Mac Interface Basics

The Menu Bar: Application Menus

On the Mac, the Menu Bar always appears at the top of the screen. Even if it’s hidden you can always mouse to the top of the screen to reveal it.

On the left side of the Menu Bar is the Apple menu (). Next is the Application menu, which carries the name of the currently active application, followed by the rest of that application’s menus. The first are usually File and Edit; the last, Window and Help.

Application menus change dynamically depending on the current application, so you can always draw your gaze up to the Menu Bar to find out which application you’re in, even if other apps’ inactive windows are the only ones visible.

When working with me, I may instruct you to go to a particular menu. If I don’t provide any context for the menu’s location, then I’m probably referring to something on the Menu Bar.

For example, if we’re in the Finder and I want you to go to your Home folder, I may instruct you to choose Home from the Go menu. Maybe you never knew such a menu existed, but it’s there and you can go there to find Home.

The Menu Bar: Status Menus

On the right side of the Menu Bar is Notification Center, followed by Spotlight, maybe Siri, and then any number of other status menus and Menu Bar applications. [Update: As of 2021, Notification Center is now merged into the Date & Time.]

These menus offer valuable information about your Mac and/or the status of various tools, applications, and hardware components, such as Wi-Fi, battery charge, and the date and time. You can click these status menus for more information and to act on the applications they represent.

For example, if you need to turn Wi-Fi off and back on to reset your network connection, you would click the Wi-Fi menu and choose Turn Wi-Fi Off, then click again and Turn Wi-Fi On.

The Dock: Feedback

The bar with mostly application icons on the bottom of the screen—or the left or right if you prefer—is called the Dock. The first icon is always the Finder. At the opposite end is the Trash. In between may be any assortment of applications, one or two dividers, and any assortment of other items (files and folders).

In its default state, the Dock provides some consistent feedback:

• As you mouse over each icon, the Dock shows the name of the item
• When an application is opening, it bounces gently
• When an application wants your attention, it bounches naggingly
• Open applications have a dot next to their icon; the dot contrasts with the Dock’s background color
• You can right-click (secondary-click or Control+click) on an application icon for a menu with various commands, including access to current windows, sometimes recent documents in the app, and the ability to hide or quit the app
• You can right-click on a folder for commands relating to the display of the folder and its contents
• You can also right-click on the Dock’s divider for special Dock view commands, drag the divider to resize the Dock, or hold Shift and drag the divider to move the Dock to a different edge of the screen

The Dock: Organization

You can add and remove icons from the Dock to your heart’s content, except for the Finder and the Trash. Is there an application you want in the Dock for quick access? Just drag it in on the application side and the Dock will happily make a space for the icon.

Got an app in the Dock that you never use. Just drag it out and, poof!, it will disappear. Don’t worry, it’s still in your Applications folder.

On the Trash side, you can place files and folders and interact with their contents one item at a time. Usually, you’ll find your Downloads folder there. Downloads remains a folder in your Home folder, but placing a folder in the Dock gives you quick access to its contents, such as when you download something from the Internet.

The Finder: A Place to Work

The third always-on interface element is the Finder. This application is constantly running in the background, ready to give you a place to find and organize your files, access applications, and more.

The Finder is also inherently linked to the Desktop, which itself is just a full-screen window where you’ve organized some items in icon view. Clicking the Desktop is one way to switch to the Finder.

I encourage clients to mirror their digital desktop experience to their physical. Is your desk cluttered in disarray or clean and organized? Can you make your Mac the same?

Best practices include making Desktop icons as big as possible (in View Options) and only keeping on the Desktop the items you’re actively working on or sharing.

The Finder: How to Get Organized

My colleagues Katherine Korlacki and Dana Arkinzadeh, professional organizers in the Bay Area who publish Notes From the Junk Drawer, interviewed me about what to do with old cellphones.

In their respective businesses, they mostly help people organize and declutter in the physical and are excellent at creating systems that deliver ease, order, and joy in home and work spaces.

What Katherine and Dana do for paper files, you can do for digital using the Finder. Just hop over to the File menu and make a Finder window. Explore your documents and files at Home and in iCloud Drive, and create new folders that categorize them.

I recommend thinking about the primary domains of your life and developing an organizational system based on them. You can create folders first and drag files into them (File > New Folder), or you can select files first and create folders that contain them (File > New Folder with Selection).