This video is brought to you by Brilliant! I just released my How I set up a new Mac
video, and I realized that I've been meaning to declutter the Mac experience and make my
Mac minimal. So today, I am going to do precisely that. I will turn my Mac from this - to - this.
There are a few key ideas behind this task: If a default app can serve the purpose and
it looks aesthetically pleasing, I shall avoid installing 3-rd party solutions
Any unused apps, tools, or buttons have to go.
No redundant useless, space-taking, distraction-creating alternatives.
So, starting with the Dock and the Launchpad. Even though I cleaned up my Launchpad in my
setup video earlier, it could've been better. Before I re-organize everything, I will first
clean the dock even further. I want to leave 3 to 5 apps that I use all the time. The most
important ones. All other apps shall be launched via the Launchpad or, most often through the
Spotlight. So in my case, I am leaving the Finder app, a browser of choice, Notion as
the app that I use to run my business, and Things as my task manager and messages.
Things, by the way, is a great to-do and note-taking app that, in a subscription world, shines
in as a one-time software investment. It matches the minimal vibes and helps me gather all
my goals quickly. So, back to the dock, I am removing the dock
app suggestions because I don't need them, and I am even removing the downloads folder
since every time I open the Finder, I see my Downloads folder by default. That's what
I meant earlier when I mentioned eliminating redundant alternatives. I might leave a slight
magnification animation for fun, but that's all. Oh, and I am also bringing the dock back
to its center bottom position because it just looks so clean and minimal at this point.
If you decide to follow me in this clean-up journey, the recipe here is straightforward.
If an app hasn't been used for the last three months and you are relatively sure that you
won't find a use for it in the next two to three months, it has to go. Also, if you don't
like an app, even just for aesthetic purposes, it has to go knowing that there are better
alternatives. Don't throw away corporate apps you are bound to use for work...OK?!?
Everything that used to live in the dock and is often used stays in the Launchpad. Absolutely
everything else goes into a MISC folder. Remember, plenty of apps already run in the background
and launch upon the computer startup, so they don't need to exist and their icons to be
visible. Also, notice that when I open the Launchpad, the dock is on top of it. There
is no need for an app to be present in the Launchpad and the dock simultaneously. The
cherry on top of this entire process would be to organize the apps alphabetically. Unfortunately,
there's no intuitive way to sort them like this, but fortunately, at this point, there
is a handful, so it takes little to no time. Now that is what I call perfection. REMEMBER
- NEVER OPEN THE MISC folder. It will be like opening Monica's hidden closet from Friends.
Moving on to the Finder. Everything has to be in list view. Forget
the big icons. List views are easier to navigate, take up less space, and provide additional
information such as dates, sizes, etc. I prefer to have the list view alongside the preview
on the right because I deal with many images and video files. The preview on the right
helps me hit the space bar less as I can glance at a file quickly.
The sidebar is something to clean up too. Unchecking and hiding unused folders like
Recents, Pictures, and Music is one place to go. Hiding the labels or tags is something
that I don't find a use for either. I am also hiding all network items and just leaving
the basic folders that I use almost all the time. I often use a few custom folders that
I decided to move to the toolbar on top. I created custom icons for them. Before placing
them, cleaning the toolbar was also something I had to do. I removed buttons that I don't
use daily or have access to from the finder menu - like choosing my view. As much as I
wanted to hide the status bar and path bar on the bottom, though, I couldn't. Navigating
quickly in the hierarchy or glancing at several files selected or a file size is essential.
Applying the same principles to Safari, the fog and noise slowly fade away. In the toolbar,
I removed pretty much all icons. For example, I don't need to have the plus sign to open
a new tab because I use CMD+T for that. I don't need to see an icon for the sidebar
or anything else for that matter. All I care about is the address bar and the back and
forth icons: no favorites bar, no status bar. I've also cleaned up all my favorites, and
from the Safari home screen, I've chosen to unsee everything besides my updated favorites.
That gives me the freedom to plaster a nice clean image as a background as well.
Talking about the background, placing a nice wallpaper with some white space is the last
and most satisfying thing you can do. I know you might be unpatented, though, so now might
also be a perfect moment to put something minimal-looking as wallpaper. I am thrilled
to use some of my own images from my personal 8k wallpaper pack that I called Up Close.
Since I have both light and dark versions, I am covered no matter the OS mode.
What we did with Finder and Safari can now be applied to any other app or tool that you
use. De-clutter and remove items and tools that you don't use. The entire process may
seem a bit repetitive, but it quickly becomes very satisfying, bringing a lot of satisfaction (hide
sidebar in iMessage while talking). I achieved a similar level of joy while taking
the Logic Course by Brilliant, the online interactive STEM-learning platform. I see
a lot of similarities between minimalism and logic because, in both, you sometimes have
to use the process of elimination. For example, while playing the Rational Detective & knowing
that androids always lie and humans always tell the truth, the cute character Marv has
to figure out who's human and who's an android by asking a single question. Only the question
"Are you both humans?" will give different answers depending on the speakers' identities
and therefore be the logical question. Besides stretching my analytic muscles with truth-tellers,
liars, logical robots like Marv, and more in the enjoyable course of Logic, Brilliant
offers an ever-growing catalog of math, science, and computer science courses that help people
learn concepts by working through them in visual, hands-on ways. To get started for
free, visit brilliant.org/thisise or click on the first link in the description below,
and the first 200 people will get 20% off Brilliant's annual premium subscription.
On my Desktop, I keep only files that I am using daily. In many cases, at the end of
each day, I organize all files that I want to keep and everything else I put in the recycle
bin. If I keep something on the Desktop, I might want to access it from my iPad or iPhone
later since the Desktop is synced via iCloud. I hide the desktop hard drives or attached
media from the Finder preferences because it already exists on the Finder's sidebar.
No need to be visible on the Desktop as well. Also, I 100% use stacks. Stacks sorts all
desktop files in their respective type and instantly makes any Desktop look organized.
Next up is INBOX ZERO - or email. I come from a history of over 11 email inboxes and so
many headaches and pressure that it makes my head hurt thinking about it. What I will
show you can be achieved with any app, with some being a lot easier, though. I use an
app called Hey. It's a full service, actually. Some of the email boxes I closed, others I
simply forgot to use, and those I care about I forwarded to my Hey email. Besides being
a concise and minimal-looking service to use, Hey also helps me eliminate distractions.
Unlike any other email service, out of the box, Hey comes with all notifications OFF.
That should speak a lot. On top of that, Hey has a compelling screening
feature that doesn't allow any email to arrive in my IMBOX without first going through a
screening process. The inbox is called IMBOX, BTW, because it's considered sacred and iMportant.
Thanks to my own efforts and the help of Hey, I always go to bed with Inbox zero. Achieving
the same results is possible with other email clients, but it takes time and patience to
unsubscribe and slowly but surely eliminate all nasty, useless emails. A quick action
you can take is to create folders and rules that organize regular emails in their respective
place. BTW, one email that you might subscribe to is my newsletter because it's twice a month,
and it's fun to read :) Shameless plug. Next up, you can consider using a cloud service
like iCloud to store all your files instead of keeping them on the Mac. Using such a service
has many advantages, the main one being the freedom of moving from one Mac to another
without the risk of losing anything. I've used nothing but iCloud to store all my personal
and work-related files for over five years. If got forbid my Mac crashes today or disappears,
I can move to another Mac in a matter of minutes, knowing that all I care about will be synced
automatically. I have a dedicated iCloud video explaining the process, so feel free to check
it out in the description below. To achieve the desired digital minimalism,
you can take another step and turn off all notifications on the Mac. I know this might
be hard, but it's actually not and makes perfect sense. For many of us, notifications are already
pinging our phones, so there's really no need to be stressed out on the computer as well.
I keep all notifications turned off as far as sounds, and for others, I might just leave
the red bubble to keep me informed. For example, I've kept notifications for Hey because, as
I mentioned, all emails are with notifications OFF by default, except for those that come
from 2 or 3 people, which I considered essential and deliberately allowed. I might get sync
updates from apps like my Synology NAS drive, but this is informative. Remember, no sounds.
The Mac menu bar is also something that I prefer to keep tidy. After this clean MacBook
set up and in my process of decluttering the Mac, the menu bar already looks very clean
and tidy, but there are still things that can be optimized. For example, I don't need
to see the Wi-Fi icon because I can see its status with the last two macOS versions by
clicking on the settings icon. If you have an icon that you'd like to hide but it won't
by default, a great tool that you've probably heard of is called Bartender. The Bartender
app organizes and hides all icons in a neat drop-down way while customizing them. For
example, the default Apple Music play icon show up when I play something, and I can't
seem to find a way to turn it off. With Bartender, I can just drag it into a hidden section,
and it appears no longer. The same goes for the Spotlight icon that I never click on since
I use CMD+space to launch it. It also goes in the hidden section of Bartender. Also,
with Bartender, I prefer to use the little arrow icon to expand the hidden apps, making
the menu bar look very clean. If you are not used to using Spotlight, learn
the magical combo of command+space and start utilizing it for launching apps or doing quick
calculations. It can, of course, do a lot more than that, but even those two steps will
increase your productivity dramatically. Check out my step-by-step setup Mac guide
here, and if you haven't already, subscribe to the channel.
It's been an absolute pleasure, This is E
Over and out.