(upbeat electronic keyboard music)
- Hey everybody.
David and David here from PayetteForward.com
and UpPhone.com,
and in this video we're going to tell you about
seven Mac settings you should turn off immediately.
Before we dive in,
we just wanna say that we're trying to grow.
A couple of ways you can help us out
are by subscribing to this channel
and sharing this video with your friends.
So, let's talk about Mac settings that you need to turn off.
- So on your Mac,
we're going to go up to the Apple menu
in the upper left-hand corner of the screen,
and just tap System Preferences.
- So the first thing we're gonna turn off
are unnecessary login items that might slow your Mac down.
- These are background programs that run,
and a lot of the times they get installed
when you install new software.
And a lot of them will just slow things down,
because you never use them,
and you might not even know that they're running.
So to do that,
tap Users & Groups in System Preferences,
and then just tap Login Items.
And on my computer I can see that I have six of these.
So Backup and Sync from Google,
I wanna hide that one but I do want it to be there.
aText, Spectacle, both great pieces of software.
But this ZoomOpener,
it's a video chat app,
but I don't use Zoom anymore so what I can do,
is just tap this minus sign here,
and it's gone.
And so now the ZoomOpener is never gonna be running
in the background of my Mac.
I recommend hitting the minus button next to any
of the applications you see in this list
that you don't recognize.
The next time you reboot your Mac,
it might be a little bit faster.
- So our next tip is to disable any unnecessary apps
that are tracking your location wherever you go.
- So let's go back to the main System Preferences window,
and tap Security & Privacy.
Just like the GPS functionality on your iPhone,
uses a lot of battery life.
Same deal with your Mac.
It might not have a GPS chip built in,
but if it's constantly asking
where am I, where am I, where am I?
It's gonna drain your battery faster,
and a lot of apps don't need to know
where you are all the time.
So this is one of those settings,
make sure that you have Privacy selected
over here on the right,
where you have to click the lock to get access.
If you don't have a Mac with Touch ID,
you have to enter your password here,
and this is your Mac password which may or not
be the same as your Apple ID.
I'm just gonna use the Touch ID here.
And I do want to leave Enable Location Services turned on,
because Location Services are great for a lot of apps.
But this KisMac app does not need to know where I am.
And any of these where you see an arrow next to them,
means that it has used your location and also your battery
within the last 24 hours.
So I don't need Siri to know where I am.
I'll leave the Weather app on,
because sometimes I like to check the weather
and it's cool if it knows where I am.
Maps, I don't use Mac maps.
So you get the idea,
just go through this list and uncheck the ones
that don't need to have access
to your location all the time.
- Yep.
The next thing we're gonna do is turn off
those unnecessary system services that are always running
and this can drain your battery life too.
- Yeah, these are the insidious ones.
So you have to go all the way to the bottom of this menu,
and then click Details on the right.
And here we have Location-Based Suggestions,
Time Zone & System Customization.
If you're traveling between time zones a lot,
you might wanna leave this on.
But what I do is,
I just leave this off and then when I go to a new time zone
I check the box,
it changes the time,
then I uncheck the box.
It doesn't need to always be checking
what time zone I'm in.
Significant Locations,
kinda creepy, tracks you everywhere you go.
Location-Based Apple Ads?
No thanks.
Find My Mac is the only one I'm gonna leave on,
because I wanna be able to find my Mac if it gets lost.
And I'll just uncheck HomeKit and Wi-Fi Networking.
Wi-Fi Networking is still gonna work,
HomeKit still gonna work,
except for the location tracking piece.
- So next we're gonna turn off Mac Analytics.
Just like on your iPhone,
Apple gathers data about how you use your iPhone.
And they use that to improve their products.
We still believe that Apple can improve
their own products on their own.
- Yep.
- We're not gonna send them our analytics data,
it can drain your battery.
- So on the left-hand side of this window,
just scroll down until you find Analytics.
Click on that,
and then uncheck Share Mac Analytics
and that will automatically uncheck
Share with App Developers,
and also Share iCloud Analytics.
There you go.
- Yeah!
- We're gonna save some battery life.
So our next setting you actually need to turn this on,
to turn it off.
We're gonna turn on Limit Ad Tracking,
obviously we don't want advertisers to track us
everywhere we go,
collect all that data about us.
We're just gonna turn Limit Ad Tracking on.
- Boom. Turned on.
And then you can also click Reset Advertising Identifier.
Are you sure you want to reset the ident-
As if this is a bad thing? (sarcastically)
Now the ads that you'll see in Apple apps,
and also on the internet,
won't be as targeted to you specifically.
The less data they have on us, the better.
Trust me,
they still have more than enough data on us,
to send us ads even with this turned on.
- Yep.
So our next tip is to turn off unnecessary notifications.
- Notifications are those things that appear
in the upper right-hand corner of your Mac all the time.
They can be kind of annoying,
and they also can drain your battery life a little bit.
So let's go back to the main System Preferences window,
and tap Notifications over here on the right.
Just take a look through this list and ask yourself,
do I really wanna get these pop-up notifications
from this app?
So the Books app,
I don't need notifications from.
Calendar is a yes for me,
because I wanna know if I have an event.
FaceTime is a yes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Go through the list,
if you don't recognize an app,
turn it off.
- Yep.
So our next tip
now that we've turned off unnecessary notifications,
we're gonna turn off unnecessary extensions.
- I'm gonna tap back to the main System Preferences window,
and head to Extensions.
Extensions are little pieces of software
that work with applications that you install on your Mac,
to give them special access and permissions
to the files on your Mac or other services.
But sometimes it's not good to have these turned on,
because little things can crop up, little problems.
So go though here.
Evernote for instance,
I don't need this to have any access to Quick Look,
which is what happens when you click on a file
and you hit the space bar,
it brings it up.
I don't need Evernote to be able to see that,
so I'm just gonna uncheck that.
Skitch, Photos Editing.
I don't need that to be happening.
So just uncheck anything here,
that you don't think needs to have access to the files
and Finder app on your Mac.
- So those are seven Mac settings
that you should turn off immediately.
Now that you've done this,
we recommend rebooting your Mac.
Just to make sure that these settings take effect.
You can just do that by hovering over the Apple,
clicking Restart.
Your Mac will reboot, you'll be all set.
Thank you guys for watching this video.
Give it a thumbs up if you've enjoyed.
Leave us a comment down below,
if you have any other Mac questions,
and don't forget to subscribe to this channel
for more great Apple videos.