macOS High Sierra For Dummies

Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus is a veteran Mac guru. He is the author of the "Dr. Mac" column for the Houston Chronicle and has been a consistent contributor to a variety of tech publications. Bob has written or co-written more than 80 books on macOS, iPhone, iPad, Office for the Mac, GarageBand, and other related topics.

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 High Sierra 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 13


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


Point-and-click boot camp 16


Not Just a Beatles Movie: Help and the Help Menu 18


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! 27


A scroll new world 29


(Hyper)active windows 30


Dialog Dealie-Boppers 32


Working with Windows 34


Opening and closing windows 34


Resizing windows and window panes 35


Moving windows 35


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 42


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 53


Customizing Your Dock 54


Adding dock icons 54


Removing an icon from the dock 56


Resizing the dock 57


What should you put on your dock? 57


Setting your dock preferences 59


Part 2: How Stuff Works 63


Chapter 4: Delving Deeper into Finder and Its Desktop 65


Introducing Finder and Its Minions: The Desktop and Icons 65


Introducing the desktop 66


Bellying up to the toolbar 68


Figuring out what an icon is 71


Identifying your Finder icons in the wild 72


Aliases Are Awesome! 73


Creating aliases 74


Deleting aliases 75


Hunting down an alias’s parent 75


The View(s) from a Window 76


Moving through folders fast in Column view 76


Perusing in Icon view 78


Listless? Try touring folders in List view 78


You gotta go with the flow 80


What’s next on the (View) menu? 81


Finder on the Menu 82


The actual Finder menu 82


Like a road map: The current folder’s pop-up menu 85


Going places with the Go menu 86


Customizing Finder Windows 88


Adding folders to the sidebar 88


Setting Finder preferences 89


Digging for Icon Data in the Info Window 92


Chapter 5: Having It Your Way 97


Introducing System Preferences 97


Putting a Picture on the Desktop 100


Setting Up a Screen Saver 101


Putting Widgets on the Dashboard 103


Translation 105


Flight Tracker 105


Giving Buttons, Menus, and Windows a Makeover 106


Adjusting the Keyboard, Mouse, Trackpad, and Other Hardware 109


Keyboard 109


Mouse 114


Bluetooth 115


Trackpad (notebooks and desktops with a Magic Trackpad) 116


Styling Your Sound 117


Changing sound effects 118


Choosing output and input options 118


Chapter 6: The Care and Feeding of Files and Folders 119


A Quick Primer on Finding Files 120


Understanding the macOS Folder Structure 120


Understanding nested folders 121


From the top: The Computer folder 123


Peeking into the Applications folder 123


Visiting the Library folders 124


Let it be: The System folder 125


There’s no place like Home 125


Your personal library card 127


Saving Your Document Before It’s Too Late 129


Stepping through a basic save 131


Save As versus Duplicate: Different names for the same result 136


Open, Sez Me 138


With drag-and-drop 139


With a Quick Look 140


When your Mac can’t open a file 140


With the application of your choice 141


Organizing Your Stuff in Folders 143


Files versus folders 144


Organizing your stuff with subfolders 144


Creating new folders 146


Navigating with spring-loaded folders 147


Smart folders 148


Shuffling Files and Folders 150


Moving files and folders 150


Selecting multiple icons 151


Playing the icon name game: Renaming icons 153


Compressing files 154


Getting rid of icons 154


The Incredible iCloud Drive 155


Chapter 7: Comprehending the macOS Clipboard 157


Introducing the Clipboard 157


Copying Files and Folders 158


Pasting from the Clipboard 160


High Sierra’s Universal Clipboard 160


Part 3: Getting Things Done 163


Chapter 8: Four Terrific Timesaving Tools 165


With a Quick Look 166


Share and share alike with the Share menu 168


Slide into Slideshow (full-screen) mode 169


Spotlight on Finding Files and Folders Faster 169


Using the search box in Finder windows 170


Using the Spotlight menu and window 172


Blast Off with Mission Control 173


The Mission Control pane: It’s painless 173


Hot corners! 176


Mission Control’s Spaces from 30,000 feet (an overview) 177


Getting around in space(s) 179


Launchpad: The Place for Applications 180


Chapter 9: Organizing Your Life 183


Keeping Track with Calendar 184


Navigating Calendar views 184


Creating calendars 185


Deleting a calendar 186


Creating and managing events 187


Reminders: Protection Against Forgetting 190


Getting started with Reminders 190


To do or not to do: Setting reminders 191


Everything You Need to Know about Notification Center 192


Use Notes for Making Notes 195


Chapter 10: Siri-ously! 199


What Siri Can Do for You 199


Working with Siri 201


Making Siri Your Own 202


Chapter 11: Maps Are Where It’s At 205


Finding your current location with Maps 205


Finding a person, place, or thing 206


Views, zooms, and pans 208


Maps and Contacts 209


Timesaving map tools: Favorites, Recents, and Contacts 210


Smart map tricks 212


Part 4: Getting Along with Others 217


Chapter 12: (Inter)Networking 219


Getting Connected to the Internet 220


Your Internet service provider and you 220


Plugging in your Internet-connection settings 221


Browsing the Web with Safari 223


Owning your toolbar 224


Using the Safari sidebar 226


Using the terrific Top Sites page 230


Searching with Google 231


Checking out Help Center 233


Audio and Video Calls with FaceTime 233


Chapter 13: Dealing with People 237


Collecting Your Contacts 237


Adding contacts 238


Importing contacts from other programs 240


Creating a basic group 241


Setting up a smart group (based on contact criteria) 242


Deleting a group or smart group 243


The view is lovely 243


Sync + Contacts = your contacts everywhere 244


Chapter 14: Communicating with Mail and Messages 247


Sending and Receiving Email with Mail 247


Setting up Mail 248


A quick overview of the toolbar 249


Composing a new message 251


Sending email from the Contacts app 253


Working with stationery 254


Checking your mail 256


Dealing with spam 257


Mailboxes smart and plain 258


Changing your preferences 260


Sign here, please 261


Mail rules rule 262


Markup and Mail Drop 265


Communicating with Messages 267


What the heck is an iMessage? 267


Chit-chatting with Messages 268


Chapter 15: Sharing Your Mac and Liking It 271


Introducing Networks and File Sharing 272


Portrait of home office networking 273


Three ways to build a network 274


Setting Up File Sharing 277


Access and Permissions: Who Can Do What 279


Users and groups and guests 279


Creating users 280


macOS knows best: Folders shared by default 287


Sharing a folder or disk by setting permissions 288


Useful settings for permissions 292


Unsharing a folder 294


Connecting to a Shared Disk or Folder on a Remote Mac 295


Changing Your Password 298


Changing your account password on your Mac 299


Changing the password of any account but your own on your Mac 300


Changing the password for your account on someone else’s Mac 300


More Types of Sharing 301


Sharing a screen 301


Sharing the Internet 302


And yet more ways to share 303


Part 5: Getting Creative 305


Chapter 16: The Musical Mac 307


Apple Music and iTunes Match Rock! 308


Introducing iTunes 309


Working with Media 312


Adding songs 312


Adding movies and TV shows 314


Adding podcasts 315


Learning from iTunes U 317


Listening to iTunes Radio 317


All about Playlists 318


Creating a regular playlist 318


Working with smart playlists 320


Burning a playlist to CD 321


Looking at the Genius playlist 321


Chapter 17: The Multimedia Mac 325


Playing Movies and Music in QuickTime Player 325


iBooks on the Mac 327


Buying iBooks 328


Shopping for books without Apple 330


Reading iBooks 331


You’re the Star with Photo Booth 333


Viewing and Converting Images and PDFs in Preview 334


Importing Media 336


Downloading photos from a camera 336


Downloading DV video from a camcorder 339


Chapter 18: Words and Letters 341


Processing Words with TextEdit 341


Creating and composing a document 342


Working with text 343


Adding graphics to documents 347


Font Mania 348


Types of fonts 348


Managing your fonts with Font Book 349


Installing fonts manually 350


Chapter 19: Publish or Perish: The Fail-Safe Guide to Printing 351


Before Diving In 352


Ready: Connecting and Adding Your Printer 352


Connecting your printer 353


Setting up a printer for the first time 353


One last thing: Printer sharing 356


Set: Setting Up Your Document with Page Setup 356


Print: Printing with the Print Sheet 358


Printing a document 358


Choosing among different printers 359


Choosing custom settings 360


Saving custom settings 362


Preview and PDF Options 363


Part 6: Care and Feeding 365


Chapter 20: Features for the Way You Work 367


Talking and Listening to Your Mac 367


Keyboard System Preferences pane: You talk and your Mac types 368


Commanding your Mac by voice 369


Listening to your Mac read for you 371


Automatic Automation 374


Script Editor app: Write and edit AppleScripts 374


Automator app: Automate almost anything 376


A Few More Useful Goodies 378


App Store app: The place to buy Mac apps 378


Accessibility System Preferences pane: Make your Mac more accessible 379


Energy Saver System Preferences pane: For energy conservation and sleep 380


Bluetooth System Preferences pane: Where Bluetooth lives 382


Ink System Preferences pane: Visible to pen-input tablet users only 382


Automatic Login in the Users & Groups System Preferences pane: Don’t bother with the login screen 383


Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac 383


Boot Camp Assistant app: Run Windows on your Mac really 384


AirPlay mirroring 384


Handoff 385


Chapter 21: Safety First: Backups and Other Security Issues 387


Backing Up Is (Not) Hard to Do 388


Backing up with High Sierra’s excellent Time Machine 388


Backing up by using the manual, brute-force method 392


Backing up by using commercial backup software 393


Why You Need Two Sets of Backups 393


Non-Backup Security Concerns 394


About viruses and other malware 394


Firewall: Yea or nay? 397


Install recommended software updates 398


Protecting Your Data from Prying Eyes 399


Blocking or limiting connections 399


Locking down files with FileVault 399


Setting other options for security 400


Chapter 22: Utility Chest 403


Calculator 403


Activity Monitor 404


Disk Utility 406


First Aid button 406


Partition button 407


Erase button 407


Mount/Unmount button 407


Info button 408


Grab 408


Grapher 408


Keychain Access 409


Migration Assistant 411


System Information 411


Terminal 412


Chapter 23: Troubleshooting macOS 413


About Startup Disks and Booting 413


Finding or creating a startup disk 414


They call it a prohibitory sign for a reason 414


Recovering with Recovery HD 416


Step 1: Run First Aid 416


Step 2: Safe boot into Safe mode 417


Step 3: Zapping the PRAM/NVRAM 418


Step 4: Reinstalling macOS 419


Step 5: Things to try before taking your Mac in for repair 419


If Your Mac Crashes at Startup 420


Optimizing Storage 421


Part 7: The Part of Tens 423


Chapter 24: Ten (or So) Ways to Speed Up Your Mac Experience 425


Use Those Keyboard Shortcuts 426


Improve Your Typing Skills 427


Resolution: It’s Not Just for New Year’s Day Anymore 427


A Mac with a View — and Preferences, Too 429


Get a New, Faster Model 431


You Can Never Have Too Much RAM! 431


Get an Accelerated Graphics Card 432


Get a Solid-State Drive (SSD) 433


Get a New Hybrid Drive 433


Chapter 25: Ten Great Websites for Mac Freaks 437


The Mac Observer 437


Macworld 438


TidBITS 438


AppleWorld.Today 439


Download.com 439


Alltop 440


Apple Support 441


Other World Computing 441


EveryMac.com 442


dealmac 442


Index 445