Finder and System Preferences
The Finder has had a serious overhaul in Big Sur. From the new-look windows with full-height sidebars to the new rounded Dock and the return of shaded icons, there’s plenty to take in visually. However, it’s the addition of Control Center and changes to Notification Center that are the most significant. Here’s how to adjust them.
1 Manage Control Center items
Some items can be either in the menu bar or in Control Center, or both. Launch System Preferences from the Apple menu and choose Dock & Menu Bar. Scroll through the list under Control Center, and click each one in turn. For those you want to add to the menu bar, check the “Show in Menu Bar” box. Select “when active” or “always.”
There’s an item here that’s new in Big Sur: Now Playing. It’s similar to the Notification Center widget and displays the name of media currently playing on your Mac, along with the app that’s playing it and controls for playing/pausing and skipping. You can choose whether it sits in Control Center or in the menu bar and whether it’s displayed permanently or only when there is something playing.
To add modules to Control Center that aren’t currently there, scroll to Other Modules and choose which to add to Control Center.
2 Add or remove items from the menu bar
Not everything in the menu bar is accessible from Control Center. Under “Menu Bar only,” you can choose whether to display Spotlight, Siri, or Time Machine, and specify how you want the clock to appear.
3 Drag items from Control Center to the menu bar
If going to System Preferences is too much hassle just to add an item to the menu bar, you can click on Control Center, then click on the item you want and drag it to the menu bar. To remove an item from the menu bar, just short-drag it in Control Center.
4 Hide the menu bar
In previous versions of macOS, you chose whether to automatically show and hide the menu bar in the General pane in System Preferences. It’s now in the Dock & Menu bar section. Go to System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar, scroll to Menu Bar, and check the box.
5 Check up on your battery usage
The new Battery System
