All it shows now is my Dock (which is useful for seeing notification badges) and controls for music, volume, and screen brightness. Lastly, to try and make my Touch Bar somewhat usable, I found that Pock ↗ works best for me. You can add as many tiles as you like, and just as with regular apps they can be dragged around the Dock and removed to your liking. To create these:Įnter the following command to create a spacer tile: $ defaults write persistent-apps -array-add ''Įnter the following command to restart the Dock: $ killall Dock Third, I added some spacer tiles, which are just empty spaces that can be moved around to create sections within the Dock. Either right click on them and then click "Remove from Dock" or simply drag them off of it. It always surprises me to see people with a bunch of default apps in there without bothering to remove them. Second, I removed all apps from it that I never or rarely use. To do this, go to System Preferences → Dock & Menu Bar and check "Automatically hide and show the Dock". This just removes it from the screen entirely until needed, which isn't actually all that often. A big part of that is the Dock.įirst, I have it set to automatically hide and show. This one doesn't necessarily benefit my productivity, but I find that it helps my peace of mind to declutter my screen. To set this up, go to System Preferences → Desktop & Screen Saver → Hot Corners…. I wouldn't even have to think about it-just flick the cursor into the bottom left corner while getting up or walking away and I was set. It's less of a necessity now while working from home, but back when I was working at an open floorplan office it was ideal to quickly lock my MacBook. But, there's one I do find convenient, and that's to set the bottom left corner to "Put Display to Sleep". I'm not a big fan of them, since I find them prone to unintentional activations and they require moving a hand off the home row. Hot corners ↗ associate certain actions with the corners of the screen, which are then activated by moving the cursor into that corner. Now, whenever you open the Mail app, it will open on the space that you're already on.įor this to show up you'll need to have at least two spaces open. The default setting is "None", but you can also assign the app to a specific desktop ("This Desktop") or-what we're looking for here-to "All Desktops". Right click on the Mail app icon in the Dock and go to Options → Assign To. Let's say you have a space for work and a space for personal stuff, and both of them need to have access to the Mail app. When opening these apps, then, there'll be a sudden jump to the space the app is opened on. For some apps this doesn't matter since they allow multiple open windows (such as Finder or Safari), but for others this isn't possible (such as Mail or Messages). Once you're using spaces, you might find that the mapping of one app per space isn't always ideal. Now, you can move smoothly between spaces without relocating your hands, and so far I haven't noticed any conflicts. There, look for the two actions "Move left a space" and "Move right a space" and replace the default shortcuts with Command-Shift-1 and Command-Shift-2, respectively. Go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts, and select "Mission Control" on the left. Sure, you could set up a hot corner for the latter, but then we're back to moving a hand off the home row. The first one requires moving a hand off the keyboard, the second one does as well (and even after following my suggestion below to add additional arrow keys, it's still awkward), and the third one is just plain cumbersome. While functional, none of these are ideal. Open Mission Control and select the desktop in the top of the screen.Press the Control key together with the left or right arrow.Swipe left or right with three or four fingers on a trackpad, or with two fingers on a Magic Mouse.As explained in the macOS User Guide linked above, by default this can be done in one of three ways: To efficiently use spaces, it's important to efficiently switch between them. This lets me set up multiple desktops and give each desktop its own focus. Instead of keeping all this on the same desktop, I use spaces ↗. For example, I have a Safari window with a bunch of personal tabs, another one with work related tabs, and then also some additional apps for work. I tend to have apps and windows open for different projects or modes. Everything in this section uses native functionalities and doesn't require any third-party apps. My laptop of choice is a MacBook, and it runs macOS. Hopefully future me will benefit from that. A big part of this is done by using shortcuts and automations, which not only make me act faster with much less arm movement but also takes away a lot of friction. To try and make the most of it, I enjoy getting to know my tools, with the aim of improving both my comfort and my productivity.
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