Macos Mojave for Dummies

Pro tips for macOS from “Dr. Mac”

Your shiny new iMac or trusty old MacBook both rely on macOS to help you get things done. It helps to have an equally reliable guidebook to steer you through the tasks and steps that make macOS run efficiently.

This fun and friendly guide provides the direction you need to easily navigate macOS. Longtime expert Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus shares his years of experience to help you better understand macOS and make it a timesaving tool in your life. 

• Take a tour of the macOS interface
• Get organized and save time with macOS applications
• Get pro tips on speeding up your Mac
• Back up your data with ease

Covering the fundamentals of the OS and offering insight into the most common functions of macOS, this is indispensable reading for new or inexperienced macOS users.

Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus has been writing the "Dr. Mac" column for the Houston Chronicle for more than 20 years. A regular contributor to a variety of technology publications, he's a proud Mac aficionado who's written or co-written more than 85 how-to books on all things Mac, including multiple Mac operating systems, the iPhone, the iPad, Office for the Mac, and GarageBand.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 3

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: macOS Basics 5

Chapter 1: macOS Mojave 101 (Prerequisites: None) 7

Gnawing to the Core of macOS 8

A Safety Net for the Absolute Beginner (or Any User) 10

Turning the dang thing on 10

What you should see on startup 11

Shutting down properly 14

A few things you should definitely not do with your Mac 15

Point-and-click Boot Camp 17

Not Just a Beatles Movie: Help and the Help Menu 19

Chapter 2: Desktop and Windows and Menus (Oh My!) 23

Touring Finder and Its Desktop 24

Anatomy of a Window 25

Top o’ the window to ya! 28

A scroll new world 29

(Hyper)active windows 31

Dialog Dealie-Boppers 32

Working with Windows 34

Opening and closing windows 34

Resizing windows and window panes 35

Moving windows 36

Shuffling windows 36

Menu Basics 39

The ever-changing menu bar 39

Contextual menus: They’re sooo contextual! 40

Recognizing disabled options 41

Navigating submenus 42

Under the Apple menu tree 43

Using keyboard shortcut commands 44

Chapter 3: What’s Up, Dock? 45

A Quick Introduction to Your Dock 46

The default icons of the dock 46

Trash talkin’ 49

Opening application menus on the dock 51

Reading dock icon body language 53

Opening files from the dock 54

Customizing Your Dock 54

Adding dock icons 54

Removing an icon from the dock 57

Resizing the dock 57

What should you put on your dock? 58

Setting your dock preferences 59

Chapter 4: Delving Deeper into Finder and Its Desktop 65

Introducing Finder and Its Minions: The Desktop and Icons 66

Introducing the desktop 66

Bellying up to the toolbar 68

Figuring out what an icon is 72

Identifying your Finder icons in the wild 72

Aliases Are Awesome! 74

Creating aliases 75

Deleting aliases 76

Hunting down an alias’s parent 76

The View(s) from a Window 76

Moving through folders fast in Column view 76

Perusing in Icon view 79

Listless? Try touring folders in List view 79

Hangin’ in the Gallery (view) 81

What’s next on the (View) menu? 81

Finder on the Menu 83

The actual Finder menu 84

Like a road map: The current folder’s pop-up menu 86

Going places with the Go menu 87

Customizing Finder Windows 89

Adding folders to the sidebar 89

Setting Finder preferences 90

Digging for Icon Data in the Info Window 93

Chapter 5: What’s New in Mojave’s Finder? 97

Cleaning Up Your Desktop Automatically with Stacks 98

Managing your Stacks 100

Quick Actions: Now Playing All Over Mojave 101

Getting the most out of Markup 101

Trimming video without launching an app 104

Do It Quicker with Finder Quick Actions 105

Creating PDFs without launching an app 105

Creating custom Finder Quick Actions 105

Four More Cool Mojave Tricks 106

Shooting screens 106

Dynamic desktop images 109

Recently used apps in the dock 109

Mentions of Gallery view 110

Part 2: How Stuff Works 113

Chapter 6: Having It Your Way 115

Introducing System Preferences 115

Putting a Picture on the Desktop 118

Setting Up a Screen Saver 120

Putting Widgets on the Dashboard 121

Giving Buttons, Menus, and Windows a Makeover 123

Adjusting the Keyboard, Mouse, Trackpad, and Other Hardware 127

Styling Your Sound 135

Chapter 7: Opening and Saving Files 137

A Quick Primer on Finding Files 138

Understanding the macOS Folder Structure 138

Understanding nested folders 139

From the top: The Computer folder 140

Peeking into the Applications folder 141

Visiting the Library folders 141

Let it be: The System folder 142

There’s no place like Home 143

Your personal library card 145

Saving Your Document Before It’s Too Late 146

Stepping through a basic save 148

Save As versus Duplicate: Different names for the same result 154

Open, Sez Me 156

With drag-and-drop 157

With a Quick Look 158

When your Mac can’t open a file 158

With the application of your choice 159

Chapter 8: File and Folder Management Made Easy 163

Organizing Your Stuff in Folders 163

Files versus folders 164

Organizing your stuff with subfolders 164

Creating new folders 166

Navigating with spring-loaded folders 167

Smart folders 168

Shuffling Files and Folders 170

Moving files and folders 171

Selecting multiple icons 172

Playing the icon name game: Renaming icons 173

Renaming multiple icons at once 174

Compressing files 174

Getting rid of icons 174

The Incredible iCloud Drive 175

Chapter 9: Comprehending the macOS Clipboard 177

Introducing the Clipboard 177

Copying Files and Folders 178

Pasting from the Clipboard 180

Mojave’s Universal Clipboard 181

Part 3: Getting Things Done 183

Chapter 10: Four Terrific Timesaving Tools 185

With a Quick Look 186

Share and share alike with the Share menu 188

Slide into Slideshow (full-screen) mode 188

Spotlight on Finding Files and Folders Faster 189

Using the Find command 190

Using the Spotlight menu and its keyboard shortcut 192

Blast Off with Mission Control 193

The Mission Control pane: It’s painless 194

Hot corners are hot stuff! 196

Mission Control’s Spaces from 30,000 feet (an overview) 197

Getting around in space(s) 199

Launchpad: The Place for Applications 200

Chapter 11: Organizing Your Life 203

Keeping Track with Calendar 204

Navigating Calendar views 204

Creating calendars 205

Deleting a calendar 207

Creating and managing events 207

Reminders: Protection Against Forgetting 210

Getting started with Reminders 211

To do or not to do: Setting reminders 212

Everything You Need to Know about Notification Center 213

Use Notes for Making Notes 217

Chapter 12: Are You Siri-ous? 221

What Siri Can Do for You 221

Working with Siri 223

Making Siri Your Own 224

Chapter 13: Maps Are Where It’s At 227

Finding your current location with Maps 227

Finding a person, place, or thing 228

Views, zooms, and pans 230

Maps and Contacts 231

Timesaving map tools: Favorites, Recents, and Contacts 232

Smart map tricks 234

Chapter 14: Four New (iOS) Apps in Mojave 239

Taking Stock of the Market with Stocks 240

Adding and deleting stocks, funds, and indexes 241

Details, details, details 242

Charting a course 242

Read All About It in News 244

What are your interests? 244

How News works 245

Managing your news 245

Recording Memos with Voice Memos 246

Recording a voice memo 246

Listening to a voice memo 248

Naming a voice memo 248

Trimming a voice memo 249

Controlling Lights, Locks, and More with Home 250

Part 4: Getting Along with Others 251

Chapter 15: (Inter)Networking 253

Getting Connected to the Internet 254

Your Internet service provider and you 254

Plugging in your Internet-connection settings 255

Browsing the Web with Safari 257

Owning your toolbar 258

Using the Safari sidebar 261

Searching with Google 265

Protect Yourself from Malice (and Ads) 267

Checking out Help Center 267

Audio and Video Calls with FaceTime 267

Chapter 16: Dealing with People 271

Collecting Your Contacts 271

Adding contacts 272

Importing contacts from other programs 274

Creating a basic group 275

Setting up a smart group (based on contact criteria) 276

Deleting a group or smart group 277

The view is lovely 277

Sync + Contacts = your contacts everywhere 278

Chapter 17: Communicating with Mail and Messages 281

Sending and Receiving Email with Mail 281

Setting up Mail 282

A quick overview of the toolbar 282

Composing a new message 285

Sending email from the Contacts app 287

Checking your mail 289

Dealing with spam 289

Mailboxes smart and plain 290

Changing your preferences 293

Sign here, please 294

Mail rules rule 295

Take a (Quick) look and (Slide) show me some photos 297

Markup and Mail Drop 298

Communicating with Messages 300

Chit-chatting with Messages 301

Chapter 18: Sharing Your Mac and Liking It 303

Introducing Networks and File Sharing 304

Portrait of home office networking 305

Three ways to build a network 306

Setting Up File Sharing 309

Access and Permissions: Who Can Do What 311

Users and groups and guests 311

Creating users 312

macOS knows best: Folders shared by default 319

Sharing a folder or disk by setting permissions 320

Useful settings for permissions 324

Unsharing a folder 327

Connecting to a Shared Disk or Folder on a Remote Mac 327

Changing Your Password 331

Changing your account password on your Mac 331

Changing the password of any account but your own on your Mac 332

Changing the password for your account on someone else’s Mac 333

More Types of Sharing 334

Sharing a screen 334

Sharing the Internet 335

And yet more ways to share 336

Part 5: Getting Creative 337

Chapter 19: The Musical Mac 339

Apple Music and iTunes Match Rock! 340

Introducing iTunes 341

Working with Media 344

Adding songs 345

Adding movies and TV shows 347

Adding podcasts 348

Listening to iTunes Radio 349

All about Playlists 350

Creating a regular playlist 351

Filtering your Library with Column Browser 352

Working with smart playlists 353

Burning a playlist to CD 354

Looking at the Genius playlist 355

Chapter 20: The Multimedia Mac 357

Playing Movies and Music in QuickTime Player 357

Books App on the Mac 359

Buying an e-book 360

Shopping for e-books without Apple 362

Reading an e-book 363

You’re the Star with Photo Booth 365

Viewing and Converting Images and PDFs in Preview 367

Importing Media 369

Downloading photos from a camera 369

Downloading DV video from a camcorder 371

Chapter 21: Words and Letters 373

Processing Words with TextEdit 373

Creating and composing a document 374

Working with text 375

Adding graphics to documents 379

Font Mania 380

Types of fonts 381

Managing your fonts with Font Book 381

Installing fonts manually 382

Chapter 22: Publish or Perish: The Fail-Safe Guide to Printing 385

Before Diving In 386

Ready: Connecting and Adding Your Printer 386

Connecting your printer 387

Setting up a printer for the first time 387

One last thing: Printer sharing 390

Set: Setting Up Your Document with Page Setup 390

Print: Printing with the Print Sheet 392

Printing a document 392

Choosing among different printers 393

Choosing custom settings 393

Saving custom settings 396

Preview and PDF Options 396

Part 6: Care and Feeding 399

Chapter 23: Features for the Way You Work 401

Finally, a Dark Mode 402

App Shopping, Improved 403

Using Your iPhone as Your Mac’s Camera or Scanner 406

Talking and Listening to Your Mac 408

Keyboard System Preferences pane: You talk and your Mac types 409

Commanding your Mac by voice 410

Listening to your Mac read for you 413

Automatic Automation 415

Script Editor app: Write and edit AppleScripts 416

Automator app: Automate almost anything 417

A Few More Useful Goodies 420

Accessibility System Preferences pane: Make your Mac more accessible 420

Energy Saver System Preferences pane: For energy conservation and sleep 422

Bluetooth System Preferences pane: Where Bluetooth lives 423

Ink System Preferences pane: Visible to pen-input tablet users only 423

Automatic Login in the Users & Groups System Preferences pane: Don’t bother with the login screen 424

Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac 424

Boot Camp Assistant app: Run Windows on your Mac really 425

AirPlay Mirroring 426

Handoff 426

Chapter 24: Safety First: Backups and Other Security Issues 429

Backing Up Is (Not) Hard to Do 430

Backing up with Mojave’s excellent Time Machine 430

Backing up by using the manual, brute-force method 434

Backing up by using commercial backup software 435

Why You Need Two Sets of Backups 436

Non-Backup Security Concerns 436

About viruses and other malware 437

Firewall: Yea or nay? 439

Install recommended software updates 440

Protecting Your Data from Prying Eyes 441

Blocking or limiting connections 441

Locking down files with FileVault 442

Setting other options for security 443

Chapter 25: Utility Chest 445

In the Applications and Utilities Folders 445

Calculator 445

Activity Monitor 446

Disk Utility 448

Grapher 453

Keychain Access 453

Migration Assistant 456

System Information 456

Terminal 456

Capturing Your Screen 457

Mojave screen-shooting 101 458

Mojave screen-shooting options 461

Mojave screen recording 461

Chapter 26: Troubleshooting macOS 463

About Startup Disks and Booting 463

Finding or creating a startup disk 464

They call it a prohibitory sign for a reason 464

Recovering with Recovery HD 466

Step 1: Run First Aid 466

Step 2: Safe boot into Safe mode 467

Step 3: Zapping the PRAM/NVRAM 468

Step 4: Reinstalling macOS 469

Step 5: Things to try before taking your Mac in for repair 469

If Your Mac Crashes at Startup 470

Optimizing Storage 471

Part 7: The Part of Tens 473

Chapter 27: Ten Ways to Speed Up Your Mac Experience 475

Use Those Keyboard Shortcuts 476

Improve Your Typing Skills 477

Change Your Resolution 477

Get a Mac with a View — and Preferences, Too 479

Purchase a Faster Mac 481

Add a Second Display 482

Add RAM 482

Upgrade to a Solid-State Drive (SSD) 483

Upgrade to a New Hybrid Drive 483

Subscribe to My Free Newsletter 485

Chapter 28: Ten Great Websites for Mac Freaks 487

The Mac Observer 488

Macworld 488

TidBITS 488

iMore 489

AppleWorld.Today 489

The Wirecutter 490

Apple Support 491

Other World Computing 491

dealmac/dealnews 492

Working Smarter for Mac Users 493

Index 495

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