The System Preferences Window

You can open System Preferences in dozens of ways:

• Choose its name from the menu.

• Jump directly to a System Preferences pane by pressing Option as you tap keys on the top row of your keyboard: Option- for Mission Control preferences, Option-volume key (, , or ) for Sound prefs, Option-brightness keys ( or ) or Option-keyboard-brightness key ( or ) for the Displays prefs. At that point, you can click Show All or press -L to see the full spread.

• If you know the name of the System Preferences panel you want, it’s often quicker to use Spotlight. To open the iCloud panel, for example, hit -space, type iclo, and then press Return. See Chapter 4 for more on operating Spotlight from the keyboard.

• If you put the System Preferences icon in your Dock (Chapter 5), you can open it and jump to a particular panel in one smooth move: Click-and-hold the System Preferences icon. You get a pop-up menu of every System Preferences panel.

Suppose, then, that by hook or by crook, you’ve figured out how to open System Preferences. At first, the rows of icons are grouped according to function, as shown in Figure 10-1, bottom. But you can also view them in tidy alphabetical order, as shown at top in Figure 10-1. That can spare you the ritual of hunting through various rows just to find a certain panel icon whose name you already know. (Quick, without looking: Which row is Date & Time in?) This chapter describes the various panels following this alphabetical arrangement.

Actually, there are two nearly identical View menus. There’s the regularly scheduled View menu at the top of the screen, and there’s the Show All button (). This button is, believe it or not, also a menu.

Figure 10-1. You can view System Preferences icons alphabetically (top), rather than in rows by function (bottom); just choose View→Organize Alphabetically. Non-Apple panes appear in a final row.

Either way, when you click one of the icons, the corresponding controls appear.

Choosing a Preferences Pane

To access a different preferences pane, you have a number of options:

• Fast: When System Preferences first opens, the insertion point is blinking in the System Preferences search box. (If the insertion point is not blinking there, then press -F.) Type a few letters of volume, resolution, wallpaper, wireless, or whatever feature you want to adjust. In a literal illustration of Spotlight’s name, the System Preferences window darkens except for the icons where you’ll find relevant controls (Figure 10-2). Click the name or icon of the one that looks the most promising.

  

  Figure 10-2. Even if you don’t know which System Preferences panel contains the settings you want to change, Spotlight can help. Type into the box at the top, and watch as the “spotlight” shines on the relevant icons.

• Faster: Click the Show All icon in the upper-left corner of the window (or press -L, a shortcut worth learning). Then click the icon of the new panel you want.

• Fastest: You can choose a panel’s name from any of three menus. There’s the View menu, the Show All button (), or the System Preferences Dock icon pop-up menu described earlier.

Hiding the Icons You Never Use

Let’s face it: Especially for a beginner, System Preferences can be daunting. You just want to change your screensaver, and suddenly you’re face to face with the space shuttle dashboard.

Fortunately, you can hide the System Preferences icons you don’t use often. Figure 10-3 shows the way.

Figure 10-3. Super-top-secret trick: If you choose Customize (from the View menu or, believe it or not, the Show All button ), the icons sprout checkboxes. You can turn off—and hide—the icons you never use. (You can still choose their names from the View menu, even if you’ve hidden them.)

All right. Here, then, is your grand tour of the built-in System Preferences panes. (You may have more if you’ve installed any non-Apple panes.)