How to Customize Your Mac Desktop Using Control Center and Widgets

Apple's macOS Big Sur merges familiar iOS features with the computing benefits of Apple’s Mac lineup. Now that iOS apps can run in macOS, it makes sense for both operating systems to look, and work, similarly.

Unfortunately, the Big Sur rollout has been difficult. When new software arrives, it’s always advisable to wait until all the kinks are worked out before you download. But who actually follows that advice? If you’ve already downloaded macOS Bir Sur, you will be among the first to discover that Apple has tricked out the Control Center, Menu Bar, and Notification Center widgets to give you one-click access to manage commonly used functions and information. 

Customize Control Center

With macOS, it can be easy to forget where certain settings are located. Going into System Preferences is fine, but macOS Big Sur does a good job of providing quick access to a number of settings by bringing the iOS Control Center to Mac. 

Since Macs don't support touch, you can’t access macOS Control Center by dragging down on your screen like on iOS devices, but Apple has added a Control Center icon to the Menu Bar in the upper-right corner; click it to open.

Out of the box, Apple provides access to many commonly used settings, like changing the volume, screen brightness, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth settings. Similar to iOS, you can customize Control Center to your liking by opening Systems Preferences and clicking Dock and Menu Bar. 

Under the Control Center heading is a list of all the settings that can be added to the Control Center. Click on a setting, and check the “Show in Control Center” box to add it.

Organize the Menu Bar

I’ve never really liked all the Menu Bar icons that appear in the upper-right corner of my Mac’s screen every time I enable or install an application. So I was pleasantly surprised that, in addition to customizing Control Center, you can now manage the Menu Bar in the same fashion without any additional add-ons.

With Control Center open, grab and drag a feature directly to the Menu Bar. You can also accomplish this by checking the “Show in Menu Bar” box in the Dock and Menu section of System Preferences.

Many of the icons you think are an eyesore or were just in the way can now be removed and replaced with more useful ones. In my case, I removed icons I did not need, and was able to move icons that I only occasionally used into the Control Center and out of the way. 

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As an added tip, you can reorder the Menu Bar icons by holding the Command button while dragging icons to a preferable position. Be aware that there will be some icons (like Control Center) that can’t be removed, and others that will have to be managed in that specific application’s Preferences settings.

Control Widgets

Akin to the iOS Today View, iOS widgets have made their way to the Mac via the Notification Center, which can be accessed by clicking the time/date icon in the Menu Bar. Notification Center gives users access to at-a-glance information and can be customized using widgets.

To add/remove widgets, open Notification Center, scroll to the bottom, and click Edit Widgets. You will be presented with all the currently available widgets. In the left column is a search bar to quickly find widgets, followed by a list view of current widgets. The middle column shows the widget layout where you can select and further customize a widget’s look according to size. 

Once you’ve selected the right size, click the plus (+) button in the upper left of the widget, or grab and drag the widget to add it to the right column that displays the current Notification Center layout. You can also click the minus (-) symbol next to any widget in Notification Center to remove it, or drag any widget up and down to reorder.

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