The big choices

General. Most choices here are purely cosmetic, like changing the highlight color, or how many items show up in the recent menu. In OS X Lion, however, you can make one important choice: whether or not to restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps. Unchecking this will stop applications from opening up the last-used files or web pages. This cannot be set on a per-app basis. Leaving this checked is good if you want to get back up and running quickly after a system reboot, bu bad if you’re giving a presentation and the last file you had open was a video of your bachelor party in Vegas.

Mission Control. The main choice here is if you want Dashboard to launch in its own space. Leaving this checked will keep it default (own space). Unchecking it means when you open the Dashboard it will work like it did in Snow Leopard, which is as an overlay on your main screen. I would have set it back to the Snow Leopard setting, but I’m using Josh’s excellent tip to map my Dashboard key to the Launchpad.

Language and Text. If you don’t like Lion auto-correcting words as you type, you can disable here. Or, you kuld just lrn to spel. For obvious reasons, I quite like this setting.

Security and Privacy. This is where you can turn Filevault encryption on. Previous versions of Filevault were fairly useless, but Filevault 2 (the one that’s included with Lion) is actually quite handy. For one thing, it’s a disc-level encryption that needs to be unlocked for your Mac to boot. I’d check this if you’re ever concerned about someone getting data from your Mac without your say-so. Also, you can turn your Mac’s firewall off and on from this preference pane.

Trackpad. Until Lion, I hadn’t realized the way I’d been scrolling was “unnatural,” but I’m glad Lion set us right in that regard. If the reverse scrolling drives you nuts you can set it back to unnatural, err, normal, err, the way it used to be, here. That said, I’d encourage you to give it a try for a few weeks. I wasn’t thrilled with it at all, but after a few days I quite liked it.

The little things

Desktop and Screensaver. This is where you can go to change your wallpaper and screensaver, as you may have guessed. But it’s also the place you can go to turn off the translucent menu bar.

Time Machine: Sadly, you can’t turn off Lion’s Autosave and Versioning features, assuming an app supports them. However, what you can change in Time Machine is the length of time before a file is locked. The default is two weeks after the last save.

Energy Saver: Here’s where you can change how often your hard drive and screen go to sleep. I’ve unchecked the setting to dim my display when using the battery, because I like my screen set to maximum brightness. However, leaving it checked is a good way to find out in a hurry when someone accidentally unplugs your laptop if you like to work in high-traffic areas.

Those are some ways you can customize your Mac without needing to use a third-party utility. Feel free to share your own suggestions about third-party preference panes that make things even better in the comments.

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Apple’s user interface is heralded as a sleek, modern experience. A great deal of attention is paid to the design of icons, and a guide is published to help ensure that developers also create icons which meet the standards of OS X.

If you’d like to use custom icons in OS X — whether for applications, files or folders — there are a couple of different ways to achieve your goal.

• On an individual basis — i.e. selecting individual files or applications and just changing that one icon
• On a system-wide basis — applying an ‘icon set’ to change the look and feel of all the OS X icons system wide

The Simple Method

The easiest method of changing individual icons requires no software, and is very straight forward. It essentially involves copying the icon from one file/folder/volume to another.

1. Select the item whose icon you want to stamp onto another.
2. Perform a ‘Get Info’ action, and select the icon towards the upper left of the window.
3. Press Command-C to copy the icon to the clipboard
4. Select the item you’d like to change the icon of, perform ‘Get Info’, then click the icon in the top left
5. Press Command-V to replace the icon with the one copied previously.

This is great for changing a limited number of icons. If, however, you want to change the appearance of the whole operating system, there is a need for a more powerful tool.

Using CandyBar

CandyBar is an application designed by Panic, which makes organizing and applying icons (and icon sets) remarkably straight forward. It costs $29, but there is a free trial available so you can decide whether it is worth your hard earned money.

CandyBar allows you to customize individual icons easily, including those which can be difficult to alter with the simple method (such as the Recycle Bin icon). It also provides the ability to apply a system icon set to your whole computer. This is useful if you’d like to change the style of folders system-wide, or alter the toolbar icons in the finder. The user interface for storing and applying icons is very straight forward.

Finding Icons and Resources

So you’re not starting from scratch, here are a few fantastic icon sets which will go a long way towards improving your Mac experience.

• Somatic – A thoroughly unique and ‘cartoony’ icon set, which can completely change the style of your Mac
• Agua – Alternatives to the default Aqua icons for OS X. Keeping a similar style, but with arguably a more simplified, professional style.
• Agua Folders – A set of Leopard-style folders, which make it easy to illustrate the content of your folders
• Litho System – A bright and well-worn system replacement icon set. Colorful and unique.
• Amora – Futuristic system and app icons, includes robots and mechanical devices in a black and white color scheme.

A great community and forum dedicated to Mac icons and themes is MacThemes, where you’ll find regular new releases and the latest news surrounding icon applications. Other communities and resources include:

• The Iconfactory – This is undoubtedly one of the largest Mac icon archives. It’s also the home of the CandyBar software.
• Pixelgirl Presents – Housing hundreds of Mac OS X icon sets that cover the full range from simple, professional icons, to funky and cartoon-style. If you’re looking for something unique, check out their designs.
• InterfaceLIFT – This site offers over 775 icon sets in a wide range of subjects. Some are better than others, but it’s an excellent resource.

If you come across any particularly good icon sets, please do let me know in the comments. In future articles I’ll be explaining how to customize the style of the OS X Dock, showcasing some interesting wallpaper applications, and highlighting how you can apply a different theme to your windows and applications.

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