Yosemite’s here today and as seems to always be the case with Apple’s new operating systems, it comes with a handful of annoyances alongside its new features. Don’t worry though — most of the common annoyances can get fixed up with a few clicks.
If you’re leapfrogging Mavericks to get to Yosemite from an older release, be sure to check out our guide for fixing some of Mavericks’ annoyances, as they’re still applicable here.
Customise Spotlight’s Search
Spotlight got a huge overhaul in Yosemite. Now, on top of searching files, you can also search for stuff online. This is very handy for most of us, but it’s easy to see where the extended search results could become a bit annoying. Thankfully, you can customise your results in Spotlight. Just open up System Preferences and select Spotlight. Here, you can uncheck any boxes you don’t want showing up in search results. You can also grab and drag them to change the order they’re shown.
Bring Back The List View In iTunes 12
iTunes 12 got some changes this time around too. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re all stuck with the new interface and can’t bring back the old sidebar, but you can at least get the list view back. When you’re on the “My Music” tab, click the drop down on the right and change it to “Songs”. This will sort everything in the classic list format. You can also click the “Playlists” tab to get part of the sidebar back, although it doesn’t include all the same info as it used to.
In an equally annoying move, iTunes no longer has a update podcasts button. Instead, you have to highlight all of them, right-click, and select refresh.
Fix A Slow Notification Center
Notification Center is all new in Yosemite, and now includes widgets — just like on iOS. This is great, unless you happen to be on an older Mac. In that case, Notification Center might be a bit too slow to actually use. Thankfully, you can edit the widgets in Notification Center so they’re not such CPU hogs. Just pop open Notification Center, click the “Edit” button, and click the red symbols next to widgets to remove them. We found that deleting everything that relies on location (like weather) helped speed up the Notification Center quite nicely.
Reduce The Transparency
Alongside its added features, Yosemite has a new look, which includes a lot of transparency in windows. For some, this can be annoying. You can disable the transparency in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display. Just click the “Reduce Transparency” check box.
Get the Bookmarks Bar Back In Safari
Safari does away with the traditional bookmarks bar in favour of a sidebar. To get it back, select View > Show Favourites Bar. You can also get the tab bar and the status bar back here if you want them.
Turn Off Phone Calls But Keep Handoff’s Other Features
The new features in Handoff are awesome, but not everyone wants to receive their phone calls on their Mac. If you always have your phone with you, you’ll hear ringing in multiple places at once. You can turn off the phone calls while still keeping the rest of the Handoff features though. Open up FaceTime and select FaceTime > Preferences. Uncheck the box marked “iPhone Cellular Calls”.
Fix Poor Graphics Performance By Disabling Dashboard
If you’re experiencing poor graphics performance, some users have reported that turning Dashboard off helps. To give it a try to see if helps you, head into System Preferences > Mission Control and change the Dashboard setting to “Off”.
Comments
4 responses to “How To Fix OS X Yosemite’s Biggest Annoyances”
i was a fan of safaris sidebar in the previous version, this one is too bland and by the looks doesn’t support individual bookmark icons, anyway to get those back?
I want an option to INCREASE transparency. Now when I change volume, everything behind the big speaker icon is blurred all to hell, terrible when watching video.
Can I get my old old itunes back please?
Thats all well and good; but how do I stop myself saying ‘yosemite’ phonetically (as in to rhyme with vegemite)? That is my major problem right now.
since downloading yosemite when i open pictures in Facebook news feeds then close them i get logged out and go to a blank screen is there a solution to this i didn’t have the problem with lion os
My vlc player has stopped working since the upgrade, has this happened to anyone else? If so, is there a fix?