Mac Basics: Set your preferences

We all type, point, and click differently. Here's how to customize your keyboard, trackpad, or mouse.

Customize your trackpad

Trackpad preferences lets you control the clicking, scrolling, zooming, and gestures of your trackpad.

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Choose View > Trackpad, or click Trackpad.
3. To change your tracking speed and click settings, click the Point & Click tab. Then, move the Tracking slider to adjust how fast the arrow moves across your screen; move it left to slow it down, or right to speed it up. You can also enable secondary-click by selecting the "Secondary click" checkbox. You can then click using two fingers to secondary-click. The secondary-click can be used to display shortcut (contextual) menus for an application.
4. To change your scroll and zoom settings, click the Scroll & Zoom tab. You can enable and disable scroll and zoom gestures.
5. To change other gesture settings, click the More Gestures tab. You can enable and disable gestures for swipe, Notification Center, Mission Control, App Exposé, Launchpad, and desktop.

Some ways to use your trackpad

• Use one finger to point, tap to click, and drag items on your screen.
• Drag two fingers up, down, or sideways to scroll in an active window.
• Use two-finger pinching to zoom in or out on PDFs, images, photos, and more.
• Use two-finger rotating to rotate photos, pages, and more.
• Swipe three fingers to quickly page through a document, move to the previous or next photo, and more.
• Swipe four fingers left or right to cycle between full-screen applications.
• Swipe left from the right edge to open the Notification Center in Mountain Lion.
• Swipe up with three fingers to open Mission Control.
• Pinch close with thumb and three fingers to open Launchpad.
• Spread with thumb and three fingers to show the desktop.

Customize your mouse

The Mouse preferences pane looks different depending on what kind of mouse you use. These settings let you set the sensitivity of the mouse to control how fast the pointer moves across your screen when you move your mouse, and adjust for your double-click reflexes. Other controls may be available, depending on the type of mouse you're using.

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Choose View > Mouse, or simply click Mouse.
3. To control how fast the pointer (cursor) moves across your screen when you move the mouse, click Point & Click and use the Tracking slider to adjust speed.
4. If Double-Click Speed appears, you can use the Double-Click slider to adjust speed.
5. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can use the Scrolling slider to adjust speed.
6. To change gesture settings, click the More Gestures tab. You can enable and disable gestures for swipe and Mission Control.

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Choose View > Sound, or simply click Sound.
3. To change the alert sound played when your Mac wants to get your attention, click the Sound Effects tab, then select a sound in the alert sound list.
4. If you want to hear sound effects play when you do other things in the Finder, such as when you empty, the Trash or remove items from the Dock, select the "Play user interface sound effects" checkbox.
5. To change the overall volume of sound effects, move the "Alert volume" slider left to lower the volume, or right to raise the volume.
6. To adjust the overall volume of your Mac, move the "Output volume" slider left to turn the volume down, or right to turn it up. If you'd rather have your Mac quiet, click "Mute".
7. To adjust the sound balance for your internal or external speakers, click the Output tab, select your speaker device from the list, and move the Balance slider left to hear more from the left channel, or right to hear more from the right channel.

To conserve energy, all Macs have the ability to sleep. When you haven't used your Mac for a set amount of time, it enters a low-power mode until you wake it by pressing the keyboard, trackpad, or moving the mouse. Sleep doesn't turn off your computer; it merely puts it into an inactive state that consumes less power. Waking your Mac from sleep is faster than waiting for your Mac to start up after a shutdown.

This is especially helpful for conserving battery life on notebooks. Sometimes you may need to alter your computer's sleep settings, such as when you're burning a DVD—if you're not interacting with your Mac during this time, it could go to sleep during the process. Or, you may want to have your Mac go to sleep earlier than scheduled. Here's how to change sleep preferences.

Set the sleep time

1. Open System Preferences
2. Choose View > Energy Saver.
3. Choose the Power Adapter or Battery tab. If you're using a desktop Mac (a Mac mini, iMac, or Mac Pro), the Power Adapter and Battery tabs do not appear.
4. Move the sliders for both the computer and display to change the times in which they go to sleep.
5. Select any other options you want, such as sleep and wake.

Your Mac is set to display the language for the country in which you bought the computer. For example, if you bought your Mac in the United States, your Mac is set to English. If you bought your Mac in France, your Mac is set to French. If you prefer to use a different language, you can easily switch languages.

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Choose View > Language & Text or click Language & Text.
3. Click the Language tab.
4. In the Languages pane, drag your preferred language to the top of the list.
5. To apply the language throughout your system, restart your Mac or log out and log back in.