- Introduction
- Understanding System Preferences
- Viewing System Preferences
- Locking and Unlocking Preference Settings
- Changing Appearance Options
- Setting Up the Desktop
- Setting Up Screen Savers
- Setting the Date and Time
- Changing Language Options
- Changing Text Substitution Options
- Saving Energy and Managing Power
- Selecting a Startup Disk
- Changing the Way a CD or DVD Starts
- Controlling Sound
- Dictating Your Speech
- Letting Mac Do the Talking
- Setting Accessibility Options
- Having VoiceOver Read from the Screen
- Setting VoiceOver Preferences
- Using VoiceOver Commands
- Setting Ink Preferences
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Changing Appearance Options
The General pane in System Preferences allows you to change the look and feel of OS X in a few areas. You can change the color scheme for buttons, menus, and windows, and the highlight color for text and lists. Or if you’re not comfortable using the scroll bars, you can change the way scroll bars work and the placement of the scroll arrows. If your text looks blurry or jagged, you can adjust the font smoothing, known as anti-aliasing, style to fix it (after you log out and back in). As you open files and applications, OS X keeps a list in the Recent Items submenu in the Apple menu. In the Appearance pane, you can set the number of recent items that appear in the menu.
Change the Appearance Color and Scroll Bars
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Click the System Preferences icon in the Dock, and then click the General icon. -
Click the Appearance pop-up, and then select a color. If you select Other, the Color Picker palette appears so you can select a color. -
Click the Highlight Color pop-up, and then select a color. -
Click the Sidebar icon size pop-up, and then select a size. -
Click the Automatically based on mouse or trackpad, When scrolling, or Always option to select an how you want to show/hide overlay scroll bars as needed. -
Click the Jump to the next page or Jump to here option to select an operation when you click in the scroll bar. -
Click the Close button.
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Smooth Fonts
- Click the System Preferences icon in the Dock, and then click the General icon.
- Select the Use LCD font smoothing when available check box to enable font smoothing, which reduces jagged edges for some fonts.
- Click the Turn Off Text Smoothing For Font Sizes pop-up, and then select a font size.
- All text in the font size or smaller is not smoothed, which makes it easier to read.
- Click the Close button.
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Change Number of Recent Items
- Click the System Preferences icon in the Dock, and then click the General icon.
- Click the pop-ups for the Recent Items, and then select a number.
- Clear Recent Items Submenu. Click the Apple menu, point to Recent Items, and then click Clear Menu.
- Select the Ask to keep changes when closing documents check box (New!) to display an alert.
- Deselect the Close windows when quitting an application check box (New!) to restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps.
- Click the Close button.
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