Customising your Apple computer

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When you get an Apple computer, it will all come as standard settings on it, but you can change loads and loads of settings on it. So what we are gonna do is have a look at how to change these preferences. These are called system preferences. Now you can access it, go down to the bottom, you will see an icon with a cog on, that's silver and it's called system preferences, click on that, and this window will pop up. And on here you can access your Apple ID, Family Sharing at the very top has a search bar at the very top where you can enter information for it to find something out. So for example, here, we could write printer and it tells you all the areas where you can get help within setting up a printer. To get rid of that, just hit the X button. And then going along the top here, there are general settings and on the general settings, you can change the themes, the colours of the computers, what it looks like, you can go in light mode or dark mode or automatic that changes it during the day. You can set the default web program. Now, on videos on this course, we will look at using Google Chrome as the default, but you can open up here and change it. So we can change it to Safari or Firefox, so it's very simple to change that. And that will mean that whatever you are doing the search is where does it go to?

So we are searching throughout Google Chrome is the ideal one. There are lots of other settings down on this side here, and you can just have a look at those on your computer. To go back, just hit the back arrow, or you can hit these dots at the top, which will take you to the same place. You can then look at your desktop and you can change the image on the back of it, you can do screen savers as well. There are lots of them pre-saved onto the system, so if you want to leave the computer idle, whenever it's left idle for a certain amount of time, you can have these backlit videos like this that are showing on the screen here now. Or on the desktop button here, you can then upload a picture. You could have a picture of your family, your dog or whatever, and you can put that onto the screen. There is also some pre-set pictures on the back here. So these are different pictures that you can add if you want to have one of those differently. You can select from your photos on there as well, and also the folders. You can just literally click one of these, and it will go into the pictures on your computer and you can download one or allocate one through. And instead of on this one here, you see these colours, stripy lines if you don't have a picture that you've uploaded. So we then go back to the main screen.

Along here as well, there are more settings for the way that systems interact, this is the docket menu bar. As you can see, you can change the default sizes of icons and you can do lots of different things within the settings. And down here, you can change settings on each one of these, whether we're dealing with Wi-Fi, we are dealing with the Bluetooth, screen mirroring, display, sound, as you see there are loads and load and loads of settings here. And if you are playing with these settings a lot, it might be my idea just to jot down what they were, so if you are changing something, if it doesn't quite look what you want it to look, you know what they are setting to come back. Along here you have got Siri. Siri is where you can ask Siri any questions, so if we click there, we can change things like the voice that Siri is going to be talking in. Just click that now, and from here, you've got different settings as well, what languages, what voice and you can change the voices just with these options here, and any other settings all to do with the Siri. And also on the left-hand side, you can enable ask Siri. With that, you can just use the word ask Siri, and then you can ask a question and then it means you don't have to push any buttons while you're actually working. It's very similar to if you got an Apple phone, it works in exactly the same way.

Other ones here, you can change the language and the region you are working with, notifications that come up onto your computer, so you can see all the different programs and the different settings we can do within here, whether we are using FaceTime or whether we are using other programs and messaging. Even apps on the computer like news apps and your photos. The next line here shows the Internet accounts that we are registered through. You can see all the different Internet accounts, all the email accounts that are logged through with this particular computer. The next icon along is Apple and wallet pay, this is where you can store credit card details, you can pay directly through the Apple side. If you are using this do make sure that you are using the card to keep it secure, you don't have to do it, it is up to you, but it also means that you can pay without actually entering in credit card numbers. This particular one we are using here is a MacBook Pro, it's also got a Touch ID, so you can just log on or secure your password just with your fingerprint. And then there are other areas here, groups and accessibility which means you can make the screen bigger if you have trouble seeing or you want to change these global settings on the computer. Screen time talks about how long you spend on the computer. Not that everyone would need that but if you want to monitor children and have access to how much time they spent on the computer.

As you see, there is lots of other settings here, security, updates and things like that. The updates, we are gonna cover in a separate video on how to update a computer. The network will show you what network you're actually connected to, so here we got our Wi-Fi set system, then there's Bluetooth and any other systems you are logged on to will all be on here and you can add extra network or take away through these plus and minus boxes here. And also you can select, show the status of the Wi-Fi using this connection here, so it either appears or doesn't appear in the top corner. So if you look up into the top corner here, you will see when I take the tick out it vanishes and it's then back in. From the network side, Bluetooth functions, so this will show you all of the Bluetooth things you got allocated to the computer. So here we have got external keyboards and an external mouse, and anything else you have that's Bluetooth enabled will go on to there as well. From there are sound settings, so this is how you can change all the settings of your computer. If you have got different speakers on, you can change them here, you can adjust the balance for the stereo, the default volume, everything's there. And also at the bottom here you can show the volume in the menu bar.

The volume of the speakers is here, this little speaker indicator, so if I take that out that fattened icon vanishes, if I push it there, it comes back. Just to show how that works, if you just click on it, again, you can see that we're connected to the speakers in the computer, and also here we can change the volume up and down as we need to. So coming back off sound, printers and scanners, this is where all the printers and scanners that you have got set up with the computer will be. This particular one here has got red dots here, which means we are not actually connected at the minute, but if we move within the WiFi range of these printers, then the dot will change to green and then you can access the printer. And similarly, here is the scan button, so if you're scanning, you can scan directly from the computer and the data could go straight onto the computer. So if you wanted to scan a page of a book, that is how you would do it. On here, keyboard, trackpad, mouse, these are just different ways of communicating with the computer, so you've got all the settings linked in with those. The displays tab is quite good if you want to change the different things, the brightness of the screen, the colouring and things like that.

But also if you use Apple Play or any external second screens and things, you will be able to control them all from this icon just here. Sidecar is a new feature that has been added on, which means you could use your iPad as a second screen to your MacBook. The battery shows the state of play of your battery on the computer, and also you can change some different settings here that when it goes to sleep at different times to keep the battery charged, keeping as much power on it as possible, and also you can see what programs are using the most amount of power within the computer at the minute. The final few on here are the date and time, you can change global settings on there, sharing folders, the time machine is the back-up feature, we'll cover that in a separate video, and also you look at the profiles and things along here. And the bottom bit here is some other programs, this is just another program we have got installed onto this computer and then the settings that we do with that. So finally, with this system, there are lots of lots of settings there, you can have a look at them. What you can also do if you're not sure if you want to change something, you just do a screen print. So just literally screen print what the settings were, so then if you did need to change it back in, you know exactly where they came from.