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System settings that aren’t in System Settings
- notbeuller 3y agoI find it really hard to maintain a mental model of all the settings now - I wish there was a “save as text” (that had better structure than the direct output of “defaults read”) that would show all the Boolean switches. Maybe have a comment for “or one of these” for something that had an enumerated value (like scaling). Hmm. (Starting to sound like a “I should just damn well go write that and quit complaining”)
- isodev 3y agoThe options listed in the post are in my opinion exactly the ones that are exactly where they need to be. You want to change something about email - you go to the Mail app, something about calling - FaceTime etc. The system settings app itself has been undergoing changes to make it more similar to iOS, I like that now I can find things on the same place they’re on my phone… but it gets confusing for more desktop-specific items (e.g. display/screen saver/night shift options are in different sections etc)
- eviks 3y agoWhy would you go to the Mail app if you don't use it??? But more importantly - you know you can have the same config in multiple places
- isodev 3y agoBecause it my mind at least, it’s not “the Mail app the product” but “the Mail app the activity”. It’s where you’d go to deal with email stuff (same applies to Calendar, Notes etc). I also use a different email client which comes with its own settings and that’s perfect, but to configure aspects of macOS I would first check the system provided app.
- darreninthenet 3y agoAlthough this is a pain on the Mac because you have to create a dummy email account on the Mail app to be able to access any of the Mail apps settings
- isodev 3y agoI think it opens your iCloud email by default.
- darreninthenet 3y agoI don't have iCloud email, never have
- pxc 3y agoPeople who are enamored of Apple's commitment to privacy on the one hand and esteemed UX on the other should really try using a Mac without an Apple account for a while.
- detourdog 3y agoI don't understand this at all. I just went to systems settings. I searched for mai... I see the top hit is internet accounts. No other option internet account does describe mail so I click it. Up pops a bunch of choices as well as an add account button... What is the problem?
- atoav 3y agoI use Thunderbird since 2003. So you expect me, someone who never has used another program, to know I have to start Mail in order to change the default to Thunderbird. That doesn't make any sense. If it is a setting that influences the system it should be a system setting not in some different program I might or might not use.
- wichert 3y agoIt's even worse: you can not access Mail's settings until you have configured an email account in Mail. Before that the settings options is greyed out.
- pxc 3y agoThe true meaning of 'it just works' in Apple-speak is 'no configuration is required to start using it'. Once you realize this, you also realize the following: In practice, 'it just works' often simply means 'you cannot configure it'. It's not a claim about simplicity, robustness, compatibility, etc. It's about taking a stance against configuration. This default mail app thing is just another case of it, on the less extreme side of the spectrum (you cannot configure it for now... first you have to do some stupid bullshit).
- CRConrad 3y agoJust another example of how Apple's vaunted "ease of use" and (above all, blech!) "intuitive" is just fricking hype.
- pxc 3y agoI do think that sometimes configurability can be a crutch or a hasty solution that developers resort to instead of thinking through their defaults or adding a bit of intelligence to their program's behavior. Apple definitely aims to avoid that pitfall with their 'just works' approach, and I think that's valid. But they take it too far for my tastes. And the lack of configurability makes those times when the UX is disagreeable or just plain wrong feel like an insult as well as a defect. > "intuitive" is just fricking hype I think I remember my dad once saying that there's only one intuitive user interface for mammals: the nipple. After that, you're learning, whether you admit it or not!
- tpmoney 3y agoRealistically a lot of these aren’t even system settings, they’re user settings and while system settings already exposes a lot of user settings, which are which are very poorly indicated. Beyond that, putting all these in system settings also means you wind up with a UI for every single type of app, which seems like it would get both unwieldy in short order and out of date. It makes me miss the old type and creator codes from classic Mac os, where you could individually specify preferred apps for opening specific file types, or files created by specific creator apps from the “get info” settings for the file. That mapping was stored globally, but could be changed from any relevant file’s info window and thus was extensible simply by the nature of just needing metadata from the file and a pointer to the app. I guess the big flaw with that for apps like mail, or calls is that you don’t really have a file. You’d need some interface for mapping uri schemes to apps, and good luck making that intuitive to the end user without either needing every app to expose that in its own settings, or some sort of central uri to human readable thing mapping, which again suffers from the unwieldy and out of date problems.
- eviks 3y agoWhy can none of the OS provide a simple everything-fuzzy-searchable interface with both directory and tag organization and sets to make the huge mess of poorly accessible configs they've created more palatable?
- dizhn 3y agoKDE's settings app is not bad in this regard. Gnome's is OK too but there is not many configurable things there. Everybody installs gnome-tweaks which provides a separate gui.
- Expurple 3y agoYeah, a fuzzy KRunner search gets me the desired settings most of the time
- xctr94 3y agoBefore the System Settings redesign, this was quite possible. Even more so if you use Alfred. I’m Catalina I think I’ll get the right setting 1 out of 5 times, if that much. The redesign is absolute garbage.
- msk-lywenn 3y agoI think you're describing regedit (although not fuzzy)
- pxc 3y agoThe whole point of what they were asking for was for the thing to be highly usable. Regedit is... not that.
- eviks 3y agono I'm not, regedit is another usability nighmare which doesn't fulfill any of the conditions I've described, and search is not only not fuzzy, but also slow (Everything can search through the whole filesystem in less than a second, Regedit takes it sweet time) And it also lacks any visual cues, so if you're used to some icon in the main settings apps, you'll not see it in regedit
- crimsontech 3y agoThe settings in MacOS have become increasingly more frustrating. Especially security or privacy permissions given to applications. I installed a capture card recently that needed a kernel extension and after agreeing a confirmation box to install the extension I couldn’t find anywhere in the settings to remove it. In the end I just deleted the file and rebooted. I had Teams in the browser ask if it could access files in my Downloads directory which I mistakenly agreed to, this took a good ten minutes to find and revoke and I can’t remember off the top of my head where the setting even was. A lot of this is down to more granular privacy and security settings but it’s difficult to find the settings you are looking for.
- TylerE 3y agoOne that’s been at least mildly annoying to me personally is that there’s no way to fly elk the OS that a “removable” drive isn’t. My chained to my desk Mac Studio has 4TB of external aSSD (some old stuff, Time Machine, but also where I tore big stuff like AI models since I only have the base Studio with 512G Constant pop up’s every time a new app wants to look at those files… so get a n admin populists that just be felt with. It’s not a huge deal for a single instance, but when it’s coming up 4 or 5 times a day… Ill I want is a per-volume checkbox “treat as internal”.
- Cockbrand 3y agoIs “to fly elk” a slang phrase I’ve never heard or just some weird autocorrect? [Edit] Either way, I’m gonna use it from now as a synonym for “tell [someone]”. Thank you for the inspiration!
- ckdot2 3y agoAll the default* options belong to the system settings, not to the specific app. The system delegates specific functionality to a corresponding app. Still, I admit that the whole settings structure is confusing and Apple should implement something similar to VsCode where you can globally search for all existing settings.
- fragmede 3y agoand have it in a text readable file that one can edit (like VScode). A boy can dream, can't he?
- detourdog 3y agothere is a search right in settings it will return the name of the settings and it also searches context.
- ckdot2 3y agothere is a search, yes. but it's not working as good (and simple) as the search in VsCode... Just an example... search for "Scrolling speed" and you won't get any result. But if you click on "Mouse" in the left navigation you will find indeed a setting "Scrolling speed". Same for "Lock Screen" > "Show message when locked". Many settings will just not be found. Other settings will be found but the search result label is weird. For example if you search for "position" to change the "Dock position", you will indeed find "Dock settings" as a search result. But it's not "Dock position" so you could assume that there is no position setting existing. This is inconsistent to other search results, i.e. "Highlight colour" will produce a much better search result "Highlight colour - Appearance".
- detourdog 3y agoI Typed Scro and the first result is Scroll Speed (Mouse) Accesibility From that list I see (Trackpad) and goes on to other options I typed posi and the Second option is Desktop & Dock I typed Hig and the second option is under Appearance. The search works for me.
- divbzero 3y agoTIL: You can run scripts you write via the Script menu. https://support.apple.com/guide/script-editor/access-scripts-using-the-script-menu-scpedt27975/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/script-editor/access-scripts...
- divbzero 3y agoThe iOS version of this article would be: App settings that aren’t found in the app
- TillE 3y agoYeah, it's a constant annoyance that iOS app settings are randomly splattered across somewhere in the app and maybe in system settings.
- charrondev 3y agoHonestly the one I use the most often is frequently a PITA to get to. I often am enabling or disabling cellular data access to applications. Unfortunately this setting lives in 2 places and is difficult to reach. There is a list of all apps in the cellular settings that allows changing this but the list has 100s of apps, has no search/filter and cannot be sorted alphabetically. You can also go the app specific settings in the settings app but this also sucks to get to because spotlight search sucks and the actual list is again, not in alphabetical order. (Apples own built in 50+ apps are strewn about in a haphazard order).
- bartvk 3y agoIt's now a habit to save all my changes in system and app preferences in a script. First I do a defaults read > 1 Then I change the setting in the app or System Settings, then back on the commandline, I do defaults read > 2 diff 1 2 The change gets copied to a preferences.sh file with a whole bunch of statements like: defaults write com.apple.ical "Show Week Numbers" -bool true Afterwards, I don't care where the setting is. I just set it in my preferences.sh file, and if I update any of it, I run that file.
- e40 3y agoThis is brilliant and I’m mad that I didn’t think of it.
- Cockbrand 3y agoIt is indeed brilliant, and I’m glad I learned this today!
- elcapitan 3y agoThis is great! Is there some non-lethal way to retrieve the initial system settings to diff from?
- pxc 3y agoDon't the non-global defaults generally live in per-user directories like ~/Library/Preferences or whatever? You can likely get a lot of this by just creating a new user.
- detourdog 3y agoThere is also user.template that lives in a directory. This file acts like a skel file and holds all the standard settings for new users created on that machine. This can be used to customize settings and folders. https://derflounder.wordpress.com/ https://derflounder.wordpress.com/
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
- testingss 3y agoWelcome
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y agoAudio and MIDI setup is its own app for some reason.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- macintux 3y agoI just want a setting for “Do not launch Music when I put away my AirPods after a Teams meeting” for my work laptop. Is that so much to ask?
- Groxx 3y agoIf you don't use iTunes at all: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes has saved quite a lot of my sanity very simply.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoApple's settings and preferences are a blue-ribbon clusterf**k. The other day, someone was complaining that they couldn't read their screen, and I (foolishly) indicated that I could fix it easily, because "I'm an expert." I ended up searching through multiple pages of settings, in order to find the one they needed. At least they got a good laugh out of it. Zoom's settings are right up there, with Apple's. Information architecture often tends to follow political and organizational structure, as opposed to good common sense usability structure. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2016/03/16/magnets https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2016/03/16/magnets
- marcellus23 3y agoWhat setting was it?
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoDisplay Zoom (I forgot what it was called, and initially started looking in Accessibility).