Organize and Hide System Preference Panes

Dan Wassink 0:01
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can organize our System Preferences, as well as hide our different preference panes on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac. Let’s first open up our System Preferences to see what it looks like by default. To do that, I just go up to the Apple menu. And then we go over to our System Preferences. When we’re looking at our different System Preferences, this is our settings for the Mac, the Mac will categorize these are organized these by category. Now, depending on which Mac OS you have, you may see different categories here. With Mac OS, Big Sur, and Monterey, they reduced it down to basically two different categories. So these first two rows here are one category.

The bottom two rows are another category. But if you have an older Mac OS, you may see up to four different categories here. Now it’s nice that they organize them in categories, but you’re going to see that it doesn’t really say what category they are, how are these organized? What are these different categories? I know I have a hard time finding different things. Even though I’ve been using the Mac for years, I still have a hard time finding different things. So where do I find Bluetooth? Well, Bluetooth is located down here towards the bottom here. It seems like an older versions of Mac OS, it might be in a different category. So you have a hard time finding different preference panes here.

Well, one thing you can do is you can easily search for. But another thing we can do is we can organize this alphabetically, then we no longer have these categories, it’s just going to be organized alphabetically. To do that, all we have to do is just go up under view here. And then we go over to organize alphabetically. When I do this, they are no longer categorized and they’re organized alphabetically. So I want to find accessibility, all I have to do is just go over to the very first preference pane, there’s accessibility, Bluetooth, well, being that this is organized alphabetically, I know that I can just go over to the right, until I find Bluetooth. I want to find time machine will time machine is going to be further down in the alphabet. So I just go down towards the bottom here, and there’s time machine. So if you’re having a hard time finding some of these preference panes, what you may want to do is just go up under view here, and then organize it alphabetically. If you don’t like you can always just switch back to organized by categories.

Now another option we have here is we can hide some of these preference panes. Let’s say you never use mouse, I have a trackpad, I never use the mouse, I would like to just hide this preference pane. Well, in order to do that, all you have to do is just go up under View. And then you’re going to see customize. When I select this, each preference pane is going to have a checkmark by so if we look back at most here, you’re going to see it has a checkmark by that checkmark means that it is going to show. So if I deselect this, it will no longer show when I’m looking at my System Preferences. Let’s say do not use language and region either. I don’t want this to show I just deselect it, and it will no longer show.

So now let’s go and turn that back off. To do that we just click on Done. And now you’re going to see that those two preference panes are no longer showing. I still have access to them. I just go back over to customize. And from there, what I’m able to do is select them again. And then they will show click on done here. And now all those preference panes are going to show again. So if you see a preference pane that you do not use, you can easily hide it. So that’s how we can organize our preference panes, as well as hide them within the System Preferences. We can organize them by category or alphabetically. To change the you just open up your System Preferences, and then you go up to View in the menu bar. From there you’re able to select how you want to show them or how you want to organize them. You can also customize the view when you customize them. You can select which preference panes are going to show. So that’s how we can organize our System Preferences, as well as hide different preference panes on the Mac.