Change General preferences on Mac

Appearance

Choose a light or dark appearance for the menu bar, desktop picture, Dock, and built-in apps on your Mac.

Dark Mode darkens the color scheme so the content you’re working on stands out while windows and controls seem to recede into the background. It’s effective for viewing documents, presentations, photos, movies, webpages, and more.

Accent color

Choose the color to use for buttons, pop-up menus, and other UI controls.

Highlight color

Choose the color to use for highlighting selected text.

Sidebar icon size

Choose small, medium, or large icons for the Finder sidebar and the Mail sidebar.

Automatically hide and show the menu bar

Show the menu bar only when you move the pointer to the top of the screen.

Show scroll bars

Scroll bars appear in a window when there’s content that doesn’t fit into the window’s current size.

• Automatically based on mouse or trackpad: Scroll bars are shown depending on the mouse or trackpad you’re using.

  If your device allows gestures, scroll bars are hidden until you start scrolling. Otherwise, they’re visible.

• When scrolling: Hide scroll bars until you start scrolling.

• Always: Scroll bars are always shown.

Click in the scroll bar to

• Jump to the next page: Clicking in the scroll bar moves the content page by page.

• Jump to the spot that’s clicked: Moves to the spot where you’re clicking; for example, if you click at the bottom of the scroll bar, you go to the bottom of the document.

To momentarily switch between scrolling methods while working, press and hold the Option key while clicking the scroll bar.

Default web browser

Safari is the web browser built into macOS and is used by default when you click a link in an email or text message. If you have other web browsers installed, you can choose which one to use by default.

To learn about the Safari app, see the Safari User Guide.

Ask to keep changes when closing documents

Unsaved changes are saved automatically when you close documents. If you also want to be asked to save changes, select this checkbox.

Close windows when quitting an app

Select to close app windows when you quit an app. The windows won’t reopen automatically the next time you open the app.

Recent items

Recent Items you’ve used are listed in the Apple menu. Choose how many items are listed.

This setting also determines how many recent items appear in app menus, such as the File > Open Recent menu in TextEdit.

Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices

(not available on all computers)

If your Mac supports Handoff, select the checkbox to turn on Handoff between your Mac, iOS devices, and Apple Watch set up with iCloud. See Pick up where you left off with Handoff on Mac.

When this option is selected, you can use Universal Clipboard to copy and paste between your devices.

Use font smoothing when available

Font smoothing reduces jagged edges for some fonts.

When text smoothing (or “antialiasing”) is on, smaller fonts may be harder to read.