5 Default macOS Features You Should Disable Immediately
These hidden settings slow you down daily.
Apple has an obsession with over-optimizing things, which can be quite harmful for daily productivity.
Unnecessary animations, constant notifications, and background tasks quietly kill your efficiency.
Here are the five defaults you should turn off if you want your Mac to feel faster, cleaner, and actually productive.
#1: Dock Animations
In the default Dock, apps bounce, icons magnify, and windows swoop down into the Dock. It looks pretty, but feels sluggish when you’re actually working.
But the bouncing app icons are a built-in distraction system — begging for your attention every time something opens. It's just too much.
The solution: Go to System Settings → Desktop & Dock and disable “Animate opening applications” and “Magnification.” Your apps will launch instantly, without the cartoon flourish.
Pro tip: You can turn off dock pop-up animation entirely.
All you have to do is open the terminal app on your Mac and paste this command.
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -int 0; killall DockIf you want to revert to the default animation, use:
defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier; killall Dock#2: Notifications: Focus Modes
MacOS assumes you want every app on your Mac to scream at you.
By default, every app is granted permission to send notifications. Calendar, Messages, Mail — fine. But random apps? Absolutely not.
Notifications are designed to destroy your focus. If you let Apple’s defaults decide, your Mac will get spammed with notifications 10 times an hour, 7 days a week.
Solution 1: Go to System Settings → Notifications. Turn off notifications for everything except the essentials (Messages, Calendar, maybe Mail). Leave the rest in silence.
Solution 2: Go to System Settings → Focus. Create a focus Mode, which is a specialized mode that will filter notifications based on what you’re doing when you turn it on.
You can select which apps can send notifications, who can call you, automate this by scheduling, and even set custom filters on applications to change how they behave.
Your attention is the most valuable resource on your Mac; don’t give it up.
#3: Background App Refresh
Your Mac is always running background processes from apps you can’t see.
Meaning, constant network calls, memory usage, and battery drain from apps you thought were closed. Background refresh quietly wastes system performance without giving you anything in return.
The solution: Head to System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions→ Background Items. Review the list and disable anything that isn’t essential.
A good rule of thumb is “If you don’t recognize it, you don’t need it.”
Your Mac should work for you, not for idle apps running in the shadows.
#4: Shake Mouse Pointer to Locate
This is kind of a fun one. Every time you lose your cursor, you can start violently swinging your mouse, and if the cursor becomes massive, it helps the user locate it.
While it’s meant to be helpful, the feature often triggers accidentally. It’s a tiny annoyance, which I am sure at least 1 out of 10 Mac users is bothered by.
The solution: Go to System Settings → Accessibility → Display and uncheck “Shake mouse pointer to locate.”
#5: Recent Folder in Finder.
The “Recents Folder” can be buggy and inconsistent. Files often go missing; some files don’t get added there at all. In some cases, a file appears and then, after a while, disappears.
Here is how we can create a much better Recents folder.
Solution: Navigate to Finder, right-click on the recents folder, and remove it from the sidebar. Next, in the Mac’s navigation bar(the strip at the top of the display) in Finder, select File → New Smart Folder.
Set filter to “Last opened date” within the past X days (7, 14, 30 — your choice). Save it and drag it to your Finder sidebar or the Dock.
Now you have a dedicated Recents folder that updates intelligently, without the inconsistency. You can even create multiple recent folders for various file types.
Bonus: Transparency & Motion Effects
macOS loves animations. They look great on a keynote stage — but some users, including myself, don't like them.
Transparency and motion are enabled system-wide by default. But if you want your Mac to feel faster and Sharper, here is how you can achieve that:
Go to System Settings → Accessibility → Display and enable “Reduce motion” and “Reduce transparency.” Your Mac will feel instantly snappier.
Final Thought: Never Settle for Average When Good is a Step Away.
If you want your Mac to be more productive, you have to strip away Apple’s defaults and rebuild it for speed, clarity, and focus.
Apple designs defaults to impress you on day one. Big animations, seamless syncing, notifications everywhere. It makes for a great keynote — but not so good long-term workflow.
If you want your Mac to feel like your machine, you have to strip away Apple’s defaults and rebuild it for speed, clarity, and focus.
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