that has a USB receiver, so I can plug it in to the back of my mac. And this will be the first screen that comes up, so we have to choose our language. In my case, English, and I enter, and now we have to choose our country or region, in my case, Spain. We have a screen here that says written and spoken languages, so we can choose to leave this as is or customized settings. Of course, you can add any language that you want. We click on Continue. Input sources, we have Spanish and the US. We click on Continue. Dictation English from the United Kingdom is okay. Continue. Accessibility. You can choose if you want to adapt to your Mac for your needs. In my case, I don't. No now, data and privacy continue. If this is not your first time using a mac and you have another mac or you want to migrate from a Windows PC, you can't do that. In my case, I don't want to do that because it's a fresh install. Not now. If you already have an Apple ID, you can write it down here or either create a new Apple ID if you don't, or obviously get your password back if you don't remember it, or you can set up later. I'm going to write down my Apple ID. We're going to get a verification code on our telephone. We're going to accept the terms and conditions. Here, we're going to create a computer account, fill in the blank with your details and set up a new password for our computer. We wait for Cloud to set up our account. Once we've entered our password and everything is set up. Now we can set up our wireless keyboards and mice. Let's go ahead and do that. We continue. And we have to follow the steps on the screen. Now our keyboard has been identified and we just have to choose the layout. In our case, I saw European Macintosh keyboard and we click done. If you can't set up your keyboard that way, I suggest coming up here to our Bluetooth window, Bluetooth preferences, and syncing our wireless keyboard here. 3. Updating Software: Before we start talking about the whole interface of your new Mac. The first thing I recommend is to update to the latest version. We're going to come over here in the upper left corner. We click on the Apple logo. About this Mac. Always check software update. And once it's finished checking, it will let you know which version you're using. And you can also check this box to automatically keep your Mac up to date. 4. Interface Basics: Apple Menu: Now let's talk a bit about the interface. This is a brand new Mac mini in my case, it's quite similar to what you're going to see when you unbox and start setting up your computer. We have three different things here. We have this menu here and the upper left corner. This menu here with more items on the upper right corner, down here, we have what's known as the doc. Let's begin with the upper left corner. As we saw before, if we clicked on the Apple logo, we can also click here about this Mac to update to the latest version. From here, we can also choose to put our computers to sleep or restart or to shut down. But what I feel is the most important one is this one here, system preferences. We're going to dive deep into the system preferences a bit further on, but you have to know it's here. When you click the Apple logo, system preferences. So this would be the equivalent to the control panel on Windows. So here we have things like our Apple ID, our notifications, if we want to set up our mouse, our keyboard, printers, blue tools, so on and so forth. So if we want to close it, we'll just click here, the red cross, and we also have it down here. System preferences inside the dock. 5. Interface Basics: Notifications and Control Center: Let's talk about the upper right hand corner. So here we have notifications and the control center. So for example, if we click on date and time, some widgets will come up. So we have the events that we have on the calendar, the weather, some time zones from different countries, a bit of stock information. Of course, we can edit them. We'll talk about that in a bit and here we have our control center. So we can turn on or off our WiFi bluetooth air drop. We can also change the brightness of our display or the sound. We also have do not disturb here. Why is this here? Because some of the apps will show some notifications here every now and then. If you don't want to be disturbed and you don't want any type of notification, you just click here, to not disturb, and you choose for how long. You can also come here to the notification preferences. As you can see, there are many apps that will send you notifications. So as I said, if you turn on the to not the start option, none of these apps will bother you. Here to the list. We have a magnifying glass. This is spotlight. If we click on it, it shows up here. Spotlight is a tool that allows you to look for anything in your computer and also in the web at the same time. For example, if I want to know how much is $25 in euros, automatically, spotlight tells me. How much it is. At the same time, let's say I want to find something in my computer. I want to bring up the system preferences once again. So I type in system preference, and spotlight already shows me some results. So I can click here on system preferences or on series suggested websites or other related searches on the web. And you can use spotlight to find pretty much anything on your computer. So if I want to open up Safari, for example, I can do that as well. And lastly, here to the left, we have our keyboard setup, for example, right now, I'm using the Spanish keyboard, but I can switch to the US if I want to. And obviously, I can go into keyboard preferences and add other keyboards if I want. 6. Interface Basics: The Dock: The last part of the interface or the desktop will be the dock, which would be down here. So, as you can see, every time we hover the mouse on top of one of these icons, it tells us what it is. So MacOS comes by default with a lot of apps and programs. Some of them you might use. Some of them, you probably won't. But here on the doc is where you'll find most of these programs and apps. So, for example, we have system preferences, we also have the app store. So if you want to download or purchase some new apps that you don't have by default. You can buy them here. And also, you can update the apps that you already have. We also have pages, numbers, podcast, Apple TV, if you have one at home, maps, Mao, Safari and the finder. And as it was the case with the Windows task bar, we can also add or remove some of these programs and apps from the doc. As I said in the introduction of this course, I'm going to focus on productivity, but also on minimalism. So I'm going for the cleanest setup possible. What does that mean that I'm going to remove or erase many of the witches that you see here or all of them, and also many of the apps and programs that you see here, that way we can focus on being more productive and also having a minimalistic desktop without unnecessary clutter. 7. Minimalist Desktop Setup: Let's begin the cleaning process. We're going to come up here to the upper right hand corner, to the control center and the notification tab. And I'm going to erase these things. I don't want these widgets. I'll come here to edit widgets. Obviously, if you use them, you can keep them. In my case, I don't. So I just erase all of them. And when I'm finished, I click Done. Now when I click here, there's nothing to bother me. Next, I come to the control center. I click on do not disturb. I click on notification preferences. Here in the left column, we have all the apps and programs that send us notifications. What I do is I click on each app, and one by one, I allow notifications one by one off, facet off, games off, and so on and so forth, until I finish disling every single notification from every app. As I said before, if you need to have some notifications, for example, from FaceTime or you want to keep your calendar notifications on, you can do that. In my case, I don't use them and I don't need them. That's why I turn them off. And when I'm finished, I just click here on the red cross. In my case, I also disable my WiFi because I use an ethernet cable. Here, the desktop works very similar to windows, so you can drag and drop anything on here, which is not bad, but if you have 100 different folders, it starts to look ugly. What I like to do is right click on my desktop. Sort by and snap to grid. This way, it will act like windows, and when you drag and drop something, it will snap to the grid. So instead of being here in the middle of nowhere, it will snap in place. That way, we have a much more organized desktop. And now let's clean up the dock. So as I said before, we have all the default apps and programs, but I only use some of them, so I don't need to have unnecessary apps on my dock. So I come here and one by one, I just remove them. So right click Options, remove from D. Pages, options, remove. Numbers, I don't use either, remove, and you do that with each and every app that you don't want. If you want to use Apple TV or you want to have FaceTime here or you want to have maps here, you can do so. In my case, I'm obsessed with minimalism and clean setups, so I don't like to have unnecessary apps on my dock. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to finish cleaning the dock. So in my case, this is how the doc would look. So I have finder, if I need to find any type of document, Safari, if I need to browse the web, system preferences, if I need to change something from my system, the app that I'm using right now to screen record and obviously the bin. Now let's move on to the doc preferences in case we want to change the behavior of the doc. 8. Dock Preferences: Want to change the behavior and look of our doc, we come here and right click on the dock and we open doc preferences, and we can change the size or the position on the screen, left bottom In my case, I prefer on the bottom. We can also animate our opening applications. When we click on an app, it does a small jump. We can turn it on or off. In my case, I don't need the animation, so I turn it off. We can also hide and show the doc. So if we check that, it disappears, but when we come here, the dog pops up. In my case, I like to see the dog constantly, so I don't have it hidden. And we can also check or uncheck show indicators for open applications. So if you can see here, we have a small dot underneath the apps. That means that these apps are open. So in this case, safari is open and system preferences is open and QuickTime is also open because I'm screen recording at the moment. If I want to quit Safari, I right click. I click on Quit. As you can see, the small dot disappeared. And we can also check or uncheck show recent applications. Now let's talk a bit about the finder app or program and how I customize it. 9. Finder Preferences: With finder, as its name implies, you can find all of your files. So if we fire up finder and we use this folder as an example where I store my screen recordings for this course, I can come here to the left column and edit how the finder looks. For example, in my case, I don't use airdrop. If you have an iPhone or another Mac device, it might be useful for you, but in my case, I don't. So I just right click and I remove from sidebar. Okay. Obviously, you can do the same with each and every option. For example, cloud, right click and I remove from sidebar. And the same with the tags. I remove all of them because I don't use them. Right click, delete. Yes, I do the same with each and every one of them. Now when I open a folder with the finder app, it looks like this, in my opinion, much cleaner. But now, let's say I want to edit the behavior of the finder app, so I close this with the red cross, and I come here to find preferences. And I can change the behavior of the finder app. So for example, show these items on the desktop. Let's say I want to show the hard disk. I can click. And here, now the hard disk of my Mcmi shows up. In my case, I don't want that, but if you need it, that's the way to do it. I just leave the external disc checked. So every time I plug a USB device, it's going to show up You can also change which window shows up when you open the finder app. So for example, recent or desktop or documents or any other folder. You can also come here to the tags tab and erase these if you don't need them because I don't need them, I'm going to uncheck them. If we come to the side bar tab, we can also check or uncheck any of the options that we want. For example, recent tags, I'm not going to use it, so I uncheck it and also see these DVDs and IOS devices. I don't use them, so I uncheck it as well. If we come to the advanced tab, we can also show the file name extensions and also show a warning before emptying the bin. In the next lesson, we're going to start diving into the system preferences. 10. System Preferences and Customization: As you can see, we have many different options. If I had to go over each and every option, this course would be over 3 hours long. But if you need help, understanding what each of these options are and what they do, you can always click on the option that you're interested in. And here, there's a question mark. If we click there, This shows up. You have an explanation or user guide of every single option under each and every one of these. Let's say you want to come here to users and groups, and you don't know what this is. You can come here again to the question mark. Okay. And the MacOS user guide will tell you everything you need to know. So I'm going to go over the system preferences that I find useful and that I customize. So first of all, let's click on Apple ID. And here you have your name, phone, e mail, password and security payment and shipping in case you need to add a shipping address. What I customize here is Cloud, and these are the apps on the MAC that use Cloud for backup. So in my case, I do want keychain backup to have my password stored on Cloud, but I don't need home and Series I uncheck them. Now, let's go back. Te preferences. I click on general. Here you can choose the appearance. So between dark light or auto. I usually leave it on auto, so it automatically adjusts the brightness. You can also change if you want to show scroll bars just when scrolling or always, or for example, which is your default browser. In my case, I'm using Firefox now. Let's go back here, D and menu bar. You can come here to the left side bar and change the control center. Here. So if you want to show the WiFi or hide it up here. In my case, I'm using the Ethernet cable, so I don't need the WiFi in the menu bar, and you can do the same with these here. If you want to show them in the control center, you can do that, show or hide it. Let's go back. Now let's go to mission control. And we're going to come down here to hot corners. So what hot corners does is allow you to perform an action when you move your mouse to one of the four corners of your screen. So for example, let's say every time I move my mouse here to the lower left corner, I want to show the desktop. Now, if I click desktop, every time I bring my mouse here, it will show the desktop, and you can do that with the other corners and choose between these options. In my case, I just need that option, but I want it in the lower right corner. Let's click on desktop. Okay. And now when I come here, the desktop shows up. So let's go back and let's move on to tracking. In my case, I'm using an external mouse. But if you're using a track pad, I would also recommend changing the setting. So let's click on mouse. And we're going to just the tracking speed. So we're going to make it a bit faster. That saves a bit of time. Also, I like to leave this unchecked because for me, the scroll direction on Mac is not natural. I prefer unchecked. Then when you scroll down, the page will go down and when you scroll up, the page will go up, not the other way around. Let's go back to system preferences once more. And if you're using your track pad, you can do that as well. In my case, it doesn't find a track pad because I'm not using one, and I have a mac mei, you can also change the tracking speed inside this preference. I also like to come here to display and I come to night shift, and I turn on this setting usually at night, like at nine or 10:00 P.M. So my eyes can get used to a warmer light before going to sleep. And I can also add a schedule. Let's say, for example, in my case, you're using an external microphone or external monitors, you'll come here to sound, for example. You can choose your output to make sure it's working properly and your input. You can also change the input volume. These are the settings that I change when I'm setting up a NMAC. But as you can see, I only use some of these settings because there's too many. What I do, I come here to view. And customize that allows me to choose which one of these I see every time I open system preferences. For example, I don't use Siri I uncheck it. I don't use screen time, so I uncheck it accessibility, I don't use it. I just uncheck all the options that I don't need. When I'm finished, I come here and I click done, and it looks much cleaner. But if at some point you need to see each and every one of them, you can always come here to view, and all of them will show up here. Now I'm going to talk briefly about stacks, which helps having a cleaner desktop. 11. Stacking Files: My desktop is quite empty because the computer is brand new, but also, I don't like having a lot of stuff on my computer because as I said, I'm quite obsessed with minimalism and it also helps increase my productivity. In this case, for example, I have two screenshots here, but I can use stacks to clean my desktop. If I right click here, use stacks, Okay. Now, both screenshots are here. If I click here, they show in a drop down menu. If I click here once more, they hide. This way, instead of having 100 different folders and screenshots and documents on your desktop, you can stack them together. 12. Minimalist Web Browsing: My case, I'm using Firefox, but this can be applied to Safari as well. Just keep in mind, Safari is probably the fastest because it's the best optimize, but some websites or extensions don't show up or work properly with Safari. In that case, I do recommend Google Chrome or Firefox, for example. But what I want to show you is how to clean up either Safari or Firefox in this case. This is what shows up when you first open your web browser and there's too much clutter and too much stuff that we probably don't need. You just come down here, click. What I like to do is remove everything. So no reading list, no series suggestions, no privacy report, no frequently visited and no favorites, or I just change them. I don't use these websites. Only Google. So I can also come here, right click and delete one by one. As you can see, when you delete here, they also disappear from here. Now, let's say we want to customize the tool bar because we don't like it like this. We just right click customize and you can have the default toolbar by dragging and dropping or you can drag and drop any of these icons that you want to use. For example, if I want the tab icon here, I can do that. And when I'm finished, I click done. Now my new tab icon is here instead of here. But as I said, I'm not using Safari. I'm using Firefox. I'm going to quickly show you that as well. Let's close Safari. Quick open Firefox. As you can see, we have some of the websites that I visit, but I want to change this as well. So personalize I don't want to see shortcuts, so I just turn them off. And manage more settings. Here I can change my homepage and my new tabs. Home page. I come to custom U, and I just Google, and I do the same with the new tabs so I want a blank page. Now let's see if that works. Let's close and open it once more. Now Google is my home page. 13. Browser Extensions: Let's talk a bit about extensions. As you know, there's hundreds and hundreds of them. So this will also be a full three hour course. I just use two extensions. It doesn't matter if it's Safari Chrome or whichever browser you're using. And these are at block plus. So I don't see ads all the time and annoying trackers and also a dark reader to enable dark mode on every single website. So on Firefox, for example, we come up here, addons and themes, and we come here to the search bar, and I write down at block plus. Hit Enter. It shows up as the first result. I just add two Firefox. In Safari, it's exactly the same process. This pop up shows up, so I click on add Okay. And I also check allow this extension to run in private windows, and I click Okay, and if we come here to the upper right corner, ABP is the icon. If we click there, we can change the settings for the extension. Now let's come to the upper right corner once again. Ads and themes. Let's write down dark reader. This one is also available for Google Chrome. I didn't find this Safari has other extensions to enable dark mode, so it's quite easy to find. In this case, I like to use this one Dark reader. Add to Firefox, and once more, upper right corner. Here is the icon. If I click here, I can toggle on or off. Now it's on. Now let's turn it off. Obviously, either Safari, chrome, Firefox, brave, whatever, all of them have many extensions and addons. You come here, you search for anything you need, you add it to your browser, and that's it. I like to keep my browsers clean like my computer, so I only install these two. Now let's move to the last part of the course, which is cleaning up your mac from the inside, cleaning up your storage, removing unnecessary apps. 14. Deleting Unnecessary Apps: The last thing I do to finish this setup is to clean up the storage of my NMAC. That means uninstalling unnecessary apps and removing stuff that I don't need. We come here to the Apple logo, we click on it about this MAC, and we click on the storage tab, and then we click on Manage. We wait for the left s bar to load, when it's finished calculating how much space we have available, we check one by one. First applications, And here we can erase the ones we don't need. So in my case, I only want Firefox and I movie. I'm not going to use numbers, pages keynote, or garage band. Obviously, if you want to keep them, you can, but in my case, I don't want them. First, numbers, so I delete. It will ask for my password. I just type in my password and then I clickk I do the same with the other apps that I don't want. Now I only have the apps that I want. But I can also clean more space from the less sidebar. Documents. In this case, I'm not erasing anything because these are screen recordings and documents that I do need. But if you need to erase something, it's also here. For example, music creation, I'm not going to use the garage band sound library, so I'm going to remove it also. In documents, I can also check the download tab. And here I would have everything that I've downloaded. So if I don't need something, I can also delete it. That's how I free up space in my computer. 15. Thank You Message: That's the end of the course. Congratulations, if you've made it this far. I hope you found it useful. If you did, please feel free to leave a review, and you can also follow my profile where I'll be uploading more courses like this one. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.