InformIT: Mac OS X Unleashed > System Preferences: Personal

Table of Contents

System Preferences: Personal

The Personal section of the System Preferences panel includes panes for customizing your personal desktop experience. With the controls in this section, you can customize such settings as desktop backgrounds, highlight color, and language preferences. In this section, we specifically look at the General, International, Login, Screen Saver and Universal Access panes.

General

The General pane, shown in Figure 11.9, allows you to set some general behaviors, which can be grouped as appearance, scroll behavior, number of recent items, and font smoothing.

Figure 11.9 The General pane controls settings for overall appearance, highlight color, scroll bar behavior, and font smoothing.

In the first section of the pane, a general color scheme for the overall appearance of the menus, buttons, and windows is set. The choice is between blue and graphite. In addition, you can set the highlight color for selected text and lists. A few more choices are available for highlight color: graphite, silver, blue, yellow, orange, green, purple, or other, which brings up a standard color browser, where you can select any color you want.

In the next section, you can select where scroll arrows are placed and the resulting behavior of clicking in the scroll bar. Scroll arrows can be placed either at the top and bottom or together. The resulting behavior of clicking in the scroll bar can be set either to jump to the next page or to scroll to here.

The next section is where you set the number of recent items for applications and documents. For both types, the choices are 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 50.

In the final section of the pane, you can turn off smoothing for fonts smaller than size 9, 10, or 12.

International

Settings involving language, date format, keyboard layouts, and so on are set in the International pane.

Language

Figure 11.10 shows the Language tab. This is where you set your preferred language order use for application menus and dialogs. Just drag the languages around until you have achieved the desired order. If not all the languages you would like to rank are shown, click the Edit button to edit the language listing. Select the languages of interest, and then rank their order.

Figure 11.10 The preferred language order for application menus and dialogs is set in the Language tab of the International pane.

In the bottom portion of the Language tab, you select a default set of behaviors for scripts. The behaviors affect sort order, case conversion, and word definition. The Roman script has many options available to choose as the default.

Date

The long date format can be set in the Date tab. The short date format defaults to certain settings, according to the region selected. You can, however, make custom settings, if the region settings are not to your liking. You can set such items as the date separator, whether to use a leading zero, and the preferred order of month, day, and year. Figure 11.11 shows the Date tab for the German region

Figure 11.11 Long and short date formats are set in the Date tab of the International pane.

Time

The Time tab, shown in Figure 11.12, is where you specify how you want the time to be displayed. You can select whether to use a 24-hour clock or a 12-hour clock. If you select a 12-hour clock, you can specify how noon and midnight should be written, and what indicator to use for before noon and after noon. Like the Date tab, the Time tab sets certain defaults based on the region, but you can customize the settings.

Figure 11.12 The time format is set in the Time tab of the International pane.

Number

The Numbers tab, shown in Figure 11.13, sets the symbol used for currency and where the symbol is placed, as well as what character is used for the decimal and thousands separators.

Figure 11.13 The currency symbol and its placement, as well as the separator characters for decimal and thousands, are specified in the Numbers tab of the International pane.

Keyboard Menu

In the Keyboard Menu tab shown in Figure 11.14, you can turn on multiple keyboard layouts. When more than one keyboard layout is selected, they appear in a Keyboard menu, and you can rotate through the choices. OS X has an interface layer that attempts to map input to an equivalent appropriate to the script. For the Roman script, many keyboard layouts are available. For example, if you were to select the U.S. keyboard, British keyboard, and French keyboard, you would see slightly different behaviors in the interpretation of the underlying Roman script for them. For example, the pound sign (#) is interpreted on the British keyboard layout as £ instead. The French keyboard layout interprets many numbers as lowercase accented characters. To get numbers in that layout, you use the Shift key. More information on the Keyboard menu can be found in Chapter 10, "Printer and Font Management."

Figure 11.14 Multiple keyboard layouts can be specified in the Keyboard Menu tab of the International pane.

Login

When you log in to your Mac OS X computer, you can choose to have it start applications for you automatically. Additionally, owners of computers that have only a single user can choose to be automatically logged in to that account at boot time, rather than manually logging in.

Login Items

The Login Items tab, shown in Figure 11.15, is where you indicate what items, if any, you would like to start automatically when you log in.

Figure 11.15 In the Login Items tab of the Login pane, you can select items that automatically start up when you log in.

Login Window

Characteristics about the login window are set in the Login Window tab, shown in Figure 11.16. Here you can indicate how you would like the login window to look, either as providing fields for username and password or as a list of usernames with an associated picture. Additionally, you can choose to include Other User as a choice in the list. You can also disable the Restart and Shut Down buttons of the login window here, and set whether to show the password hint after three tries. If your machine is actually being used as a multi-user machine with multiple users who might log in at the console, or if your machine is located in a public area, we recommend that you disable the Restart and Shut Down buttons. This reduces the chances of the machine accidentally being shut down.

Figure 11.16 You can configure the behavior of the login window in the Login Window tab of the Login pane.

You can also set a particular user to be logged in automatically. OS X has initially set up the machine to automatically log in the first created administrative user, to give you the Mac OS feel that you are used to. After you have added an additional user, we recommend that you disable the automatic login to get a login window instead. If you don't make that modification, your account can be modified by whoever sits at the machine.

Screen Saver

The Screen Saver pane is where you configure your screen saver, if you want to use one.

Screen Savers

In the Screen Savers tab, shown in Figure 11.17, you can select one of the default screen savers, set up your own screen saver by choosing the Slide Show option, or choose to have the machine randomly select screen saver modules for you. Here you can test the screen savers. However, if you find that you seem to be getting the same approximate pattern for each screen saver, select one that you think you might like, and let the screen saver start naturally. It should work properly on its own.

Figure 11.17 Select a screen saver in the Screen Savers tab of the Screen Saver pane.

Activation

You can set when the screen saver starts in the Activation tab, shown in Figure 11.18. Set a time that is appropriate for your situation. In addition, you can specify whether the system should request a password to unlock the screen. We recommend that you select this option. This option essentially locks your screen for you if you happen to leave your machine while you are logged in.

Figure 11.18 Set the activation parameters in the Activation tab of the Screen Saver pane.

Hot Corners

In the Hot Corners tab, shown in Figure 11.19, you can enable or disable screen corners to activate the screen saver when your mouse enters the corner. Click in the desired box until a minus appears to create a "disable" corner, or click to make a check mark to set an "activate" corner.

Figure 11.19 Activate the screen corners in the Hot Corners tab of the Screen Saver pane.

Universal Access

The Universal Access pane is where you can customize some keyboard and mouse behaviors, if you are having difficulties with the keyboard or the mouse itself.

Keyboard

In the Keyboard tab, shown in Figure 11.20, you can set the Sticky Keys on or off. If you set the Sticky Keys on, you can also choose to have the machine beep when a modifier key is set and to show pressed keys on screen. The Sticky Keys option is useful if you have trouble executing multiple key combinations, such as Command+I. Note that you can also toggle on and off the Sticky Keys behavior by pressing the Shift key five times.

Figure 11.20 Set the Sticky Keys on in the Keyboard tab of the Universal Access pane if you have difficulties executing multiple key sequences at once.

From the Keyboard tab, you can also adjust key repeat timing. The Keyboard tab brings up the Keyboard pane to accomplish this task.

Mouse

If you have difficulties using the mouse, you can set Mouse Keys on in the Mouse tab, shown in Figure 11.21. When you turn Mouse Keys on, the numeric key pad is what you use to move the cursor around. The Mouse tab also allows you to customize mouse pointer movement by setting a preferred initial delay and maximum speed using slider controls. Note that you can also toggle on and off the Mouse Keys by pressing the Option key five times.

Figure 11.21 Set the Mouse Keys on in the Mouse tab of the Universal Access pane if you have difficulties with the mouse.

System Preferences: Hardware | Next Section

Previous Section