Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ for Dummies®

Chapter 3. Have It Your Way

In This Chapter

• Making it just the way you like it with System Preferences

• Beautifying your Leopard with a Desktop background and screen saver

• Working with those wonderful Dashboard widgets

• Customizing hardware and keyboard shortcuts

• Setting up for superb sound

Everyone works a bit differently, and everyone likes to use the Mac in a particular way. In this chapter, you find out how to tweak various options so everything is just the way you like it. The first things most people like to do are set their background and screen saver and populate the Dashboard with handy widgets. You can begin with that stuff, but keep in mind that you can do much more.

You can change the colors in windows, the standard font, and more if you like. Your Mac lets you choose how on-screen elements behave and how your hardware — such as the keyboard, mouse, and any wireless Bluetooth gadgets — interacts with your Mac.

Introducing System Preferences

You should start by becoming familiar with System Preferences, which appear on the Apple (

The following steps explain how to move around the System Preferences window, no matter what you're trying to tweak:

1. Open the System Preferences window, shown in Figure 3-1.

   You can do this in three different ways:

   • Choose

     

   • Open the System Preferences icon in your ...