So you got a new Macbook and it's a lot to take in.
Where do you begin?
What do you do first?
Here are seven of the fist things you should tweak or do on your new Macbook.
Often when you buy a new Mac, Apple will have released a new software update before you even boot it.
So before you go around tweaking things and setting things up, you might as well go ahead and update it first.
Click the Apple logo in the top left of the menu bar.
Then select about this Mac.
Then click software update.
Install any major software updates available.
The doc is something that you're going to use pretty often.
So you might as well set it up the way you want to use it.
Best of all, all the changes you can make to the dock, you can do from the dock itself.
Right-click on an icon.
Go to Options, and click keep in dock or Remove from Dock.
Click and drag on the dock at the divider to adjust its size, and right-click it here to access other settings like auto-hiding and its position on the screen.
If you have a new MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar, you may not like the way the Touch Bar comes out of the box.
So you're gonna want to customize that as well.
To do this, go System Preferences, then Keyboard and click the Customize Control Strip button.
Drag the buttons you want to show up on the default view of the Touch Bar below the display, and position them where you want on the Touch Bar.
Like on an iPhone, MacBooks display a battery indicator in the status bar.
But by default, the percentage is not visible.
To enable this, click on the battery indicator in the menu bar and select Show Percentage.
One of the best parts of staying within the Apple ecosystem is the ability to share and sync files between your devices seamlessly.
And it's no different on MacBook.
You can use iCloud drive to sync a folder between all of your Apple devices.
To set this up on your new MacBook, do to system preferences then iCloud and click options next to iCloud drive.
Then check the box for the top item, desktop and documents folders.
You will then be able to access any files you saved directly on your desktop or in the documents folder from any Mac or IOS devices you own.
The natural trackpad scrolling direction on a Macbook might feel unnatural.
And that's because it's more like scrolling on a smartphone than it is, say, with a scroll wheel or any other trackpad you may have used.
If you don't like or you can't seem to get used to it, you can reverse it by going to the system preferences and then trackpad Open the scroll and zoom tab, and uncheck the box for direction, natural.
Staring at a screen with a blueish tint late into the evening and after sunset, can mess with your body's internal clock.
And it can also make it difficult to get a good night's rest.
Enter night shift.
Night shift will alter the colors of your display to the warmer end of the spectrum during the evening hours.
To turn it on, go to System Preferences, Displays, and click the Night Shift tab.
There, you can set it to come on from sunset to sunrise automatically, manually activate it until sunrise, and adjust the color temperature.
For more tips and tricks and other how tos, be sure to check out cnet.com/howto.
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