macOS Monterey For Dummies

Introduction 1 About This Book 1 Foolish Assumptions 3 Icons Used in This Book 3 Beyond the Book 4 Where to Go from Here 4 Part 1: macOS Basics 5 Chapter 1: macOS Monterey 101 (Prerequisites: None) 7 Gnawing to the Core of macOS 8 A Safety Net for the Absolute Beginner (or Any User) 10 Turning the dang thing on 10 What you should see on startup 11 Shutting down properly 14 A few things you should definitely not do with your Mac 15 Point-and-click 101 16 Not Just a Beatles Movie: Help and the Help Menu 18 Chapter 2: Desktop and Windows and Menus (Oh My!) 23 Touring Finder and Its Desktop 24 Anatomy of a Window 25 Top o’ the window to ya! 27 A scroll new world 29 (Hyper)active windows 30 Dialog Dealie-Boppers 32 Working with Windows 34 Opening and closing windows 34 Resizing windows and window panes 35 Moving windows 35 Shuffling windows 36 Menu Basics 38 The ever-changing menu bar 39 Contextual (shortcut) menus: They’re sooo contextual! 39 Recognizing disabled options 41 Navigating submenus 42 Under the Apple menu tree 43 Using keyboard shortcut commands 44 Chapter 3: What’s Up, Dock? 45 A Quick Introduction to Your Dock 46 The default icons of the dock 47 Trash talkin’ 49 Opening application menus on the dock 51 Reading dock icon body language 53 Opening files from the dock 54 Customizing Your Dock 54 Adding dock icons 54 Removing an icon from the dock 57 Resizing the dock 58 What should you put on your dock? 58 Setting your dock preferences 60 Chapter 4: Getting to Know Finder and Its Desktop 65 Introducing Finder and Its Minions: The Desktop and Icons 66 Introducing the desktop 66 Bellying up to the toolbar 68 Figuring out what an icon is 71 Identifying your Finder icons in the wild 72 Aliases Are Awesome! 73 Creating aliases 75 Deleting aliases 76 Hunting down an alias’s parent 76 The View(s) from a Window 76 Moving through folders fast in Column view 77 Perusing in Icon view 79 Listless? Try viewing folders as a list 79 Hangin’ in the Gallery (view) 81 What’s next on the (View) menu? 82 Finder on the Menu 84 The actual Finder menu 84 Like a road map: The current folder’s pop-up menu 87 Going places with the Go menu 88 Customizing Finder Windows 90 Adding folders to the sidebar 90 Setting Finder preferences 90 Digging for Icon Data in the Info Window 93 Chapter 5: Delving Even Deeper into Monterey’s Desktop and Finder 97 Cleaning Up Your Desktop Automatically with Stacks 97 Managing your Stacks 100 Quick Actions: Now Playing All Over Monterey 101 Getting the most out of Markup 101 Trimming video without launching an app 104 Do It Quicker with Finder Quick Actions 105 Creating PDFs without launching an app 105 Creating custom Finder Quick Actions 106 Four More Cool Monterey Tricks 107 Shooting screens 107 Dynamic desktop images 109 Part 2: How Stuff Works 111 Chapter 6: Having It Your Way 113 Introducing System Preferences 113 The Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences Pane 115 The Desktop tab 116 The Screen Saver tab 117 The General System Preferences Pane 118 Adjusting the Keyboard, Mouse, Trackpad, and Other Hardware 121 The Keyboard System Preferences pane 122 The Mouse System Preferences pane 126 The Bluetooth System Preferences pane 127 The Trackpad System Preferences pane 127 The Sound System Preferences Pane 129 Changing sound effects 129 Choosing output and input options 130 Chapter 7: Opening and Saving Files 131 A Quick Primer on Finding Files 132 Understanding the macOS Folder Structure 132 Understanding nested folders 134 From the top: The Computer folder 135 Peeking into the Applications folder 136 Visiting the Library folders 136 Let it be: The System folder 137 There’s no place like Home 137 Your personal library card 139 Saving Your Document Before It’s Too Late 141 Stepping through a basic save 142 Save As versus Duplicate: Different names for the same result 148 Open, Sez Me 150 With drag-and-drop 152 With a Quick Look 152 When your Mac can’t open a file 153 With the application of your choice 154 Chapter 8: File and Folder Management Made Easy 157 Organizing Your Stuff in Folders 157 Files versus folders 158 Organizing your stuff with subfolders 158 Creating new folders 160 Navigating with spring-loaded folders 161 Smart folders 162 Shuffling Files and Folders 164 Moving files and folders 165 Selecting multiple icons 166 Playing the icon name game: Renaming icons 167 Renaming multiple icons at once 168 Compressing files 168 Getting rid of icons 168 The Incredible iCloud+ (and iCloud Drive) 169 Chapter 9: Comprehending the macOS Clipboard 171 Introducing the Clipboard 171 Copying Files and Folders 173 Pasting from the Clipboard 175 Monterey’s Universal Clipboard 175 Part 3: Getting Things Done 177 Chapter 10: Five Terrific Time-Saving Tools 179 With a Quick Look 180 Share and share alike with the Share menu 181 Slide into Slideshow (full-screen) mode 182 Spotlight on Finding Files and Folders Faster 183 Using the Find command 184 Using the Spotlight menu and its keyboard shortcut 186 Blast Off with Mission Control 187 The Mission Control pane: It’s painless 187 Hot corners are hot stuff! 189 Mission Control’s Spaces from 30,000 feet (an overview) 190 Getting around in space(s) 192 Taking Control of Essential Settings 193 Launchpad: The Place for Applications 194 Chapter 11: Organizing Your Life 197 Keeping Track with Calendar 198 Navigating Calendar views 198 Creating calendars 199 Deleting a calendar 200 Creating and managing events 201 Reminders: Protection Against Forgetting 203 Getting started with Reminders 204 To do or not to do: Setting reminders 205 Sharing lists and assigning reminders 206 Everything You Need to Know about Notification Center 207 Tweaking Notification settings 207 Widget management 101 209 Using Notification Center 210 Getting focused 210 Use Notes for Making Notes 211 Take a Quick Note with Quick Note 215 Tracking Productivity with Screen Time 215 Chapter 12: Are You Siri-ous? 217 What Siri Can Do for You 217 Working with Siri 219 Making Siri Your Own 220 Chapter 13: Maps Are Where It’s At 223 Finding Your Current Location with Maps 223 Finding a Person, Place, or Thing 224 Views, Zooms, and Pans 225 Maps and Contacts 227 Time-saving Map Tools: Favorites, Guides, and Recents 228 Favorites 228 Guides 229 Recents 230 Smart Map Tricks 230 Get route maps and driving directions 230 Get walking directions 231 Get directions for public transportation 232 Get traffic info in real time 232 Flyovers and look arounds 232 Do more on the Info sheet 233 Chapter 14: Apps Born in iOS 235 Taking Stock of the Market with Stocks 236 Adding and deleting stocks, funds, and indexes 237 Details, details, details 237 Charting a course 238 Read All about It in News 239 What are your interests? 239 How News works 240 Managing your news 240 Recording Memos with Voice Memos 241 Recording a voice memo 241 Listening to a voice memo 242 Naming a voice memo 243 Trimming a voice memo 243 Automating Repetitive Tasks with Shortcuts 244 Controlling Lights, Locks, and More with Home 245 Part 4: Getting Along with Others 247 Chapter 15: (Inter)Networking 249 Getting Connected to the Internet 250 Your internet service provider and you 251 Plugging in your internet-connection settings 251 Browsing the Web with Safari 253 Owning your toolbar 254 Using the Safari sidebar 255 Checking out Help Center 260 Chapter 16: Dealing with People 261 Collecting Your Contacts 261 Adding contacts 262 Importing contacts from other programs 263 Creating a basic group 264 Setting up a smart group (based on contact criteria) 266 Deleting a group or smart group 266 Sync + Contacts = your contacts everywhere 267 Audio and Video Calls with FaceTime 268 About SharePlay 269 Chapter 17: Communicating with Mail and Messages 271 Sending and Receiving Email with Mail 271 Setting Up Mail 272 A quick overview of the toolbar 272 Composing a new message 274 Sending email from the Contacts app 276 Checking your mail 278 Dealing with spam 279 Mailboxes smart and plain 280 Changing your preferences 282 Sign here, please 283 Mail rules rule 284 Take a (Quick) look and (Slide) show me some photos 286 Markup and Mail Drop 286 Communicating with Messages 288 What the heck is an iMessage? 289 Chit-chatting with Messages 289 Chapter 18: Sharing Your Mac and Liking It 293 Introducing Networks and File Sharing 294 Portrait of home office networking 295 Three ways to build a network 297 Setting Up File Sharing 299 Access and Permissions: Who Can Do What 300 Users and groups and guests 300 Creating users 302 macOS knows best: Folders shared by default 306 Sharing a folder or disk by setting permissions 307 Useful settings for permissions 311 Unsharing a folder 314 Connecting to a Shared Disk or Folder on a Remote Mac 314 Changing Your Password 318 Changing your account password on your Mac 319 Changing the password of any account but your own on your Mac 319 More Types of Sharing 320 Sharing a screen 320 Sharing the internet 321 And yet more ways to share 322 Part 5: Getting Creative 323 Chapter 19: The Musical Mac 325 Apple Music and iTunes Match Rock! 326 Introducing Music (the App Formerly Known as iTunes) 327 Working with Media 330 Adding songs 330 Listening to Radio 332 All about Playlists 334 Creating a regular playlist 334 Working with smart playlists 336 Working with the Genius playlist 337 Burning a playlist to CD 338 Chapter 20: The Multimedia Mac 341 Playing Movies and Music in QuickTime Player 342 Watching TV 343 Using the Books App 344 Buying an e-book or audiobook 345 Shopping for e-books without Apple 347 Finding and Listening to Podcasts with the Podcasts App 348 You’re the Star with Photo Booth 349 Viewing and Converting Images and PDFs in Preview 351 Chapter 21: Words and Letters 353 Processing Words with TextEdit 354 Creating and composing a document 354 Working with text 355 Adding graphics to documents 358 Font Mania 359 Types of fonts 360 Managing your fonts with Font Book 360 Chapter 22: Publish or Perish: The Fail-Safe Guide to Printing 363 Before Diving In 364 Ready: Connecting and Adding Your Printer 364 Connecting your printer 365 Setting up a printer for the first time 365 One last thing: Printer sharing 368 Set: Setting Up Your Document with Page Setup 368 Print: Printing with the Print Sheet 370 Printing a document 370 Choosing among different printers 371 Choosing custom settings 371 Saving custom settings 374 Preview and PDF Options 374 Part 6: Care and Feeding 377 Chapter 23: Features for the Way You Work 379 Finally, a Dark Mode 380 App Shopping, Improved 381 Using Your iPhone as Your Mac’s Camera or Scanner 383 Talking and Listening to Your Mac 386 Keyboard System Preferences pane: You talk and your Mac types 386 Commanding your Mac by voice 388 Listening to your Mac read your screen 389 Automatic Automation 392 Script Editor app: Write and edit AppleScripts 392 Automator app: Automate almost anything 394 A Few More Useful Goodies 396 Accessibility System Preferences pane: Make your Mac more accessible 396 Battery and Energy Saver System Preferences panes: For energy conservation and sleep 398 Bluetooth System Preferences pane: Where Bluetooth lives 399 Ink System Preferences pane: Visible to pen-input tablet users only 400 Automatic Login in the Users & Groups System Preferences pane: Don’t bother with the login screen 400 Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac 401 Boot Camp Assistant app: Run Windows on your Mac really 401 AirPlay and AirPlay to Mac 402 Handoff 403 Universal Control 404 Chapter 24: Safety First: Backups and Other Security Issues 405 Backing Up is (Not) Hard to Do 406 Backing up with Monterey’s excellent Time Machine 406 Backing up by using the manual, brute-force method 409 Backing up by using commercial backup software 410 Why You Need Two Sets of Backups 411 Non-Backup Security Concerns 412 About viruses and other malware 412 Install recommended software updates 414 Protecting Your Data from Prying Eyes 415 Blocking or limiting connections 416 Locking down files with FileVault 416 Setting other options for security 417 Chapter 25: Utility Chest 419 In the Applications and Utilities Folders 419 Calculator 419 Activity Monitor 421 Disk Utility 422 Keychain Access 427 Passwords System Preferences pane 429 Migration Assistant 429 System Information 430 Terminal 430 Screenshot 431 The best keyboard shortcut to memorize 432 Monterey screen-shooting options 433 Monterey screen recording 434 Chapter 26: Troubleshooting macOS 435 About Startup Disks and Booting 435 Finding or creating a startup disk 436 They call it a prohibitory sign for a reason 436 Recovering with Recovery HD 438 Step 1: Run First Aid 438 Step 2: Safe boot into Safe mode 439 Step 3: Zapping the PRAM/NVRAM 440 Step 4: Reinstalling macOS 441 Step 5: Things to try before taking your Mac in for repair 441 If Your Mac Crashes at Startup 442 Managing Storage 442 Part 7: The Part of Tens 445 Chapter 27: Ten Ways to Speed Up Your Mac Experience 447 Use Those Keyboard Shortcuts 447 Improve Your Typing Skills 448 Try a Different Keyboard 449 Change Your Resolution 450 Purchase a Faster Mac 450 Add RAM 451 Add a Second Display 451 Use Your iPad as a Second Display 452 Upgrade to a Solid-State Drive (SSD) 452 Get More Storage 453 Chapter 28: Ten Great Websites for Mac Freaks 455 The Mac Observer 456 Macworld 456 TidBITS 456 iMore 457 AppleWorld.Today 457 The Wirecutter 457 Apple Support 458 Other World Computing 458 Apple’s Refurbished and Clearance Store 459 Six Colors 459 Index 461