Apple laptop:
Managing files, desktop, and profile
This short, animated course shows you how to organise your files on your computer's desktop so they are easy to find. We show you how to create and name new folders, and how to move files into these folders using the drag and drop method.
You'll also learn how to personalise your computer by adding a wallpaper image as your desktop background, and how to add a personal photo to your computer profile.
Watch our animation by pressing the Play button below, or click on the handy Chapters icon in the video playbar to go straight to the information you want to see, such as how to:
- organise the desktop
- create desktop folders
- change the desktop wallpaper
- set your profile picture.
Sign in to save your progress
Transcript
Welcome to the "Apple laptop: Managing Files Desktop and Profile" course. You'll learn how to organise files on your computer's desktop. How to choose the desktop background picture and how to change the profile picture you see when you sign into your computer.
The screen you see when you first sign into your computer is the desktop. You might use your desktop to store some of the files and folders you use most often. If your desktop gets cluttered with lots of things, it can be hard to find what you're looking for. Let's look at a handy way to keep your desktop tidy.
First, right click on an empty part of the desktop to open the right-click menu. From the right-click menu, move your cursor over Sort By to reveal a list of options to help you sort your desktop. Let's sort the items on the desktop by name. Carefully move the cursor over the blue Sort By option, towards the list of options, and then down to Name. Click it to sort the items on the desktop in alphabetical order from the right, according to their name.
Let's look at some of the other ways you can sort your desktop. Open the right-click menu once more and place your mouse pointer over Sort By to see these options again. Kind will group the files that are alike. It puts all your pictures together, for example. Date Last Opened, Added, Modified and Created will sort the files in order of when you last made those changes to each file. Size will sort them in order of how much space each file takes up on your hard drive. And Tags will sort your files by the labels you've added to them. For this demonstration, we'll click None. And the icons on the desktop will go back to where they started from.
If you have lots of files to organise, you can group them into folders. For this demonstration, we have some files on the desktop from a health check-up and also some files from a garden renovation. We're going to create two folders for these categories.
Right click on an empty part of the desktop to open the right-click menu. At the top of this menu, click New Folder and a new folder will appear on the desktop. It will be called 'untitled folder' and the name of the folder will be highlighted. Start typing to change the name to Gardening. Press Enter to finish.
Now let's repeat those steps to create another folder called Medical. Let's look at how to move files into these folders to organise the desktop.
For this demonstration, we're going to click and drag the gardening files into the Gardening folder. Use your mouse to click once and hold on a file. Now move your mouse to drag the file over to the Gardening folder. When it's over the folder, remove your finger from the mouse to release the file. If the file disappears, that's because it's been dropped into the folder. You can use this method to organise all the files on your desktop. For this demonstration, we'll move all the gardening files into the Gardening folder. When that's done, we'll move all the medical files into the Medical folder. When we're done, the desktop will be neat and tidy.
To see the files inside a folder on your desktop, double-click it. A finder panel will open showing all the files inside. At the top of the panel, you'll see some options that let you change how the files are shown. In this demonstration the files are shown in a list, but we can click the first option, which looks like a grid of four squares to see the files as icons. Now each file presents with a tiny picture. This is known as a thumbnail. A thumbnail helps you quickly see what's what. Some files will show as an icon instead of a thumbnail. The icon will let you know what kind of file it is.
To open a file within the folder, simply double-click on it. When you're done, click the red dot in the top left corner to close it.
Now your desktop is organised. You might like to personalise it a bit more. Let's look at this now. You can personalise your desktop by changing the picture or colour that appears on it. First, right click on the desktop to open the right-click menu. Find Change Wallpaper and click on it. The System Settings panel will open showing the wallpaper options. Here you will see some wallpaper options that come with your computer. Click on any of the small pictures and the desktop will change right away to show the new wallpaper.
You can also use a personal photo or other image that you've saved on your computer for your wallpaper. Scroll down to the bottom of the wallpaper options. Look for the Add Folder button at the bottom of the panel and click it. A new finder panel will appear. In this demonstration, we have a folder in Documents to which we've saved our favourite desktop wallpaper images. Click on the folder that has your images in it and click on the file you want to use as your desktop wallpaper. Then at the bottom right of the Finder panel, click Choose. The Finder panel will disappear, and the desktop will instantly change to your new wallpaper.
If you scroll back down to the bottom of the wallpaper options, you'll see there's now a shortcut here that lets you change your wallpaper to any of the files that were in the folder you selected. Click on any of these to change your wallpaper.
Your profile picture appears in the circle on the Sign-in screen. It might also appear on emails you send to others or in some applications and web browsers. It's safe to set a profile picture that's a photo of yourself, but if you're not comfortable with the idea, don't worry. Your computer will work just as well without one.
You should still have the wallpaper options open in the System Settings panel. On the left side of the panel, look for Users & Groups and click on it to see the users and group settings. At the top of this panel is a list of all the users who have accounts with the computer along with their profile pictures.
Click on the profile picture you want to change. A new panel with some profile picture options will appear. You can click on any of these to use them as your new profile picture. On the left, you can click Emoji, Monogram or Suggestions to explore more options. If your computer has a webcam, you can click Camera to take a selfie or Photos to choose from images in your photo gallery.
Let's look at another way to change your profile picture using an image you have saved to your computer. At the bottom of the panel, click Cancel to return to Users & Groups. Look for the information icon to the right of your Sign-in name, it looks like a circle with a letter I. Click it and a pop-up box will appear showing your Sign-in name and current profile image plus some other information. Move the mouse down to the dock to locate the finder app. Then click it. When the Finder opens, locate the image you want to use. If the Finder panel opens on top of the Users & Groups panel, you can click and drag it to the side so you can see both at the same time. The image we want is in the Gardening folder on our desktop so let's double-click this folder to see the files inside. Now we'll click and drag the image onto the current picture in the Users & Groups panel. Take your finger off the mouse to drop the image onto your current profile picture. The profile picture panel we saw earlier will reappear with a preview of the profile picture at the bottom left.
If the Finder panel is still in front, click the panel with the profile picture options. Below this is a slider control that you can use to zoom in or out of the image. Use your mouse to move the button on the slider to the right to make the image larger and to the left to make it smaller. Once you're happy with how the picture looks in the preview circle, click Save on the bottom right side of the panel. The profile picture next to the name has now been updated and you can click Done to return to the Users & Groups panel.
You should now know how to keep the files and folders on your desktop, neat and tidy, and how to use images to personalise your computer and accounts.
If you are unsure about any steps, you can rewind the video or click the chapter headings to jump to the start of a chapter. If you are ready to move on, there are many other courses to explore on Be Connected.