Top 7 ways to personalize Mac desktop

| Published: Friday, January 25, 2019, 21:26 [IST]

Apple’s Mac is a marvelous piece of technology to own. While it comes packed with amazing features that can do pretty much everything an average user could want in rather extraordinary ways, there are a few tiny aspects that come with Apple that can leave users disappointed.

System Integrity Protection (SIP, sometimes referred to as rootless) is a security feature of Apple's macOS operating system introduced in OS X El Capitan. It is made up of a number of mechanisms that are enforced by the kernel. The protection of system-owned files and directories against modifications by processes without a specific "entitlement" is one of the primary function of SIP. This essentially means that you do not have a lot of options when it comes to sprucing up your Mac.

But all hope is not yet lost, there are seven easy steps by which you can customize your Mac to better suit your tastes.

Wallpaper

You can bring a refreshing change to your system by simply swapping your wallpaper. You can do this by visiting General > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop.

You can pick a fresh image from the available Mac desktop themes or go for solid background color or even access your Photos library to find something you like.

Custom Color Scheme

You can come up with a fresh color scheme by mixing and matching various color schemes starting from macOS Mojave. In order to do this, visit System Preferences > General and then pick new colors under Accent color and Highlight color. You can see the updated color scheme across buttons, boxes, menus, selections and other system elements.

Icons and Background with Personality

In addition to being able to scale icons up and down (View > Show View Options > Icon size), you can also change how icons look by using custom icons.

You can look for icons online as well. You just need to keep an eye out for the ICNS extension while doing so as this indicates that they're in the Apple Icon Image format.

To change the icon for a folder or file, copy the icon file, select the folder whose icon you wish to replace and click on File > Get Info. In the folder inspector that pops up, choose the icon at the top and click on Edit > Paste. Your custom icon will now be in place.

Change up the Login Screen

You can change up your login screen by going to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Password. In the settings pane, you can click on the existing user pane to swap it out for one from Apple's default set or your Photos library. Hit Save to get the selected picture in place.

You can go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General and select the checkbox for ‘Show a message when the screen is locked.'

Get a better Dock.

You can get rid of icons you don't need on your dock by dragging them out of the dock and releasing them when you see the Remove prompt. You can drag the apps you want to your Dock from the Applications folder.

You can reposition the Dock, resize its icons and set them to magnify to various degrees.

Give makeovers to individual apps

Most of the installed apps have built-in settings that can add more personal touches to your Mac. You can apply new themes to your Slack sidebar if you have it installed. You can change the fonts and colors in the Mac Mail app by going to Preferences > Fonts & Colors.

You can also get a new skin for Terminal via Preferences > Profiles when you have it open.

Add Custom Sounds to Mac

You can add a new system voice as default from System Preferences > Accessibility > Speech > System Voice. You can get a new alert sound from System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects. You can also set your Mac to announce time at set intervals through System Preferences > Date & Time > Clock.