10 Mac settings to change right now (and why they matter)

True Tone adapts your display's white balance to match the light in the room. Night Shift dials back blue light after sunset. Run both at once and your screen stops fighting your eyes, morning to midnight, without you doing anything after setup.

1. Open System Settings and go to Displays.
2. Toggle True Tone on.
3. Click the Night Shift tab and set a schedule (Sunset to Sunrise works well for most people).
4. Drag the colour temperature slider toward the warmer end to taste.
5. Both features run simultaneously. No further action needed.

macOS lets you scale your display between "Larger Text" and "More Space". The default sits somewhere in the middle, but shifting it even one notch can give you meaningfully more screen real estate for productivity apps, or bigger, easier-to-read text if that's what you need.

1. Go to System Settings > Displays.
2. Under Resolution, select Scaled.
3. Pick "More Space" to fit more content on screen, or "Larger Text" for readability.
4. The change takes effect immediately. No restart required.

Pressing Control+Command+Q locks your Mac immediately. No hunting through menus, no waiting for a screensaver. One shortcut and your screen is protected the moment you step away from your desk.

1. Press Control+Command+Q on any Mac running macOS Ventura or later (and most earlier versions too).
2. Go to System Settings > Lock Screen and set "Require password" to "Immediately" so the lock actually holds.
3. Alternatively, press Control+Shift+Power to turn the display off without fully locking, useful if you'll be back in seconds.

Most people use Spotlight just to open apps. It also does instant maths, live currency conversions, and natural-language file searches. Press Command+Space, type your query, and get an answer before you'd have opened a browser tab.

1. Press Command+Space to open Spotlight.
2. Type any app name and press Return to open it instantly.
3. Type a maths expression (e.g., "15% of 280") for an immediate result.
4. Type a conversion (e.g., "10 USD in GBP") for live currency rates.
5. Use natural language for files: try "emails from Sarah last week" or "PDFs from January".

Mac's built-in text replacement turns short triggers into full blocks of text the moment you type them. Set "myemail" to expand into your full address, or "tysm" into "Thank you so much for getting in touch". It syncs to all your Apple devices via iCloud automatically.

1. Go to System Settings > Keyboard > Text Replacements.
2. Click the + button.
3. Type your trigger in the Replace column and your full text in the With column.
4. Press Return. The replacement is active immediately in most apps.
5. Use unique triggers (like "myaddr1" rather than "my") to avoid unwanted expansions mid-sentence.

No app download needed. Mac has three screenshot shortcuts built in, covering full screen, custom selection, and single windows. A fourth opens a toolbar with video recording and timed capture. Most people know one of these at most.

1. Command+Shift+3 captures the entire screen and saves it to your Desktop.
2. Command+Shift+4 lets you drag to select any area.
3. Command+Shift+4, then Space, then click a window captures just that window cleanly.
4. Command+Shift+5 opens the full toolbar with recording options and a timer.
5. Add Control to any of the above (e.g., Control+Command+Shift+4) to copy to clipboard instead of saving a file.
6. Change the default save location in Command+Shift+5 > Options > Save to.

By default, the top row of keys controls brightness and volume. Flip one setting and they become proper F1 to F12 keys, which unlocks a huge range of shortcuts in creative apps, IDEs, and anything else that uses F-key bindings. You can still reach the hardware controls by holding Fn.

1. Go to System Settings > Keyboard.
2. Enable "Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys".
3. From now on, press Fn+F1 (or whichever key) to access hardware features like brightness.
4. On a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, hold Fn to reveal the F-key row on the Touch Bar itself.

Fn isn't just for toggling function keys. On a MacBook it also gives you forward delete (Fn+Delete), Page Up and Page Down (Fn+Up/Down Arrow), and reveals the F-key row on Touch Bar models. Tiny shortcuts, but the forward delete alone saves time every single day.

1. Press Fn+Delete to delete the character to the right of the cursor (forward delete), exactly like the Del key on a full-size keyboard.
2. Press Fn+Up Arrow for Page Up, Fn+Down Arrow for Page Down.
3. On MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, hold Fn to display the F1 to F12 row on the Touch Bar.

Mission Control gives you a bird's-eye view of every open window. Spaces let you create separate virtual desktops for different projects. Together they turn a cluttered screen into something manageable, and you can switch between contexts without touching the Dock.

1. Press Control+Up Arrow (or swipe up with three fingers on a trackpad) to open Mission Control.
2. Click any window thumbnail to jump to it.
3. Click the + button in the top-right corner to add a new Space (virtual desktop).
4. Drag windows into different Spaces in Mission Control view to organise by project or context.
5. Use Control+Left/Right Arrow to switch between Spaces instantly from anywhere.
6. Right-click an app in the Dock, go to Options > Assign to, to pin it to a specific Space permanently.

If an app has a menu item you use constantly but no shortcut for it, you can add one yourself in System Settings. No third-party tools, no scripting. Type the menu item's exact name, pick a key combo, and it appears in the menu immediately.

1. Go to System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.
2. Click the + button.
3. Select the target app from the dropdown, or choose "All Applications" for a global shortcut.
4. Type the menu item title exactly as it appears, including capitalisation and any punctuation (e.g., "Merge All Windows").
5. Click in the Keyboard Shortcut field and press your chosen key combination.
6. Click Add. The shortcut appears next to the menu item instantly.