Making the Desktop Easier to See

In today's workshop, we're going to look at a simple change we can make to our computer's desktop so the icons for documents and folders are easier to see.

Sometimes a background with images and animations can look pretty cool. However, busy backgrounds can make it harder to see items on our desktop, so it's great that we can customize the way our desktop looks so it's easier to find the stuff we really want.

With a simple change in the wallpaper settings, we can select a color with contrast that works for us and make our Mac's desktop look just the way we want it.

To personalize the way our desktop looks, we'll head over to the wallpaper settings and to get to the wallpaper settings, let's first open the Apple menu by clicking on the Apple icon in the top left corner of the screen.

Then we'll select system settings from the menu, and now we'll see wallpaper as one of the options. So let's click on that, and here we are in the wallpaper settings.

Now on your computer, the options might look different, from the Apple menu, you might see system preferences, and then wallpaper will be part of the desktop and screen saver option. No matter how we get here, once we're in the wallpaper settings, we'll find a bunch of options to customize the way our desktop looks.

We've got choices like dynamic wallpapers, light and dark wallpapers, pictures and colors. These are all just different ways to customize the background or wallpaper on our desktop. For now, let's customize the desktop background color.

Right here at the bottom of the wallpaper window, we find the colors option, and here we have some circles with sample colors we can choose. Once again, your screen might look different, but these options are all available when you select wallpaper or desktop.

To see more options, let's select the show all link on the right or on your computer, it might say custom color. Great, now we'll just click on a color that seems like a good wallpaper choice, one that adds a little contrast to the apps and icons on the desktop.

On this computer, let's try this bright blue, and as soon as we pick a color, the wallpaper changes.

Now let's use a handy keyboard shortcut to go right to the desktop and see how it looks. We'll press our Fn or function key and F11, and that takes us straight to the desktop.

Okay, that looks pretty good, but maybe a darker color would be better. We can go back to our wallpaper settings with another great Mac shortcut, command tab.

That always takes us back to the last place we were. So we'll hit command tab and we're back at the wallpaper window.

Now let's choose a darker color from the color options and let's check it out on the desktop again We can use the function F11 shortcut to go back to the desktop, or we can use command tab again since the desktop is the last place we were and this wallpaper looks great.

Now we can see the important stuff on our desktop, our pictures, folders, and documents. The new wallpaper color adds plenty of contrast to make everything stand out a little bit more.

Thanks so much for joining me today to learn how to make your Mac desktop a little easier to see. I look forward to seeing you next time.