24 hidden settings that can maximize your Mac

“Apple prides itself on the polish and slickness of its software, and on the surface, macOS proves itself an intuitive and easy-to-navigate operating system,” David Nield writes for Popular Science. “Dig deeper, however, and you’ll find a heap of useful settings and options that let you customize your computing experience.”

Some examples:

• Free up hard drive space: If you’re running low on hard drive space, macOS can help. At the top of the screen, click the Apple menu and choose About This Mac. In the window that appears, open the Storage tab and click Manage. To automatically remove cloud-based files that don’t require local storage—such as iTunes TV shows, iTunes movies, and email attachments—select Optimize. If you prefer manual control, pick Review Files to check out the largest files on your system and decide whether or not to erase them.

• Share files: If you have an iCloud account, you can easily share your files with your contacts from within macOS. Open Finder and select the file you want. At the top of that Finder window, click the Share button—it looks like an arrow pointing out of a box—and pick Add People. Then you can use the next dialog box to choose your sharing method, the file’s recipients, and whether they will be able to make changes to it.

22 more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Articles like this about Apple’s indomitable Mac in a well-circulated general science and tech publication can stoke interest in the great unwashed Windows PC suffering contingent.

10 Comments

  1. Appreciate Mac news on MDN.

    The problem is, unless Tim shows the Mac some love many of us may be forced to Windows 10. At least Microsoft has not abandoned it.

    If Tim Cook has lost interest, maybe he should license the OS out. I don’t give a damn about Jony’s Styling exercises. I want a workstation- not an iMac of any kind- and I already have a MacBook Pro.

    Would be sad, as I bought my first Mac as soon as the first ones were available at the old Robinson Barracks PX in Stuttgart, Germany back in the day. That was less than a year after launch and it replaced an Apple II. I didn’t switch to the Mac because I never switched away.

      1. I’m running Windows 10 on Parallels on my MBP and I love it. Night and day from what Windows used to be (my last version was Win 7 – ver 10 blows it away). I like having the flexibility of both, especially for MS Office, since the Mac version pales in many ways next to the Windows version.

  2. When I click on the link above I get redirected to the magazine’s home page and the message “Oops! Something went wrong. Please scroll down to find your content”. The article doesn’t come up in a search. Anyone else having this happen?

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