0:00 Hey, all. It's been a while, but today I want to talk about something that I think makes a bigger difference than people realize, and that is organizing your MacBook. A clean, well-organized Mac doesn't just look nicer. It actually changes the way you work. You spend less time hunting for things, less time fighting with clutter, and more time actually getting things done. In this video, I'm going to walk you through six changes that have made the biggest differences for me personally. We'll start with setting up your dog, then moving to color-coding your folders, cleaning up your desktop, building out a real system inside finder, customizing the menu bar and control center, and finally getting comfortable with the new spotlight in macOS 26. Some of these are quick wins, and some are deeper, set it up once and benefit forever kind of tips.
0:45 I'm running macOS 26 Tahoe here, which is Apple's newest version of macOS, but most of these tips will work on slightly older versions as well. I'll call out the ones that are specific to Tahoe as we go. With that said, let's get started. Let's start with the dock, because it's probably the part of your Mac you interact with the most without even thinking about it. By default, the dock comes loaded with every app Apple thinks you might want: Mail FaceTime Contacts News TV Podcast, and the App Store, and a bunch of others. And the truth is, most of us don't use even half of those on a daily basis. So, the first thing I do on any new Mac is clean those out. To remove an app from the dock, just click and hold the icon and drag it up off the dock and let go.
1:31 You'll see a little remove label appear, and the icon disappears in a small puff. Don't worry, this isn't deleting the actual application. It's just taking it off the dock. That app will still live in your applications folder if you ever need to access it. My recommendation here is to be ruthless. Only keep the applications you genuinely open every day. For me, that's things like Safari, Mail Messages Notes Reminders Calendar, and a few production apps I use for this channel. Everything else gets removed. The goal is to make every icon on your dock earn its spot. Once you've cleaned things out, the next step is to actually adjust the dock itself. Right click on the divider line in the dock, or you can go to system settings, then desktop and dock, and you'll find all the customization options. The first thing I change is the actual size. The
2:17 default dock is a bit too big for my taste, so I shrink it down. I also turn on magnification, which makes icons grow when I hover over them, and this way the dock can stay small and out of the way, but I can clearly see what I'm hovering over. Next, I look at the position. By default, the dock sits at the bottom of the screen, and honestly, that's where I like to keep it. I know a lot of people prefer it on the side to save vertical space, especially on a laptop, but I just can't get used to that. So, pick whatever feels natural to you. Then, there's a minimize effect. By default, this is set to the genie effect, which is that fancy animation where windows kind of slurp into the dock whenever you minimize an application. Looks very cool, but it's slower than it really needs to be. I switch this to scale, which is much snappier, and the windows get out of the way a lot faster. I also turn on
3:03 minimize windows into application icon. Without this turned on, every time you minimize a window, it creates a new little thumbnail on the right side of the dock, which clutters up things very quickly. With this turned on, minimize windows just tuck back into the actual app icon itself, and this looks way more cleaner. And finally, I always turn off show suggested and recent applications in dock. This is a setting that adds random apps to the right side of the dock based on what you've recently opened. The problem is those applications don't leave the dock when you quit them. So, over time, you end up with a bunch of icons you didn't put there. Turning this off keeps your dock looking exactly the way you set it up. One more pro tip on the dock is you can actually add folders to it, not just applications. If you drag a folder from finder to the right side of the dock near the trash
3:48 can icon, it becomes a quick access shortcut. I do this with my downloads folder, so when you click the folder, it pops up as a stack or a grid of files, so you can grab what you need without ever actually opening up the finder application. It's a small thing, but it saves a surprising amount of time. With the dock taken care of, let's move on to the second tip, which is color coding your folders. If you watch my Apple calendar video, you already know I'm a big believer in color coding across the entire Apple ecosystem. In my personal setup, I use blue for personal, green for YouTube, and yellow for family. That same color scheme follows me everywhere, in the reminders lists, calendars, and yes, Mac folders. And the reason it's so effective is because your brain starts to instantly recognize what area of your life you're looking at without having to read anything. You just see the color
4:35 and you already know. Now, by default, every folder on your Mac is the same generic blue, which means when you're looking at a finder window full of folders, everything kind of blends in together. In macOS 26, Apple finally gave us a built-in way to fix that, and it's a game-changer for anyone who likes a more visual setup. To do this, right-click on a folder and select customize folder. You'll see a panel pop up with different color options, and you can pick whatever color matches your system. So, for me, my YouTube folder gets changed to green, my personal folder goes blue, and my family folder turns yellow. Now, instead of seeing a wall of identical blue folders, each one is instantly recognizable. You can take this even further by adding an emoji on top of the folder. In that same customize folder menu, there's an option to add a symbol or emoji that overlays the folder icon. So, my YouTube folder
5:21 doesn't just turn green, it also has a little camera emoji on it. My family folder has a house. It sounds small, but when you're scanning through finder, those little visual cues make it incredibly fast to find what you're looking for. The reason I love this whole color coding approach is because it scales so easily. Once you set it up, it just keeps working for you. Every new folder I create for a project gets its own color assigned right away. And now I have a finder window that generally tells me what I'm looking at without me having to read a single word. Now that your folders are looking sharp, let's move on to the third tip, which is taming your desktop. Be honest, what does your desktop look like right now? If it's anything like most people's, it's a sea of screenshots, random downloads, half-finished documents, and external drive icons. And the problem is, every time you minimize a window or look at your wallpaper, you're staring at that mess. It's a small source of
6:07 friction that adds up over the day. The good news is that macOS gives you a few built-in tools to fix this in about 30 seconds. There are three things I do here on every new Mac. The first thing is to hide drives from the desktop. Open Finder, go to Settings, then click on the General tab. You'll see a section that says, "Show these items on desktop." And by default, almost everything is checked. I uncheck hard disks, external disks, CDs, DVDs, and connected servers. Don't worry, your drives are still fully accessible from the Finder sidebar under locations. You're not losing anything, you're just not staring at it all day. The second thing is to turn on Stacks. This is a feature that automatically groups loose files on your desktop into neat little piles by category. To turn it on, right-click anywhere on the desktop and
6:53 select Use Stacks, or go to View, then Use Stacks. Instantly, every file on your desktop gets sorted into a stack, one for images, one for PDFs, one for screenshots, and so on. You can also choose how Stacks group your files. Right-click on the desktop again, go to Group Stacks by, and pick what makes sense to you. Most people are best served by grouping by kind, which is the default. One important thing to mention here is that Stacks only work on loose files. They don't group your folders together, and the files don't actually move anywhere. Turning Stacks off just brings the mess right back. Think of it as a visual layer, not a real organizer. The third thing I do here is to add a few widgets to the desktop. This is something Apple has been building out over the past few macOS releases, and in macOS 26 with the
7:39 new liquid glass design, the widgets actually look really nice on the desktop now. To add one, right click anywhere on the desktop and select edit widgets. A panel pops up showing up every widget available on your Mac, plus widgets from your iPhone if you're signed in to the same Apple ID. For my own setup, I like to keep it simple. A calendar widget so I can see what's coming up, a reminders widget that's actually interactive, meaning I can check off tasks right from the desktop without opening up the app, a weather widget, and a batteries widget so I can keep track of the charge level on my on my AirPods. That's it. The goal isn't to fill the desktop with widgets, it's to put the most useful ones somewhere you'll actually use them. One taco-specific tip while we're here, if you go to system settings, then appearance, you'll see new options for icon and widget styles. You can pick default, dark, clear, or tinted. The
8:26 clear option gives you that full liquid glass look, and tinted lets you pick one accent color for all your icons. Play around with it. It's a small change, but it does affect the overall feel of your desktop. With the desktop looking clean, let's move into the fourth tip, which is building a real system inside finder. This is the deepest tip in the video, but it's also the one that will pay off the most over time. The idea is that finder shouldn't just be a place where you browse folders. It should be a workspace that's set up around how you actually work. There are four small setups I do, and once they're done, finder becomes a much more powerful tool. The first one is curating the sidebar. Go to finder, then settings, then click on the sidebar tab. Here you can toggle on and off everything that shows up on the left side of every finder window. For me, I keep things like home, documents, downloads, desktop, and applications. I turn I turn
9:11 off things like movies, music, and pictures because I don't use those folders directly. Everything else like AirDrop or recents really comes down to a personal preference. But here's the part that most people miss. You can actually drag your own folders into the sidebar. So, if you have a project folder you're working on every day, just drag it into the favorite section, and now it's one click away from anywhere in finder. When the project is done, right click and remove from sidebar. Just don't overdo it. Keep your sidebar to the folders you genuinely use all the time. The second setup is your default view. Open any folder, switch to list view by pressing command two, then press command J to bring up the view options. From here, set sort by to date modified. Turn on the calculate all sizes so you can see folder sizes. And also turn on use relative dates so
9:58 you see yesterday and today instead of a full date stamp. Then click use as defaults. Now, every folder you open will use these settings. By the way, there's a small but really nice update in macOS 26 that I want to call out. In the column view, view options now has a checkbox called resize columns to fit file names. Turn it on and column view will stop cutting off long file names. It's a tiny change, but it's one of those things that's been bugging Mac users for years. So, it's nice to finally see it fixed. The third setup is smart folders, which are basically saved searches that always stay up to date. To create one, go to file, then new smart folder. From there, you click the plus sign and add a
10:44 filter. There are a few that I find genuinely useful. A recent file smart folder set to last open date is within the last 7 days. This basically replaces the built-in recents folder with something cleaner. I also create an all my PDFs smart folder set to kind equals PDF. And now I can find any receipt, contract, or document anywhere on my Mac in one click. Once you create a smart folder, hit save, give it a name, and check the box to add it to the sidebar. The fourth setup is setting your default apps. Anytime you open a file type, like a PDF or an image, your Mac uses a default application to open it. Sometimes that default isn't what you want. To change it, right-click any
11:29 file, choose get info, and expand the open with section. Pick the app you actually want to use and then click change all. Now, every file of that specific type will open with the application you picked. It's a tiny adjustment, but it removes any small daily friction. A quick philosophy note before we move on. I've tried going way too far with finder organization before. I had folders nested inside folders nested inside folders and smart folders for every little thing. And honestly, it just got in the way. So, my recommendation here is to keep the folder depth to about three levels max and only create smart folders that you actually use. Simplicity really wins here. All right, on to the sixth tip, which is customizing your menu bar and control center. This one has a lot of
12:16 new updates in Mac OS 26. So, even if you've used Macs for years, there's stuff here that might be brand new to you. Let's start with the menu bar. In Tahoe, Apple finally added a dedicated section in system settings just for the menu bar. So, if you go to system settings and scroll down, you'll see a new menu bar pane. From here, you can decide what shows up in the menu bar, what gets hidden, and what's allowed in the menu bar at all. This is a big deal because before, all these settings were scattered all over the place. The first thing I'd recommend is making sure you have battery percentage turned on. Click on battery options and enable show percentage. Beyond that, my recommendation is to be very picky about what you keep in the menu bar. Every icon up there is taking up space and visual attention. So, each
13:03 one should earn its spot. For me, I keep things like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, battery percentage, and a focus mode visible. And I tend to hide the rest. A quick trick, you can actually hold command and drag any first-party menu bar icon to reorder it. And you can command drag it down off the menu bar to remove it. You'll hear a little whoosh sound whenever you do that. For third-party app icons, you'll need to use the new menu bar settings pane. Now, let's talk about Control Center because this one's one of the bigger redesigns in macOS 26. In Tahoe, Control Center now works a lot like one in iPhone. You can fully customize what's in it. You can change the size of each control, and you can even create multiple pages of controls.
13:48 To customize it, click the Control Center icon in the menu bar, and then look for the Edit Controls option at the bottom. From here, you'll see a giant library of controls, over 80 of them, covering everything from media to Focus modes to network settings. You can drag controls around, resize them, and add new pages by clicking the plus icon at the very top. For my setup, I have only one page with media controls and other quick actions. I probably need to spend some more time finding what other controls can be useful in this page, but for now, this is good enough for me. And here's a really useful trick. If there's a control you use all the time, you can actually drag it from the Control Center directly up into the menu bar to make it a permanent icon. So, if you want a one-click button to take a screenshot, just drag it up there and it
14:34 lives in the menu bar from now on. All right, the sixth and final tip is using the new Spotlight in macOS 26. And this one's genuinely one of the biggest macOS upgrades in years, so I want to spend a few minutes on it. For those who don't know, Spotlight is Apple's built-in search tool. You open it with command space or by clicking the magnifying glass in the menu bar. In older versions of macOS, Spotlight was mostly used to launch apps and find files. But, in Tahoe, Apple completely rebuilt it, and it does a lot more now. The first thing to know is that there are now four browse modes inside Spotlight. Once you open it with command space, you can press command one to see all your apps, command two to see files, command three to see actions, and command four to see your clipboard history.
15:19 Each one of those is genuinely useful, but the last two are the new powerful ones. Actions in Command 3 let you run things across your apps without opening up the application. You can send a message, add a reminder, start a timer, run any shortcut, and more all from Spotlight. So, instead of opening up the Reminders app to add a quick task, you just hit command space, switch to Actions, tap add reminder, and you're done. It saves a surprising amount of time once you get used to it. And the clipboard history in Command 4 is something a lot of Mac users have been asking for forever. You enable it once by hitting the command space, then command four, and clicking enable. After that, your Mac will remember everything you've copied, text, links, even images, and you can search through it at any time. To use a previous item, just
16:05 double-click it from the list, and it pastes wherever your cursor is. By default, your clipboard history is kept for 8 hours, but you can adjust this in the system settings under Spotlight. You can set it to 30 minutes, 8 hours, or 7 days, depending on how much history you want to keep. There's also a clear button there if you ever want to wipe it manually. One more trick worth knowing here are the quick keys. You use the same action all the time, macOS will start auto assigning short letter codes to them. So, SM might be send message, AR might be add reminder, and so on. You can also assign your own from any action. Once you have this set up, you can just hit command space, type your two-letter code, and hit the return button. Then those actions will run immediately. A small but worthwhile pro tip, go to system settings, then
16:50 Spotlight, and uncheck the categories you don't need indexed. Things like fonts, movies, and tips. It makes Spotlight faster, and your search results become more relevant because you're not waiting through stuff you don't actually want to see. So, that's it. We've covered cleaning up your dock, color coding your folders, taming your desktop with stacks and widgets, [music] building a real system inside Finder with the sidebar, default views, smart folders, and default tabs, customizing your menu bar and control center, and finally getting comfortable with the new spotlight. If you set up even half of what we covered today, your Mac is going to feel a lot more like your Mac instead of just a default setup. And the best part is that pretty much all of these are set it up once changes [music] and forget it. So, the time you put in today keeps paying off every single day after.
17:38 If you found this video helpful, please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing to the channel for more [music] Mac tips like this. If you have your own organization tips, drop them in the comments below. I really would love to hear how you set things up. Some of the best ideas I picked up over the years have come from the YouTube comment section. Thanks all for watching and [music] I'll catch you in the next video. >> [music]
