Might have to keep coming back to this thread, but here’s a few that come to mind:
Spaces
I fell in love with Spaces when I got my tiny 11" MBA - combined with being able to swipe from Space to Space made macOS really nice to use.
On a desktop they are even more powerful - making it easy to work on multiple projects at the same time.
I also don’t let it order by last use - so I always have Apple Music full screen in a space on the far left, followed by Mail, followed by my main desktop (with safari, Music in a mini player, Terminal windows of any servers I am keeping an eye on, an open note, etc).
Hot Corners
I use hot corners a lot, mine are set to:
- Top left - Mission Control
- Top Right. - Show desktop
- Bottom left - Application windows
- Bottom right - Notification centre
LittleSnitch
First thing I instal on every Mac. See our thread about it here: Do you use LittleSnitch or the equivalent on your OS?
Also, while on the topic - the first thing I do whenever I get a new Mac…
Stats
Install with brew install stats - it’s a nice way to keep an eye on performance issues, especially after macOS upgrades.
Turn off Spyware
In System settings:
- Analytics & Improvements - off
- Apple Intelligence Report - to off, it is on for every 15 minutes by default even if you have Apple Intelligence off!
- Spotlight > Help Improve Apple Search (it is on by default!!)
- Spotlight (turn off anything that sends your search query to Apple - eg web/wikipedia etc)
- iCoud - turn off for photos, and anything else you don’t want on their servers (I only use it for Books, Contacts, Calendar, Private Relay (experimenting with it), Notes).
Desktop Wallpaper - cycle every 5 minutes
I have a huge amount of desktops from https://wallscloud.net and I set my Mac to randomly change from my specified folder every 5 minutes. Works really well on an Ultrawide monitor combined with the ‘Show desktop’ hot corner when a nice landscape appears - kind of brings the outside in and lets your eyes focus on what we might be doing if out in nature.
Curiously, not only do I find landscapes calming, but wallpapers of outer space too (think there are some studies on it/looking at the stars).
Apple Music - play non-Apple radio stations
Don’t think many people know this but you can add any internet radio to play via Apple Music not just their own radio stations. Go to: File > Open URL Stream and paste the url into it (eg https://www.bassdrive.com/bassdrive3.m3u). You can then add it to a playlist like normal.
