macOS Ventura comes with a variety of new features and changes, and one of them may be shocking: System Preferences turns into System Settings. Follow us to see what’s changed, tips and tricks for using the new UI with Mac system settings, feature requests, and more.
A big change in Ventura is the move from System Preferences to System Settings. As the name suggests, this marks the transformation of the default UI from the long-standing tiled icon to one aligned with iOS.
Whether you’re frustrated with the new user interface or love it, it might take some time to get used to the new Mac system settings. I’ve been using it since June and it still catches me off guard every time I open it 😂.
Let’s find out what’s new, tips for getting acclimated, feature requests, and more.
Mac System Settings: Tips and Tricks for macOS Ventura
new design
System Settings in macOS Ventura brings a sidebar-focused design. While System Preferences on macOS Monterey and earlier offered the tiled view by default, you can also customize it by deleting items, changing the order, and switching to a list view.
With system settings, you’re stuck with what you see. The list of settings on the left is ordered much the same as iOS with Apple ID and Family followed by Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Network. But the organization of the elements is not obvious or intuitive apart from the fact that it looks like iOS.
And unfortunately right now you can’t rearrange the settings, change the main window to display alphabetically (there’s a workaround for that below), or delete/sort them by recently used or favorites.
Tips and Tricks for System Settings
- Think/view iPhone/iPad Settings before opening System Settings on Mac to help your brain know what to expect when you open it 😅
- Use of research in system settings (top left) works fine overall, so enjoy
- This is especially handy as some settings were removed when switching from the System Preferences tiled UI to the new list UI
- Use Siri on Mac or Spotlight search to quickly display the specific parameters you are looking for
- To see all your parameters in alphabetical orderopen System Settings > click View in menu bar
- You cannot resize width from system settings, but you can increase height of the window by dragging up or down (or by clicking on the green button + circled zoom)
Room for improvement
Here are some tweaks I’d like to see for system settings:
- Personalization
- Either with the ability to rearrange, use recent/favorite items, or hide items (the latter was available for many years in macOS until Ventura)
- Choice of user interface
- A simple option to select an icon/tile view – and Apple could still keep the iOS-inspired design
- Multilevel view
For more really thoughtful ideas on overhauling system settings, check out Jason’s full article.
Want to see the changes too? You can let Apple know what you think on its product feedback page. And I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Read more 9to5Mac tutorials:
FTC: We use revenue-generating automatic affiliate links. After.
Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:
