How to Customize Your Mac Desktop: Tips and Tricks

Change the background

You can quickly change the background on your Mac by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing Change Desktop Background or selecting the Desktop & Screen Saver option in System Preferences. You can pick your image by dragging it into the display screen rectangle on the top left. If you want your desktop to change automatically, select a folder to draw photos from and check “Change picture” while also choosing a frequency. It’s recommended that you use “Random order.”

You can also enlarge the background thumbnail photos by hovering the mouse cursor over them and using the pinch-enlarging gesture on your trackpad. You can mimic Apple’s screen savers and set them as your desktop background by clicking an empty spot on the desktop, then tapping Shift + Cmd + G, pasting “/Library/Screen Savers/Default Collections” in the dialog box that appears and selecting the one you like. Right-click it, and select Set Desktop Picture.

You can find excellent images to use for changing your desktop background and screen savers on your Mac. Check out our article on “How to Find Wallpaper and Screen Saver Photos on Mac.”

Customize Interface

Apple only allows a modest set of visual customization options for your Mac’s interface. You can find the available options by opening System Preferences and clicking the General tab. From there, you can set buttons, menus and windows in blue or graphite, markers in one of the preset colors, or sidebar icons in Finder as small, medium, or large size.

You can also turn on dark mode, which makes the dock and top menu bar and dropdowns black. You can set the top menu bar to automatically hide and reappear when hovered over as well. By clicking the Accessibility icon and selecting Display, you can also soften some of the “flat” look in recent editions of macOS.

Customize Icons and Folders

You can adjust the size and spacing of desktop icons by right-clicking on an empty spot and selecting Show View Options. You can also customize the four different view modes within a Finder window using the same method. You can change the background to a color or your choice with Icon display only.

Each folder can have its unique appearance, or you can configure one folder to your liking, then click the “Use as Defaults” button at the bottom of the window to apply the design to all future Finder windows.

Upload Your Own Icons

You can customize your Mac’s file or folder icons by using your photos. First, find a substitute icon. You can find many options online or use your photo. If you use an icon, view the highest resolution version, copy it, and then paste it into the Icon Inspector window. You cannot use this method on files or folder aliases.

You can also view the inspection window to select a default icon and hit the backspace or delete key to revert to the original icon. Check out “Change Mac App Icons” for more details.

Custom Third-Party Apps

Despite macOS’s built-in personalization options, you can’t theme your Safari browser like you can with Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. To get more control over personalization options, try using Flavors 2 (from £3.73/$5) or cDock (free). These third-party apps can adjust the Dock’s appearance by applying different looks to it, including “Yosemite 3D,” which restores the old 3D dock that was abandoned during the Yosemite move. You can also add colored icons to the Finder sidebar with cDock. Keep in mind that these apps hack system files, although they are reported to work correctly in most cases.