Notification Center

In this video, we’re going to look at the Notification Center and macOS Big Sur. Apple redesigned it slightly; we have different size widgets, just like we do with the iPad and the iPhone. Also, they removed a key indicator or a key button to get to our Notification Center. Don’t worry; it’s still easy to access our Notification Center. Let’s see the new Notification Center and macOS Big Sur. Let’s go to my Mac.

Now, if you’re not familiar with the Notification Center, the Notification Center is where we can find all of our different notifications. Let’s say I had an event in my Calendar, and I set up a notification. I would be able to find that notification in my Notification Center. If I set up a reminder for my Reminders app, I’d be able to see that notification from the Reminders app in my Notification Center.

So how do we get to this Notification Center? In past versions of macOS, you had an icon in the upper right-hand corner here that you clicked on, and you would get to Notification Center. If we look here with macOS Big Sur, we do not have a Notification Center icon. So now, how do I get to it? Well, it’s still pretty easy. All I need to do is just click on the time here. And I’m looking at my Notification Center. I click on it again. It goes away.

So now, let’s take a closer look at this Notification Center. I click on the time we’re looking at my notifications. The first thing you may notice is it looks a lot more like an iPad or an iPhone’s Notification Center. We have different size widgets. This is a small widget, while this one here is slightly larger, and then we have our larger widgets. They’re also free floating, meaning they are not in a separate section. In previous versions of macOS, you had a gray background where these notifications were. Now they are just floating on top of our desktop. If I click on any one of these, it’s going to open up the app. So that’s the basics of our Notification Center.

Now, how do we modify this? How do we change our widgets or add new widgets? Well, what we need to do is go down to the bottom, and you’re going to see Edit Widgets. When I click on this, I’m able to edit all of my widgets. I have a list of apps here that have widgets, and I select on any one of them to see all the available widgets. Some apps will have multiple widgets.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, we have different size widgets. If we look here for my calendar, my up next, I have different size widgets. To see what each widget looks like you just click on it, and now you can see what the different widgets look like. So this widget here, I do not have different sizes. This is a city widget from the clock app, but we can see that we have two different sizes when we go down to world clock here.

So now, how do I add these to my Notification Center? Well, all I need to do is just select the widget that I want. So let’s say I wanted to add this small widget here. We can see that I have a medium-size widget, I want to add this small one. All I need to do is just select the widget I want. I have it set for small, and then I just take this and drag it where I want in my Notification Center. Let’s put it up here, and now we can see that we just added that widget.

To remove a widget, all we have to do is just click on the minus in the upper left-hand corner and remove it. So let’s swipe up here a little bit, and let’s go with new note. I just click and drag, this as a size that I want, I place it where I want. And now I’ve just added those two widgets. Now from here, I can change the widget size. If I hold down the control key and click, you’re going to see I’m able to change it to a medium widget. So let’s go ahead and click on this, and now we can see it as medium. Let’s go down to my notes here. I control-click on it, hold down the control key, and click, and now I can change it from small to medium or large. So let’s go with medium here. And now we can see we have two medium widgets there.

I can also edit these widgets. We can see that we have four world clocks here. I want to edit this. I want to change which times are shown. To do that, we hold down our control key again. And then I go over to edit. When I click on edit, it flips around, and now what I can do is change which clocks are shown.

When I’m finished, I click on done, and any changes are applied. You can have multiple widgets. So if I went over here to the weather widget, what I’d be able to do is add different widgets for different cities. I can have multiple widgets as well. I just go over to the right here, select the size that I want. I drag it over, and then I drag it over again. These are both set for the same city. I want to change one of them. I just go down and control-click on one of them. I go to edit, and then I change the location. So let’s go with Key West here. And now I click on done. And now we have one weather widget for Holland, while I have another one for Key West.

When I am finished, all I have to do is just click outside here. And it closes my Notification Center. To open it back up. We just go back up to our clock here, click on it, and we’re back in my Notification Center with my new widgets.

So that’s the Notification Center in macOS Big Sur. It still basically works the same way it’s located on the right side of our display. To get to it, we just click on the clock in the upper right-hand corner. We no longer have an icon for it, but we can easily get to it by clicking on the clock. Once we show our notifications, if we want to edit them, we go down to the bottom, and you’re going to see Edit, click on that, and then you’re able to edit your notifications. You can drag them around to move them. You can add different size widgets. You can even change the size once you’ve added it to your Notification Center. You can also edit the widget by control-clicking on it.

So that’s how the Notification Center works in macOS Big Sur.