Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you
how you can customize the look of your Mac in macOS Ventura.
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So by default macOS Ventura comes with a colorful yellow wallpaper and Menu Bars,
Dock and Windows that look pretty much the same as everybody else's Mac. So here's how your Mac may
look right now. But it can also look like this or this, or this, or even this. All you need to do to
get any of these looks is use some of the settings I'm going to show you. Let's start off here with
the Desktop Wallpaper. You don't have to use this default background or whatever you've been using
up until now. You can go into System Settings and then scroll down the list here on the left and go
to Wallpaper. This is a new name for this set of settings. Previously it was called Desktop
Background. Now you can change your background. You can use one of Apple's. They have many dynamic
desktops which will change colors during the day. You can use the Ventura one. You can use
the Monterey one from last year. But there are also a variety of pictures and illustrations.
So you can choose something like this, for instance. If you see the little cloud icon there
it means that it hasn't been downloaded yet. Just click the little cloud icon and it will download
and then it will switch to it. So you can see how things look very different
with a background like this. This will actually change to different
times of the day in this illustration based on the time day where you are.
You can also choose for it to be not dynamic and just stick with the light image or the dark image.
You could also choose from a variety of light and dark desktops. If you choose one of these,
say this one, you can have it automatically change from light to dark, day and night, or you can
choose the light or the dark one to stay on all the time. You can also choose from a variety of
desktop pictures that Apple has used in the past or you can go with a solid color if you like. You
can even pick any color you want by clicking the Plus button here and then choosing from the Color
Picker over here. At the bottom of the list here you can choose from any photo that is in
your Pictures Folder or a folder you've added here. You can add a folder by clicking there.
You can also add a photo from any album in your Photos Library. So I can easily choose this as my
Desktop background. Then it all looks like that. Notice now the Menu Bar has a white text in it.
If the wallpaper is dark enough the Menu Bar will automatically change to white text instead
of black text. So you can still read it. Note, you can also drag and drop an image right into
here. So I'm going to drag and drop a JPEG image right in there and it will set that as the Desktop
background without me having to move anything anywhere or add anything to these buttons.
Notice the Desktop background colors are adapted by the Menu Bar here at the top and also they are
used to tint the windows. So these windows are slightly tinted from being pure gray to having
a little bit of the green and other colors back here. So if I were to switch to another Desktop
Background, like let's just go back to the default one, you could see the tinting changes to match
that color. If I choose Monterey you could see the tinting changes again. But you can adjust
that in one of two ways. The first is to go to Appearance. Under Appearance you've got Allow
Wallpaper Tinting in windows. So you can turn that Off and the tinting is reduced. So you're still
going to see definite tinting up here, notice how it is tinted a little bit yellow there,
and some of it is also going to tine the windows a bit. So I change the wallpaper to
Monterey you could see how it still affects it even with the wallpaper tinting turned Off.
So another option you've got is under Accessibility.
Go to Display and then you've got the Reduce Transparency setting. Turn that On
and you'll see it actually gets rid of the tinting completely. The Menu Bar is now completely gray
and the windows here are completely opaque. So just to compare here are three images. The one
on the left shows Window Tinting Turned On and Reduce Transparency turned Off. The middle one
has Window Tinting turned Off and keeps Reduce Transparency Off as well. The last one has
Window Tinting On. It's not actually going to do anything because it has Reduced Transparency
turned On here. That kind of overrides it. So you can pick which of the three you like.
Now if you want to go even further than Reduce Transparency you can use Increased Contrast
here in Accessibility, Display. If you turn On Increased Contrast its going to automatically
switch on Reduce Transparency and it will also outline everything with high contrast lines.
So you can see this creates a very different look. I think it is kind of Retro. It kind of looks kind
of like how macOS looked back in the 90's. A lot of people may actually like this. Notice
how even the buttons have shapes outlining them. If you like those shape outlines but
you don't want to go all the way to the Increased Contract, if you turn that off and you can turn on
Show Toolbar Button Shapes. You can see you see a slight outline for these buttons now.
Now another option here is Menu Bar Size. You've got two choices. Default and Large.
So if you find the Menu Bar items here too small for you, you can of course change your
screen resolution. That is probably what you should do if you are finding a lot of things
too small. But if you just want to change the Menu Bar size you could switch to Large. Now
when you do its going to warn you that you have to Logout in order to see the changes. So this
is what it looks like set to Default. Then if I change it to Large, logout and log back in,
this is what is looks like with Large. Now another size you can change is back under Appearance here.
There is Sidebar Icon Size. So you can see the Sidebar here in the Finder. If I change the size
to Large you can see how the icons and the text there increase. I can also choose Small. Notice
how it is affecting multiple apps. Finder is being affected but also here System Settings
is being affected. Another thing you can change here in Appearance is switch from Light Mode to
Dark Mode. So when you do that you'll see the windows take this dark appearance. If you're
using a dynamic wallpaper that is also going to switch to the dark version of that wallpaper. So
if you're using your own photo you wouldn't have a different version and it would stay the same.
So using a picture here as my Desktop Background I can see that this is what it looks like with light
and this is what it looks like with dark. You can see the Desktop Background doesn't change
but the windows do. If you set to Auto then it is going to be lighter in the day and dark at night.
Now another change you can make in Accessibility is the Accent Color. So you can leave it at
Multicolor. What Multicolor does is it allows the app to decide what the accent color should be. So
if I go, for instance, to Notes here you can see the Accent color is yellow. If I go to Mail here
you can see the Accent color is blue. But I can set the Accent color to a specific
color. So let's change it to purple. If I change it to purple you can see how the
Accent colors change in various places here in System Settings. But also if I go into Notes
notice how it is purple in Notes now and in Mail it is also purple. So it overrides
the Accent color in each app to make it a specific one throughout the operating system.
Now there is also Highlight Color. Highlight Color is what you get when you highlight some
text. Like I'll highlight the text here in TextEdit. Now if you have the Accent
color set to multicolor then the highlight color will match whatever the app wants. So
an app here like TextEdit is going to use this light blue. You could override that and change
the highlight color to something else. So I can make the highlight color look red,
for instance. So now when I look in TextEdit you can see it is red. So I can set these
separately. I could set the Accent color to orange and the Highlight color to say green.
Now I could see green highlight there in TextEdit. But if I go to Notes I can see the orange accent
color there and I can see the highlight color is green. That matches what I have set here.
Another thing we can change in Appearance is Show Scroll Bars. Now normally scroll bars only appear
when you're scrolling. So I have a lot of text in this window here. I don't see a scroll bar.
But if I use my trackpad or my Apple mouse to scroll I can see it appear and it will remain
there for a few seconds. So I can actually grab it and use it. But if I stop using it it goes away. I
could have it turn on Always and then you could see how the scroll bar appears and stays there,
both the vertical and horizontal scroll bar if the app uses that. So it changes kind of
the look of all of these windows to have that scroll bar always there. Another thing you can
change is the look of the Pointer. The Pointer you see here at as an arrow and it is just black
with a white outline. But you can go here to Accessibility and then Display and there's a
section here for Pointer. You can change the Pointer's size to make it larger like that.
You can also change the outline color to something else. So let's go and choose a different color
for the Pointer. I'll choose a red color there and then you can change the outline color to something
else. Let's do black. So now you can see it right here. Make the Pointer, maybe, a little bigger.
Change the colors and it definitely creates a different feel when you're using your Mac.
Now another thing you can change is how the Dock works. Here I've got it set to appear only when
I move the Pointer to the bottom of the screen. You've got a lot of settings Desktop & Dock to
change the Dock. So I can turn Off automatic hiding so the Dock is always there. I can also
change its position. So I can make it on the right here or make it on the left as well. You
can turn on Magnification to get kind of a retro look. So if you move it up here like that now
look what happens when I move my Pointer over the Dock. You can change the general size but
you can only make it as big as space allows. So I can make this a little bit smaller, like that,
if I want. But I can only go so big because it will overrun the space. But you can get
rid of some of the items in the Dock if you want to have more space to make it larger.
Now in addition to having automatically Hide or Show the Dock, you can also automatically Hide
and Show the Menu Bar. So the Menu Bar usually is there all the time unless you're using a full
screen app. But you have the option right here to change that. Instead of having it Hide when
it is in Full Screen mode you can have it Hide on Desktop Mode instead. You could see the Menu
Bar is gone. But if you move the Pointer to the top it always appears. So it's simply there. It's
just not visible. It gives you a little more space and maybe a slightly different look not having the
Menu Bar there. You can also have it set to Always Automatically Hide. So now it will automatically
hide both on a regular Desktop like this and in full screen mode. Or you can have it set
to Never Automatically Hide so it will be there in Desktop mode and in full screen mode. Also,
in the Menu Bar you've got the Clock here at the top right. You can find the settings for
the Clock in Control Center. Under that at the bottom you've got Clock and then Clock
Options. Click on that and then you've got some options here. Like for instance whether
or not the date is showing. Like you can have the date Never Shown, Always Shown,
or Only when Space Allows. You could have the Day of the Week shown if you want. You
can switch the Clock entirely to analog like that. It takes up a minimal amount of space.
There are various other options here. Like you can have the blinking time separator there to
always have something going on in that corner. You can even have seconds displayed as well.
Now a bit new feature in macOS Ventura is Stage Manager. Using Stage Manager definitely does give
your Mac a different look. On your Desktop & Dock I'll go into here and turn it On.
You can turn it On in Control Center as well. Now I can see Stage Manager in action putting
these two windows over here to the side and I can easily switch them if I want. But you have
Customization options. One of those is to turn Off recent applications which is a list here on
the left. So if you'd rather not see that you can turn it Off. It is still there if you move
the Pointer over to the left they will pop-out. You just use regular app switching techniques to
switch between them never using that list. Also another thing you can do is you can put these
over on the right. The only way to do that currently is to go up to the Dock's setting
and position the Dock on the left side of the screen. When you do that the Dock's on the left,
you can see it pop-out there when I move my Pointer over. You can see Stage Manager
moves the App Set over to the right side. So you can turn off Automatic Dock Hide and
you've got your Dock items here on the left and Stage Manager items here on the right.
So that's a look at some of the ways you can customize your Mac
in macOS Ventura. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.