If you have an Apple Mac computer, be it a MacBook, iMac or any other version, you can squeeze out one of the star features added last year. We refer to the so-called Control Center, a very functional element of macOS that can be very useful to be more productive with your team. In this post we tell you everything you need to know about it.
What exactly is the Control Center
Basically it is a part of the system in which you can have quick and immediate access to some elements such as brightness, volume, WiFi activation and other parameters that normally would have to be adjusted from System Preferences.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you will already know that these devices also have a Control Center as standard in which actions such as those described above are carried out. Precisely the Macs drink much of what we have in iOS and iPadOS. Even visually they are very similar and although they cannot be touched with the fingers on a computer, they can be operated with the keyboard and mouse or trackpad.
Not all Macs have this item
It really is not that there are Macs that do not have this functionality enabled, but that it is the operating system that limits it. This novelty appeared for the first time in macOS 11 Big Sur , so computers that cannot update to this version will not be able to have it. If you have one of the following Macs and you don’t have this version or later , you can update them because they are compatible:
- MacBook Pro (Late 2013 and later)
- MacBook (2015 and later)
- MacBook Air (2013 and later)
- iMac (2014 and later)
- iMac Pro (2017 and later)
- Mac mini (2014 and later)
- Mac Pro (2013 and later)
Open control center in macOS
If your computer is not only one of the ones in the previous list, but it is also updated to a suitable version, you will be able to access the Control Center in a tremendously simple way. You just have to look at the top toolbar, look at the right side, and tap on the Control Center icon. Take a look at the image below.
Once you have opened it, you will see a screen like this:
In the upper left box are the WiFi, Bluetooth and AirDrop options. If you pass the cursor over any of them you will see that an arrow appears which, if pressed, allows access to more options for each of them. Do not disturb and Screen Mirroring options appear at the top left. The first one will allow you to silence notifications for 1 hour, until night, until tomorrow or forever. The second allows you to add an external screen with another monitor. Both elements also have access to the preferences panel in which to obtain more settings.
Already in the central part there is a bar with the brightness of the screen and the sound of the Mac . You can modify them by sliding with the pointer and if you have a Magic Mouse or Trackpad you can also make the gesture of sliding to one side or the other to increase or decrease the brightness and volume. And, like the previous ones, these settings also have more options by pressing the respective arrow that appears when the cursor is over it.
Centralize everything in this panel
Actually all the options of the Control Center were already available in other versions of macOS and even in these in the menu bar. However, in this way everything can be unified in one place. If you have already created some access for WiFi or Bluetooth, for example, you can click on the respective icons in the menu bar, open their preferences and deactivate the option to “show in the menu bar” . That will not prevent them from appearing in the Control Center and you can also have this bar much less loaded so that it is more comfortable to handle everything.
How can it be customized
Unlike what can be done on an iPhone or iPad, on a Mac it is not possible to perform actions such as changing the order in which the items in the Control Center appear. Nor can the style of the icons or the background color be changed, although the latter will vary depending on whether the system’s dark mode or light mode is activated.
What is possible is to add other modules to this Control Center and to be able to more easily deactivate the shortcuts in the menu bar, something that we mentioned in the previous section.
- Open System Preferences.
- Go to the Dock and menu bar.
- On the left, under “Control Center” you can access each of the elements present in this place and choose whether or not you want them to appear in the bar. You can’t delete them from the Control Center.
- If you go to the part where it says “Other modules” you will find some options available to put in the Control Center and in the menu bar.
- Already in the lower part you can control the items that can only be present in the menu bar.