If you are tired of pop-ups and banners interrupting your web browsing experience, it's worth getting to know Distraction Control, a new Safari feature that helps you focus on the content that matters by minimizing intrusive elements on webpages. While it's not designed as an ad blocker, Distraction Control can significantly improve your reading experience by hiding static distractions.
To nix a distracting item on a webpage, click the Page menu icon in the address bar and select Hide Distracting Items. Then simply hover your pointer over the item in question, whereupon it will be auto-selected for removal. With another click, the distraction will disintegrate before your eyes. When you're finished, click Done in the address bar. If you're on a webpage where you've hidden items, a crossed out eye icon will appear in the address bar, indicating that you can make them visible again by revisiting the Page menu and selecting Show Hidden Items.
Are there times when you sit down to work on your Mac and struggle to see items on the screen? Whether it’s the app icons on your desktop, text in emails or webpages, or simply your mouse pointer, there are ways to improve your screen space.
You should never have to strain to read or see what’s on your computer screen. So, here are several adjustments you can make to improve your Mac experience.
Find your pointer faster
Starting with the simple things, you may have trouble seeing your pointer on the screen or just lose track of where it is.
You can adjust the size of your pointer, so it’s easier to spot. Open System Settings.. from the Apple menu and go to Accessibility > Display. Use the Pointer size slider to increase the size of your mouse or trackpad pointer. A super handy feature on Mac is that you can shake your mouse to briefly increase the size of the pointer and thus making it simpler to find. This setting is in the same spot as the cursor size. Go there and enable Shake mouse pointer to locate.
Make text bigger in specific apps
If it’s reading words that you’re having a hard time with on Mac, you can make the text size bigger.
Font size in Messages: Go to Messages > Settings... and on the General tab. From here, move the slider at the bottom for Text Size.
Font size in Mail: Go to Mail > Settings..., and on the Fonts & Colors tab, change the text sizes using the Select button for each font at the top.
Font size in Safari: Go to Safari > Settings..., and on the Advanced tab, check the box for Never use font sizes smaller than and pick a minimum size in the drop-down list.
Font size in Notes: Go to Notes > Settings... and move the slider at the bottom for Default Text Size.
For other Apple or third-party apps on your Mac, check the app’s Settings/Preferences or the Help section for instructions on increasing the font size if available.
Make desktop text and icons larger
In addition to increasing the size of the text in apps, you can make your screen font and icons larger as well. You can do this for text and icons on your desktop, in Finder, in your sidebars, and in your menu bar.
You can increase the size of the items on your desktop pretty easily. Right-click or hold Control and click an empty spot on your desktop and select Show View Options.
Choose a Text Size from the drop-down list and use the slider for the Icon Size. You can change the size of the font in Finder if you use Icon, List, or Column view. Open Finder and click View > Show View Options from the menu bar. Choose a Text Size and Icon Size.
For an overarching larger icon size in sidebars, head to Apple menu > System Settings... > Appearance and select Small, Medium, or Large for Sidebar Icon Size.
Text in the menu bar
You can increase the size of the text in the menu bar. Head to Apple menu > System Settings... > Accessibility. Select Display, and select Large as the Menu bar size. You’ll need to log out and back in to see this change.
Use system-wide large text
Besides the above finer options, you can also significantly increase the overall text size of all apps and windows. To do that, go to Apple menu > System Settings... > Displays and choose an option next to Larger Text.
Adjust the appearance of your desktop
You can make some simple tweaks to make items easier to view on your desktop, in menus, and for borders. These types of adjustments are related to the colors on your screen.
Turn transparent areas of the desktop gray in Apple menu > System Settings... > Accessibility. Select Display and enable Reduce transparency.
Darkening the borders also reduces transparency and makes things simpler to see. Go to Apple menu > System Settings... > Accessibility. Select Display and enable the switch for Increase contrast.
If seeing white on black is easier on your eyes, you can head to Apple menu > System Settings... > Accessibility > Display and enable Invert Colors.
For statuses and information, you can choose to see shapes instead of or in addition to colored text. Go to Apple menu > System Settings... > Accessibility > Display and enable Differentiate without color.
Adjust the overall contrast for the display. Head to Apple menu > System Settings... > Accessibility > Display and move the Display contrast slider.
For protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia, or a color tint, you can use filters. Go to Apple menu > System Settings... > Accessibility > Display. Enable Color Filters. Select the Filter Type and then use the adjustments options that display to personalize the filter or color tint.
Use Night Shift
Another built-in Mac feature called Night Shift can make your screen easier on the eyes. You can turn it on quickly from the Control Center or schedule it to turn on regularly. In Control Center, click Display and then the Night Shift. To Schedule Night Shift, open Apple menu > System Settings... > Displays and click the Night Shift.
Among the new features in the Messages app, you can now add neat text effects to your messages to make them more expressive.
The new animated text effects can be applied to your entire message, a single word, a phrase, or even an emoji or sticker. The options include Big, Small, Shake, Nod, Explode, Ripple, Bloom, and Jitter.
Using the same contextual menu, you can also now add emphasis to your text messages using bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough formatting. You can now apply these formatting options to entire messages, individual words, or even specific letters, offering a higher degree of customization in how you communicate.
Stationery Pad is a handy way to nix a step in your workflow if you regularly use document templates on your Mac. The long-standing Finder feature essentially tells a file's parent application to open a copy of it by default, ensuring that the original file remains unedited. Almost any file type can be defined as a template with Stationery Pad – it could be used to streamline common Photoshop jobs, create skeleton HTML/CSS files, or help with Word document invoicing.
To take advantage of it, right-click (Ctrl-click) the file that you want to use as a template, select Get Info, then check the Stationery Pad checkbox under the General section. Lastly, click the red traffic light button to close the Get Info window. Next time you double-click the template file, Finder will automatically create and open a copy of it, leaving the original untouched.
Stationery Pad doesn't get much attention these days, but it's a neat alternative to repeatedly editing templates and using the "Save As..." command, which can lead to overwriting the original file if you're not too careful.
Browser tabs in Safari are a great way to visit multiple webpages in the same browsing session without having to close any of them, which makes them particularly useful for cross-referencing and researching things online. But all too often, the number of tabs you have open can get out of control. This makes navigating them tricky and it can also sap system resources, so to avoid being overwhelmed by open tabs, try the following Safari tips to better manage them.
Bookmark all open tabs
If the browser tabs you have open are related and you plan to regularly revisit them, it's worth bookmarking them together in their own bookmark folder. To do so, simply select Bookmarks -> Add Bookmarks for These X Tabs... (X being the number of open tabs).
You'll then be invited to create a name for the bookmark folder and select where you want it to be kept amongst your other bookmarks, which you can access at any time by selecting Bookmarks > Show Bookmarks in the menu bar. Note that you can perform a similar action to add all open tabs to your Reading List for later perusal, even when you're offline. (Bookmarks > Add These X Tabs to Reading List.)
Use Tab Groups
Tab Groups are a neat way to save and manage related tabs without having to have those tabs active and taking up space. If you're planning a trip, for example, you can save all of your tabs into a "Vacation" group, accessing them when needed and leaving your device free for other content when you're not doing active planning.
To create a new Tab Group, click the Show Sidebar icon next to the traffic lights, then select New Tab Group. Alternately, click the down arrow next to the Show Sidebar icon and select either New Empty Tab Group or New Tab Group With X Tabs, "X" being the number of tabs currently open. Any Tab Groups you create are listed in the sidebar for easy switching. You can also select groups by clicking the down arrow next to the Show Sidebar icon. Any tabs that are opened when a Tab Group is selected will automatically be included in that group.
Change Safari's tab layout
Safari offers two tab layouts: Compact and Separate. Compact is a more unified Safari design that does away with the dedicated URL and search interface and makes any individual tab able to be used for navigation input. The problem with the Compact layout is that it severely limits space for multiple open tabs. In this regard, the Separate layout is more preferable, as it positions the URL/search bar at the top of the Safari window, with your tabs arranged below it.
If you're not already using the Separate tab layout, you can switch to it easily enough by selecting Safari > Settings... in the menu bar. Click the Tabs menu in the preference pane and select Tab Layout: Separate to remove the compact tab bar that merges everything together.
Rearrange open tabs
Sometimes you may have several open tabs from a handful of websites that you tend to visit but which are mixed up with other tabs from different places across the web. In such cases, it can be useful to rearrange your tabs so that tabs from the same website are lined up next to each other, allowing you to easily review what you've read and dispense with any redundant tabs that were hiding between them. To sort your tabs according to website, or title if you prefer, simply right-click any tab and select Arrange Tabs By > Website or Title from the dropdown menu.
Pin tabs
Safari's pinned tabs feature lets you better organize your tabs, especially if find you have too many open at the same time. It's particularly useful if you have certain websites that you tend to visit frequently throughout the day. The neat thing about pinned tabs is that they stay in place, even when you open a new Safari window or quit and reopen Safari. And when you click a link to another website from a pinned tab, the other website opens in a new tab, ensuring your pinned tab always shows the website you pinned.
To pin a tab, drag the tab to the leftmost side of the tab bar, and when the tab shrinks to show just the website's favicon, simply drop it in place. You can also select Window > Pin Tab from the menu bar, or right-click (Ctrl-click) a tab, then choose Pin Tab from the contextual menu. If you have multiple pinned tabs, you can rearrange them in the Tabs bar by dragging them with your cursor. To unpin a website tab, just drag the pinned tab to the right side of the tab bar and it will expand to become a normal tab again.
Kill them all
If you're done with all your other open tabs because you've found what you were looking for, then you can close all open tabs except the currently active one. Alternately, you can opt to close all open tabs to the right of the one you're currently viewing. Simply right-click the currently active tab and select Close Other Tabs or Close Tabs to the Right.