macOS includes a number of features for security, backups, and usability. In this video, you’ll learn about Mission Control, Spaces, Keychain, Spotlight, Finder, Continuity, and more.
If you’re like me, you use a lot of different applications all at the same time, and they’re usually scattered as little icons at the bottom of the screen or on your dock. But in macOS, we can show all of the current running applications on our desktop and be able to quickly move from one to the other. We refer to this as Mission Control. This spreads everything out on your desktop, so that you can see everything that you’re currently using, and quickly move from one to the other.
To be able to use Mission Control, you can swipe upwards with three fingers on your trackpad or use the control-up arrow option. From here, you can create multiple desktops, each one that might have a different set of applications running inside of it. We refer to this multiple desktop capability as spaces, and the spaces are available from within the Mission Control screen.
To use Mission Control, we hold down the Control key and hit the up arrow, and you can see all of the different applications that are currently running on my system. If you want to move to a different application, you simply click on that particular app, and it will move you directly to that application. You can, of course, perform the same thing again to move back to where you started.
When you do launch Mission Control, you’ll notice across the top is a desktop 1 and a desktop 2, and you can add additional desktops to this configuration. This means that you could build out separate desktops, each with different applications, and be able to quickly move from one desktop to the other by simply choosing the desktop options at the top of the screen.
When you’re using a browser or other applications within macOS, it gives you the option to save that password to be able to retrieve it later. MacOS stores all of these passwords securely using an application called Keychain. Keychain not only stores your application. It can also store your notes, certificates, and anything else that may be sensitive information.
Keychain is not something you add on to macOS. It’s a feature that is integrated into the macOS operating system. MacOS encrypts all of this information that is stored in the keychain, and the only way to decrypt and access that information is by using your login password.
An important feature of most operating systems is a way to search the operating system to find exactly the information you need. In macOS, we refer to this search as Spotlight. This allows us to find apps, documents, images, and anything else that might be important in our operating system. To use Spotlight, you can click the magnifying glass that’s in the upper right of your desktop, or you can press Command-Space and type in what you’re looking for. It will then go through your entire operating system to find anything that matches the information you added to the search.
If there’s certain information that you would rather macOS not look through, you can always enable or disable different categories of information from within your System Preferences under the Spotlight category. So if you use Command-Space and you type in Professor Messer, it will search through folders, find information that’s in apps, identify suggested websites, look through the iTunes Store, and much more.
The cloud-based service that integrates and stores information across multiple Apple operating systems is iCloud. iCloud allows you to share information across multiple devices, including calendar settings, emails, images, and much more. iCloud also has a built-in backup process, so you can have information that is saved to iCloud the moment you store it on your system. You can manage your iCloud storage under your System Preferences in the iCloud category.
And with iCloud Drive, you can store files in the cloud very similar to Google Drive or Dropbox. This also takes information from your applications and stores it into your iCloud Drive as well. This makes it very easy to store information that you’ve created on a macOS desktop, and be able to access that same data on an iPhone or an iPad.
iCloud is also a great way to synchronize your data across all of these different systems. For example, the messages that you have on your mobile phone, your iPad, and macOS can all be integrated together through one single iCloud account. You can also customize exactly what type of information is stored in iCloud by enabling and disabling it under the iCloud category of your System Preferences. For example, you can choose to synchronize message information between devices. You can make sure that all of your FaceTime information is kept up to date, regardless of what Apple device you’re using.
You might want to store files in your iCloud Drive and be able to integrate those with the apps that you use on all of these systems. Or you might want to customize the information that’s stored in your iCloud Drive so that you can share all of this data across multiple apps, regardless of what platform you’re using. You can scroll through this extensive list of applications and data system preferences under the iCloud category.
You might be using a trackpad in your Apple laptop or your iPad, or you might have an external trackpad that you use on your Apple desktop. You can customize how this trackpad operates using the gestures feature within the trackpad settings. You can customize exactly what your trackpad will do if you swipe, pinch, or click on the trackpad itself. You can modify how to access any of these features, or you can simply enable and disable those features from the trackpad options.
In Windows, we have File Explorer, and in macOS, we have the Finder. Finder is a centralized file management front end that allows us to launch applications, modify the file names that we’re using, or delete the files from our system. This also integrates into a number of different features that are built into the operating system. For example, you can see all of the file sharing options that are along the left side. And you can not only connect to local drives, but also drives that are located across the network. This also shows you all of the Remote Storage options on your network, and if there are any devices that we’re able to remote control using screen sharing, you’ll see those appear in the Finder as well.
If you want to access information quickly in macOS, you can simply scroll down to the bottom of the screen and use the built-in dock. This is a fast way to access applications and data files that you’ve stored in different areas of your operating system. This is a way to have quick access to your most used applications, and you can easily see what applications are currently in use. For example, if you look at my dock, you may notice that there are some icons that have dots underneath the icon, and those dots indicate that application is currently being used.
You might also keep entire folders in the dock. That way, you can access files very quickly by simply going down to the dock and clicking on that particular folder instead of going into the Finder.
This dock can also be customized by having it hide itself automatically, or you can change where it’s located on the screen or move it to a different display. These days, it’s common to walk around with multiple devices that you would use, including your laptop, a tablet, and perhaps a smartphone. With macOS, iPadOS, and iOS, you can integrate all of these devices together using Continuity. Continuity allows you to begin working on one device, and then easily move to another device and pick up where you left off. For example, you could be browsing the internet on your iPhone, then sit down at your desktop, open up a browser, and it will show you the page that you were last on when you were using your smartphone.
This goes even a step further, where you can use hardware resources on a separate device and apply those towards the computer that you’re currently using. For example, you can use your iPhone as a webcam when you’re working on your Mac desktop, or you could be working on your macOS desktop and then open a new window to interact and view the information that’s on your iPhone. This also forwards text messages between devices and allows you to easily AirDrop files from one device to another. This is a feature that is built into iCloud, so if you’re logged into iCloud through all of your devices, you’re able to use Continuity.
If you’re working with drives, storage, or anything to do with saving information on a macOS system, then you need to become very familiar with Disk Utility. Disk Utility is a management front end for all of your file systems on all of your devices. This utility is a way to manage all of the storage devices that are connected to your macOS machine. If you simply need to view and manage the configuration of those devices, you can see it in Disk Utility.
You can also modify the configuration of these file systems, create new partitions, format drives, and be able to manage any aspect of your storage. You can also create images within Disk Utility. So you could take an entire directory or everything that’s on a drive, create an image file of that drive, and then transfer that image drive to a third party.
In Windows, you might be familiar with the full disk encryption capabilities that are provided by BitLocker. In macOS, we have a similar feature known as FileVault. This provides full disk encryption for the entire operating system, and it encrypts everything using your local password, or it integrates into your iCloud authentication. This means that any of the data that you store in your drive is protected, and if somebody does gain access to your physical storage drive, they would not have access to the data unless they also had these authentication credentials.
If you want to turn on or turn off the FileVault capabilities of your macOS operating system, you can find those options inside of your System Preferences under privacy and security. As a system administrator, you’re probably very familiar with working at the command line and understand the importance of being able to manage a system from this terminal screen. In macOS, you would use the Terminal app to gain access to the command line. From here, you can view information in your file system, you can run shell scripts, or you can modify configuration settings for your applications. In a future video, you’ll learn a number of different commands that you can use inside of the macOS terminal.
Unfortunately, not every application we use is going to operate the way we might expect 100% of the time. There might be cases where we need to administratively stop an application from running, especially an application that seems to have hung up or is not accessible from the normal user interface. One way that you can stop that application from executing is by using the force quit option within macOS.
A common way to use force quit is to use the keystroke Command-Option-Escape, and it will bring up a window that shows all of the applications that are currently running. You can highlight any one of those and then choose the option to force quit. You can also force quit directly from the dock. So you can view the applications that are running in the dock, hold down your Option key, right mouse click on the icon, and it will give you the option to force quit that app. So if you find that your operating system is not working the way you would expect, and you believe the problem is associated with a single application, you may want to force quit that application and see if you can regain control of your operating system.