12 ways to make your computer look and sound better

Twelve ways to make your computer look and sound better

This article has been updated. Originally published on December 7, 2017

When starting a brand new computer, you expect it to deliver the latest technology, from gorgeous visuals to clear audio. While your unboxing experience will be pretty good, desktop operating systems like Windows and macOS cater to the tastes and preferences of most users, which doesn't necessarily fit your personal preferences. To make the software perfect for you, you can adjust a variety of visual and audio settings. From changing the operating system's interface to enabling all connected speakers, these 12 tips for PC and Mac will give you complete control over the appearance and sound of your computer.

Windows display and sound prompts

1. Change the theme

Tired of the same old Windows colors and wallpapers? Change the theme: The prepackaged look of the operating system. A single theme can include wallpaper images, color schemes, cursor icons, and even related sound effects.

To switch themes, click

Start menu

and click Gear icon to open Settings . Then select Personalization and Theme. At first you will only see a few topics on the screen, but you can access more topics by clicking in the Microsoft Store . To download the theme from the store, select it and click to get . After selecting your favorite theme (download it if it is not immediately available), select it from the

Theme

dialog box. If you like most aspects of the theme, but for example wallpaper is not your favorite, no problem – you can customize each element individually. Just click on any element to change it. 2. Adjust color and transparency

If you don't want to make large-scale visual changes with your new theme, you can adjust the color, focus, and transparency instead. For example, the focus settings control how often the focus color appears, for example, whether you see it on the window's title bar or on the Start menu. Transparency settings determine the effect, such as whether you can see wallpaper through the taskbar.

Similarly, open the settings by clicking the gear icon on the Start menu. Then select

Personalization

and Color. Want to create a new color scheme based on your wallpaper? Check the box marked automatically select the accent color from my background. Otherwise, select a color from the palette. Any changes you make will appear immediately, so you can view the effects and adjust them as needed. In addition to the color picker, you will also see options that allow you to add your own custom colors, set the degree of use of accent colors, or turn the transparency effect on and off.

3. Turn off the visual effect

Windows comes with visual effects such as shadows under the mouse pointer and menu fading, which makes the operating system pleasing to the eye. If you don't like these effects, you can turn off any or all of them. In addition to reducing visual effects, this can also slightly increase the speed of the computer, as the machine doesn't have to deal with all of these visual effects.

In the taskbar search box, start typing "Adjust the Appearance..." and you should see an option with Adjust the Appearance and Performance of Windows . Click it and open the Visual Effects tab. Here you have three options: let Windows choose what it thinks is best for your computer, optimize performance for the best look, and optimize performance for the best performance.

[Related: How to upgrade your computer's graphics card]

For more granular control, select Custom to turn on or off individual visuals using the checkbox. Choose the set of options that best suit your taste.

4. Connect your speakers

If your computer has a nice 5.1 surround sound setup, you need to make sure your operating system and all your applications make the most of it. Here is how to coordinate your software and speakers.

Type "Control Panel" in the search box on the taskbar, and then open the Control Panel application. From there, click Hardware and Sound and then click Sound. Under the Play tab, you should see a list of devices. Select your speaker from the list and click Configure and a drop-down list will appear. Select the correct settings from this menu depending on the number of speakers you are connected to.

After selecting the speaker, you will see the audio configuration diagram on the right side of the screen. Click the Test button to make sure it is working. To complete this process, click Next and then click to finish .

5. Customize your notifications

Don't like the low battery warning, the shuffle effect accompanied by the recycling bin clearance, or any other random noise from your computer? You can customize all of these notifications.

Type "Control Panel" in the taskbar search box and open the application. Select Hardware and Sound and then click Change system soundSuggestions or click Sound and open the Sound tab. Click any program events in the list and select (None) from the drop-down menu under Sounds to disable audio alerts, or select a different sound file from the menu.

You can also perform some other tasks from this menu. If you have specific sound clips for events, click to browse to select them from your computer. To turn off the sound completely, open the Sound Scheme drop-down menu and select No sound. You can even enable or disable Windows boot sound using its own separate checkbox.

6. Switch to mono audio

If you want to listen to music through one headset, or you need to pay attention to the outside world while watching movies on your computer, consider switching Windows to mono instead of stereo.

To do this, please open Settings by clicking the gear icon in the Start menu. Then select to easily access and audio. You will find the mono audio toggle switch on this page. Once it is turned on, all applications on the system will make sounds in mono. To change back to stereo, just turn off the switch again. MacOS display and sound prompts

7. Change the color scheme

The macOS interface uses the set colors to emphasize the elements you see on the screen, including dialog boxes and menu bars. You can adjust these shades to change your view and emphasize your favorite shades.

To do this, open the

Apple

menu, select System Preferences, and go to the General section. Here you can select new highlight colors for menus and highlights, and you can also decide whether menus, buttons and windows follow light colors , dark colors or variable (Auto)Theme. On the same screen, you can also resize the sidebar icon and choose to show or hide the scrollbar. 8. Choose the perfect wallpaper

For the overall look of your computer screen, your wallpaper choices dominate the look (especially when you close or minimize all applications). While it’s important to choose a good wallpaper, Apple also allows you to choose to loop through a set of images, giving your screen a ever-changing background.

To set the wallpaper, click the

Apple

menu, then click System Preferences, and then click Desktop and Screen Saver. Open the Desktop tab to select the picture. Apple offers its own choices under the title Apple or you can select your own image from your hard drive by clicking the plus icon .

[Related: Where to find great wallpapers to enhance your device]

If you want to change your wallpaper periodically, create a folder with your favorite images and add it to the above

under the

Desktop tab >Folder list and click on one of the images to set it as the desktop background. Then use the options at the bottom of the window to decide how often you want the graphics to switch and whether they rotate in a set order or random order. Now macOS will loop through all wallpapers in that folder. 9. Fine-tune Dock When you launch and switch your favorite macOS app, you may find yourself visiting Dock frequently. So make sure you customize it according to your personal preferences. Open the

Apple

menu and select

System Preferences

and then select Dock and menu bar to adjust the appearance of the app launcher.

Size Slide on the top, it changes the Dock's size. Then toggle the Zoom in option to set whether the Dock item will zoom in and out when you hover your mouse cursor over it. Position on the screen Check box allows you to move the Dock from its regular position that is usually located at the bottom of the display to the left or right of the screen. Finally, you can decide whether the Dock will automatically hide when it is not in use and control the animations performed when the application opens.

10. Browse better

Finder is the window you enter the contents of a macOS machine. It comes with a variety of customization options that make it easier to be seen by the eyes – whatever you think is “easy to be seen by the eyes”.

First open a Finder window. Click the three dots

in the upper right corner of the window, and then select from the menu that appears. Here you can adjust settings such as the size of the icons and the grid they reside, the text size, and the position of the label. If you use the drop-down menu near the center of the window to select whether to view items in the form of icon , column , list or gallery You will see different options. Another menu at the top of the window allows you to change the listing and sorting of files: by date, size, name, etc. 11. Custom sound effects

When you interact with macOS, you will hear various sound effects. While some people will be happy with these default alerts, you may want to customize them to your liking.

You can find most of these options by clicking the

Apple

menu, then

System Preferences and then Sound. Under Sound Effects, you can see all clips used by macOS to remind you of updates or warning you about the problem. Click any item in this list to listen to the sound. You can also use the slider below to adjust the volume level for each effect individually. Finally, you can turn off all sound notifications by unchecking the Play the UI sound effect box. 12. Configure external speakers

If you want to play audio from macOS machines on multiple external speakers, you need to configure them correctly. The best way is to set up the application via audio MIDI.

You can find this application by searching for it in Spotlight: click the

magnifying glass icon

on the menu bar or press the

Cmd Space keyboard shortcut. If you have set up the speakers correctly (follow the instructions included with the hardware), they should appear in the list on the left. Click the speaker name and select Configure speaker . At this point, you can tell macOS how they are arranged so that it knows exactly how to output audio to them. When finished, click Apply , and then click to finish . The audio MIDI settings also allow you to set more specifically if necessary: ​​you can adjust the volume of each speaker.

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