Table of contents for The Mac Beginners' Guide in The Mac Beginners' Guide

Connected Mac 1 Make sure that your Mac is within range of your wireless router’s Wi-Fi signal, then click on the Command Centre icon in the upper-right of the desktop (next to Siri). If the Wi-Fi is indicating it’s off, click the icon to switch it on. 2 Within the Wi-Fi icon you’ll see the option for Other Networks, click this to list the currently scanned and available Wi-Fi networks. Click your Wi-Fi network and enter your access password. Consult your router/ISP for the Wi-Fi password. 3 Ensure that the Remember this network option is ticked, so you don’t have to keep entering the password every time you boot your Mac. When the Wi-Fi is connected, you’ll notice the radar-like icon on the menu bar at the top of the desktop; this indicates…

Accessing Your Applications from the Dock Add or Remove an Application To add an app, first click the icon filled with multicoloured boxes on the left-hand side of the Dock to bring up Launchpad. Then, click and drag the item you want onto the Dock. To remove it, just drag it out. Open an Application To open an application that’s in your Dock, simply move the mouse pointer onto the Dock and click on its icon. Notice that the app icon slightly bounces as the application opens before the main app opens. Move an Application To move an item to a new location in the Dock, click and drag to the required position. As you move the item the adjacent applications will move aside to allow you to drop the…

Using Spotlight’s Features 1 To start using Spotlight, press CMD and the space bar or click the magnifying glass in the top menu and the Spotlight Search window appears. In Big Sur, as with macOS Catalina, you can drag this window to wherever you want on the screen; it’s not fixed in position. 2 Start typing your search query into Spotlight and immediately answers appear, with suggestions based on the contents of your computer as well as other sources. This may mean you only have to type a few letters of your search term to find what you’re looking for. 3 Spotlight can do instant unit conversions for you. For example, if you want to convert from imperial to metric weights (or vice versa) you just type in the number and a type…

1 Navigation Controls: These two arrow control buttons enable you to move back and forth between current and previously viewed web pages. 2 Toolbar Buttons: These buttons give you access to various Safari features. You can add or remove buttons by right-clicking or CTRL-clicking on the toolbar and selecting Customise Toolbar. 3 URL Bar: Enter the website address of your choice or a search term that you wish to look up into this bar, then tap the Return key. 4 Reload Page: Sometimes, if a web page fails to load properly, you can fix the problem by clicking on this button and reloading. 5 Share Button: Click on this button to see your options for sharing the page you’re viewing using email or social media networks, including adding the page…

1 When you’re using the Music app, the top bar gives you pull-down menus offering controls and options. It’s worthwhile familiarising yourself with them. 2 The Search field: Completion suggestions are offered as you type, and results can be limited to Apple Music, or your on-Mac library, as you wish. Results include artists, songs, albums and more. 3 The controls: These are, in turn, Shuffle Tracks, Previous track, Play/Pause, Next track, Repeat Play. 4 When you’re playing music, the album art, artist and title are shown here. Click on the album art to switch to the mini player, which shows the album art and controls only and takes up much less space on the screen. The line under the track name lets you scrub through the song. 5 The volume slider: Click and drag the…

Managing and Maintaining Contacts 1 This guide shows you to how to add new contacts to your Contacts address book, edit existing ones and share a completed contact card with other people. To create a new contact card, click on the plus button in the bottom left of the current card. Select New Contact from the window that pops up and you’re given a blank card to fill in. 2 To add details, click on the field and then type in the information. After entering a phone number or address, another blank is offered, in case you want to add a second one. Click on the name of the detail (in blue) for a pop-up window that lets you change it. When you’re finished, click Done. To change or add information to…

Setting Up Messages 1 When you first open Messages, you might need to sign in with your Apple ID. If you’re not asked to do so, you’re already signed in. Open Messages and select Preferences from the Messages menu in the top bar. Alternatively, press CMD-comma on your keyboard. Either way, the Preferences window appears. 2 Click the iMessage tab and ensure that the email address associated with your Apple ID is enabled. If it isn’t, click the Sign in button and enter your Apple ID and password. You can set more than one email address and phone number if you wish, so messages sent to any of these addresses or numbers are received on your Mac. 3 Once you’re signed in, click back to the General tab and click on the Set…

Finding Places with Maps 1 To find your current location, click the arrow icon left of the search field. The map zooms to your current whereabouts. To search for a specific location, type the address, postcode or zip code or road name into the search field. Possible matches are shown as you type. 2 You can search for a business by entering the business name or type, for example ‘Fast Food’, into the search field. Pins appear on the map indicating all matching businesses in the area. To get more information, click on a pin, then on any relevant information that accompanies it. 3 To change the view, click the map icon at the top of the pane. The options are: Map, which displays a simple graphical map; Public Transport, which shows public…

The Touch Bar Explained 1 App-specific: What the Touch Bar shows depends on the app you’re currently using. Here it’s used with a video app but it can be configured for other software too. 2 The Touch Bar: The Touch Bar runs along the top of the keyboard, where the function keys used to be. What it displays depends on what app you’re using. 3 Regular Buttons: As you can see, regular buttons like the Escape key and media controls can be replicated on the Touch Bar and placed where their function keys were. 4 App-related Buttons: Because the OLED Touch Bar is in itself a mini screen, it can also display buttons that are specific to the app that you’re currently using. 5 Slider Bar: The versatility of the Touch Bar means you can use it as…

Terminal Velocity Before we begin to look at some Terminal commands it’s worth a quick look at what exactly the Terminal is. The macOS Terminal or Terminal Emulator to be exact, is a shell that enables you to gain text-based access to the operating system. Since macOS is a UNIX-based operating system, the Terminal will open a command-line interface where you can enter UNIX commands, create automated scripts and much more. It can be daunting to those new to a command line and within it you could potentially crash the entire system but with care you can also unlock a whole new world of control beyond the eye-catching graphics of the desktop. 1 To find the Terminal app, open LaunchPad and look to the Other icon – which is a group…

1 Get used to using Spotlight for better searching. Just press the Command + Spacebar to bring up the Spotlight search box and look for anything from files and folder to how many centimetres it is to Pluto and back. 2 You can quickly switch between open apps by pressing Command + Tab, then keeping hold of Command and tapping the Tab key to cycle through the currently available apps. 3 Hot Corners are the physical corners of the desktop, that can be customised to perform certain tasks when your mouse hovers over them. Go to System Preferences > Mission Control > Hot Corners to set them up. 4 To quickly hide a window on the desktop press the Command + H keys. You can easily get it back by…

1 Your first step is to choose your territory, that is, where you live and will be using your Mac. You can scroll the list of countries up and down to find your own, or start to type it to get there quicker. Click your country to highlight your choice, then click Continue. 2 Now select your language and input source. The default ones for your chosen territory are offered, but if you want to change them, click Customise Settings and set the language your Mac uses and the keyboard layout to suit your needs. 3 Now choose your Wi-Fi network. Scroll up and down the list until you find your router’s SSID (service set identifier) and click on it. Enter the password in the field provided and move on.…

The Apple Menu 1 The Apple menu is found in the top left corner of the desktop. To open it, click on the Apple icon once, then choose an option. It’s always there, whatever you’re doing on your Mac. 2 Choose About This Mac for a window showing you technical information about your computer. Tabs at the top of this window let you delve further, looking at its Display, Storage and more; and you can get a full System Report by clicking a button too. 3 The System Preferences option opens the Mac’s System Preferences, which we discuss later in this book. 4 This option opens the App Store. If updates are available for your Mac or any of its apps, this is noted here too. 5 Hover your pointer…

While this may not seem to make to much sense, it’s really quite a clever move on the part of Apple. All you need to do to view any notifications is to click on the Date and Time in the top-right of the desktop. If there are any, then they’ll appear at the top of the slide-in area that appears from the right-side of the screen. Notifications are grouped together depending on the app they’re coming from. For example, the News app will display notifications based on what news channels you’ve decided to have alert you. If you click on a notification in the group, the rest expand so you can see all the available notifications of that group. And clicking on a notification, whether it’s from the Messages app,…

Setting Up Your iCloud Email 1 If you set up your Apple ID during your Mac’s initial setup, or if you signed in with an existing Apple ID, your iCloud email account is already in place. But if not, or if you want to add another iCloud email account to your Mail client, follow these instructions. 2 Open the Mail application from the Dock and then under the Mail drop-down menu found in the left of the menu bar, click on the Add Account… link. From the pop-up menu that appears, select the iCloud link and then click on the Continue button. 3 Now enter the Apple ID for the iCloud email account you want to add to your Mail app, and then the password. When you have confirmed your details you can…

1 This is the sidebar, which lets you select mailboxes, see emails from VIP senders or those which you’ve flagged, and more. You can resize and even close this sidebar by clicking and dragging the divider between this and your emails list. 2 The list of emails contained in the currently selected mailbox, in this case, All Mailboxes. The number of emails in the box, and the number of unread emails, are shown. You can resize this column by clicking and dragging its left or right edge. 3 Click this circular icon to toggle between showing all emails and only unread emails. 4 This button downloads new emails. You can set your Mail app to check automatically but this button does so manually. 5 When you want to write a new email from scratch, click…

1 When you first open the News app, you see a sidebar and a main window. The sidebar’s Today option is selected, giving you a range of the day’s top stories. Click on a story to open it and read it in full. 2 When you open a news story, if it has a video it can be watched within the News app. In the File menu, there’s an option to open the story in Safari. This takes you to the web page from which the story was drawn. 3 The Spotlight option gives you a selection of features chosen by Apple’s editors. If you find a story you particularly like or dislike, choose the Suggest More or Fewer Stories Like this in the File menu to improve future suggestions. 4 In the sidebar…

Changing the View 1 There are several ways to view your calendars and switching between these viewing options is simple. To move between Day, Week, Month and Year views, you use the corresponding buttons that appear in the top bar of the Calendar application. 2 The Year view shows you a complete year in a single window. Clicking on the title bar for any month takes you to the Month view for that month. Double-click on a specific day in either Year, Week or Month view to open that day’s page in the Calendar app. 3 Click the Calendars button (top left) to open and close the sidebar, as shown here. This sidebar is visible regardless of whether you’re in Day, Week, Month or Year view and lets you mute or reveal individual…

Setting Up Books 1 Launch the Books app and click on Get Started. You’re asked to sign in using your Apple ID. If you need to sign in with another account at a later date, use the Sign In/Out option in the Store drop-down menu in the top bar. 2 If you’re already a Books user on your iPad or iPhone, you can access your books by clicking the All Books option at the top of the left-hand sidebar. From this link, you’re taken to your complete Books library located on iCloud. 3 Previous macOS users will note that the interface of the Books app has changed slightly. For one, there’s no longer the iCloud icon in the upper-right of the screen to begin downloading a book. Books now operates much the same…

Creating, Editing and Searching Notes 1 To create a new note, first of all, click on the pen-and-paper symbol found in the toolbar at the top of the Notes window. A new blank note appears. Start typing your note. The first line of a new note is used as its title in the notes list, so bear this in mind. 2 Your notes are listed in the left-hand pane. Click on a note to open it. To change the font or use bold, underline or italicise, select the text and right-click or CTRL-click for a menu; these options are found under Font. To attach an image, simply drag it onto the note. 3 To search notes, use the search icon (the magnifying glass) in the top right. Searches cover all your notes, not…

1 To use Split View mode, first open an app you want to use as a split-screen app. Here we’ve chosen Safari but any app that’s compatible will do. Just open the app window; there’s no need to open it as a full screen. 2 Click on the window’s top bar and drag it upwards, onto the menu bar. A strip appears, offering the current desktop image and a receptacle for the app you’re dragging. Drop the window onto the plus sign to make it a full screen app. 3 Go back to the desktop and open the second app you wish to use as a full-screen app in Split View mode. Here we’re using Apple’s own Pages word processor app, though once again, you can use almost any app on your Mac.…

A afconvert – Used to convert audio files. afinfo – Can display information of an audio file. afplay – Can play an audio file. alias – Used to create alias commands. For example, the clear command can be aliased to CLS. awk – Used to find and replace text within a file or files. B basename – Can be used to convert a full pathname to a single filename bash – A different type of Shell, the Bourne-Again SHell. bg – Send a process to the background. break – Used to exit from a For, While, Until or Select command loop within a script. bzip2 – A compression tool to compress or decompress files and folders. C caffeinate – Used to prevent the system from going into Sleep mode. cal –…

1 On your Mac, open the document you wish to import a photo into, or start a new one. Right-click where you want it to appear, select Import from iPhone or iPad, then Take Photo on whichever device you’re using. Devices only appear here if they’re on the same Apple ID as your Mac. 2 Switch to the device you chose to take the photo from. The Camera app should already be open, so take a photo. You get fewer options in the Camera app than usual. When you’ve taken your snap, you can discard it or use it; make your choice from the links at the bottom of the screen. 3 The photo instantly appears on your Mac, in the application you chose to import it to. You can edit and use…

Storing Your Documents in iCloud 1 Click on your desktop to open Finder, then open iCloud Drive from the Go menu. You may need to log into iCloud using your Apple ID. You’ll see a Finder window showing the contents of your iCloud drive folder, with folders for some apps that store output in iCloud. 2 To save files of any type into your iCloud Drive folder, simply drag them from their current location (in this screenshot, that’s the desktop) and drop them in the open iCloud window. They are now stored remotely and accessible from any connected Apple device. 3 You can organise your iCloud folder like any other folder, including creating new folders within it. To move files into a new folder in your iCloud Drive, just drag and drop them…

Into the 4th Dimension 1 Connect an external hard drive, via USB, FireWire or Thunderbolt, to your Mac. It should be at least the size of your Mac’s hard drive. The larger the drive, the further back in time you will be able to store backups. Now open System Preferences and click on Time Machine in the bottom row. 2 Click the Select Disk… button and you will be presented with a window listing your connected drives. Select the drive on which you would like to store your backups. If your external drive isn’t already formatted as ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’, Time Machine invites you to erase and reformat it. 3 If you choose to reformat your disk, all data currently on the drive is wiped. You might get a pop-up asking if…

Why did you opt to purchase a Mac? There may well be many reasons but often chief among them is quality. Macs are the most robust and cleverly designed computers ever manufactured. Their complexity doesn’t stop at their aesthetic design but also includes the millions of lines of code that come together to bring you the stable and powerful operating system that is Big Sur. However, no computer is one hundred percent perfect. No matter how well designed, computers contain parts that will undoubtedly break and code that can become confused and freeze mid-way through your work. It’s a pain but when you consider the early days of computing, where knocking the desk may have sent the 80s computer into a confused frenzy of ones and zeros, the modern Mac…

1 Command Centre – The Command Centre is where you can access Bluetooth, Wi-Fi settings, display brightness, volume, keyboard brightness, Screen Mirroring and much more. 2 Apple Menu – From the Apple menu you can log out, shut down, restart or put the computer into sleep mode, get comprehensive information on the computer’s hardware and software, access the System and Dock preferences and open items you’ve recently closed. 3 Desktop Wallpaper – Why have a plain background when you can spruce it up with your favourite photo? If you’re bored with the same one day after day, set it to change regularly. You can even use your own photos as wallpaper. 4 Folder Icons – In macOS, folders work just like their real-world counterparts. You can use them to store files, data and other…

1 Window Control Options: Use the gumdrops to close or minimise the window or open it in full-screen mode. We’ll cover this on the next page. 2 Navigation Controls: The chevron buttons found under the gumdrops in the top left corner of the window take you forwards or back through your navigation history. 3 View Options: These four buttons let you set-up how you view the files and folders in the Finder window; whether as icons, a list, in columns or as a cover flow which gives you a much larger visual preview. 4 Item Arrangement List: Click on the button shown here to order the contents of the window; according to date, alphabetically and more. 5 Share Button: The Share button is found in many places throughout macOS. Here you can highlight a file…

As with the Notifications, you can access the new Big Sur widgets by clicking on the date/time in the top-right of the desktop. These are simple affairs at present but in time will become more intricate as Big Sur matures and more developers come on board to include widget styles in their apps. The primary design of widgets is to provide quick and easy access to relevant information, images, reminders or some form of control. They’re handy elements to the OS but at present they can’t be pinned permanently to the desktop – although that may not even be possible in the future, if anyone reading this can recall the instant dislike to pinned widgets in Microsoft’s Windows Vista. Arranging Your Widgets 1 Every aspect of controlling your widgets comes from…

The Mac App Store The Apple Mac Store is an impressive market place of apps, that have been registered and cleared with Apple to run on your Mac without any hint of anything unwarranted – such as malware. But it doesn’t have everything on offer. There are times when you may need to go outside the Mac App Store in order to get hold of a vital app, and this is where the confusion often arises. Beyond the Mac App Store you’ll find all manner of different kinds of apps and these are often packaged differently depending on the developer. You can find DMG files with apps inside them, PKG installers and even Zip archives with applications inside. Let’s keep things simple to begin with and start with the Mac…

1 Before you can make use of the Home app, you have to add HomeKit compatible devices. You can only do this from an iOS device, you can’t use your Mac. There’s a list of HomeKit compatible devices online at www.apple.co/2MFjhb3. 2 When you’ve added one or more devices using your iOS device, you can access them through Home on the Mac. Right-click on a device’s window and select Settings and you can change the room they’re assigned to. 3 Click the Automation tab and you can set timers, actions and more. What they do depends on what kit you’ve incorporated into your Home app. Click the + icon to add automations or groups of automations (scenes). 4 For example, you can use the Home app to control and configure speakers that are compatible…

1 Use this button to toggle between regular thumbnails of your photos, as seen here, and square-shaped images that leave little border. 2 This slider increases and decreases the size of your preview images. 3 Use these buttons to view your photos arranged according to the year, month, or day in which they were taken. 4 Click here to see all your photographs in the Photos app, arranged as thumbnails. Double-click on a thumbnail to open a photo. 5 This button opens the information window. You can use it by selecting a preview or opening a photo. The information window gives information on the picture and the camera on which it was taken, it also lets you add names to the people in it. 6 The Share button lets you add the picture to…

1 This is the Reminders app’s front page, showing smart lists as well as the lists you’ve created yourself. A ‘list’ is a group of reminders you’ve set up and can be titled anything you like. 2 This is your search field. Use it to search your reminders, regardless of into which list they’re organised. 3 These are your smart lists. ‘Today’ is all your reminders scheduled for that day, ‘Scheduled’ shows reminders that are scheduled for any day, ‘All’ lists all your reminders and ‘Flagged’ shows reminders you’ve flagged for extra attention or to locate easier. 4 Here, you see the currently selected list or smart list. As ‘All’ is currently selected, this column shows all your reminders arranged in their respective lists. 5 These are your lists. They can be called anything you…

Social Distancing Contact The Coronavirus pandemic has changed the way in which we work and contact each other for generations to come. It’s the single most devastating blow to global civilisation in living memory and there’s a chance it’s going to be with us forever. Thankfully, with our modern levels of technology we can still get access to the things that mean the most to us; our family, our friends and our work. We can do all of this through the power of video communications. Indeed, since the governments of the world announced lockdown measures, video communications has taken on a new cultural significance. Social Isolation The pandemic, in some ways, brought forward the problems of social isolation to more people than ever before. Prior to lockdown, social isolation was…

1 Search Bar: If you know the name of the application you’re looking for, type it here to go straight to it. Suggestions are offered as you type, so click on one to select it. You can search for developers here too. 2 Discover: This is the App Store’s main page, where you can see Apple’s picks of the best and most essential apps for your Mac. 3 Arcade: For a monthly fee, Apple’s new, all-you-can-eat gaming subscription service lets you play as many games as you want, for as long as you want. 5 Work: Here you find the App Store’s productivity apps, such as note taking apps, software for getting things done, apps to organise your life and more. 6 Play: Unsurprisingly, this section is for video games. The number and quality of…

Mission Control 1 To activate Mission Control, swipe upwards with three fingers on a trackpad or tap the F3 key on your keyboard. This is unchanged from previous versions of the Mac’s operating system, unless you’ve modified the gesture settings yourself. 2 Unlike pre-Sierra versions of Mission Control, open windows are presented in a single layer instead of being stacked according to which application produced them. Click on a window to bring its app to the fore. 3 You can open a document or app in full screen from Mission Control simply by dragging its window upwards, onto the strip showing the desktops. You can also create a new desktop space by clicking the plus sign, whether this Spaces bar is open or not. 4 You can still use the Exposé buttons, just like…

Wi-Fi Instant Hotspot 1 Instant Hotspot’s system requirements are stringent. A Mac must be mid-2012 or newer and running Yosemite or later. To find out when your Mac was made, click on the Apple icon in the top left and select About This Mac. An iOS device must be an iPhone 5 or later, iPad (4th gen) or later, an iPod touch (5th gen) or later or any iPad mini. 2 Make sure your Mac and all the devices you want to use with Instant Hotspot are signed into the same iCloud account. On an iPadOS or iOS device, go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud and on a Mac, open System Preferences (under the Apple menu, top left corner or from the Dock) and click on Apple ID…

Setting Up Siri 1 You might have activated Siri during the set up procedure. If not, under the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Click on Siri in the bottom row. If it isn’t already ticked, click on Enable Siri, on the left. If you want Siri in the menu bar, check that box too. 2 You can change the language that Siri understands and also speaks in using the pull-down menu. You can also change the English language voice from a British male to a female voice and a different accent, and set up a keyboard shortcut for Siri if you wish. 3 To launch Siri, click on the icon in the Dock, click on the menu bar icon if you’ve opted for one or press the keyboard shortcut, again if you have…

Finder Shortcuts These shortcuts are available when you’re using Mojave’s Finder features, like windows and folders. Command + [……….. Go to the previous folder Command +] ……….. Go to the next folder Command + ↑………. Navigate up one level Command + ↓………. Navigate down one level Option+ Double click…… Open the selected folder in a new window and close the current window Command + Double click … Open selected folder in a new tab Command + Tab ……… Cycle forward through your opened applications Command + Shift + Tab …. Cycle backward through your opened applications Space ……………. Launch Quick Look Command + A ………. Select all items in Finder Command + Option + A…. Deselect any selected items Command + N ………. Open new Finder window Command+ Shift+ K………