15 Mac PRIVACY & SECURITY Setting you Have to Change on macOS Sequoia

• There are numerous security threats in our digital environment.
• This video discusses 15 settings that can enhance the security and privacy of your Mac.
• Key features include ad tracking limits, password requirements, and more.
• Learn how to secure your Wi-Fi and Safari settings effectively.
• Keeping your Mac and applications updated is crucial for security.

There are many security threats all around us, especially in the digital area, so it's never a bad idea to be a step ahead. In this video, I want to show you not only five or 10, but 15 different settings which have a direct impact on the security and privacy on your Mac.

Let's start off with one simple switch. If you prefer to browse more anonymously and don't like targeted ads, you can easily limit ad tracking in the Privacy and Security section of your system settings. Here, scroll all the way down to Apple Advertising and disable Personalized Ads.

If you enjoy the offers and ads more tailored to your browsing history, you can always leave this switch on, but I value my own privacy more than that. Later in this video, I'll discuss safer advertising as well. There is one new amazing tool in macOS which can remove all of the annoying ads on the web even if you keep the Apple advertising active.

But now, let's go one step back and scroll up in the Privacy and Security tab. Here, go to Location Services, click on the details next to System Services, and turn off Significant Locations tracking. This will stop your Mac from tracking all of your movements and all the places you have recently visited.

But don't worry; these settings won't impact any other location services like your Apple Maps or the Weather app. If you actually want to know exactly when your system or any app is requesting your location, you can enable the Show Location icon. Now it will appear in the menu bar and always show you.

Now let's leave the Privacy and Security tab and go right above to Lock Screen. As you can imagine, you should definitely be using a password at login no matter if your Mac stays at home all the time. It's good to have it locked to prevent anybody from accessing all of your documents, passwords, accounts, and other things.

The question is, how often do you want to require the password? You can choose from these options; it can be required from immediately up to never. Now I'll just give you my suggestions, but we can talk about it more in the comments below. You can share with me how you have it set.

I know you might be tempted to set it as immediate, but that seems a little bit inconvenient. Imagine if I just put my computer to sleep, close the lid, and then remember I just needed to do one more thing. I would have to unlock it again. For me, 5 minutes seems just fine, especially if it's a desktop computer. If it's your MacBook that you carry around with you all the time, you might consider putting it down to 1 minute.

Anyway, if you have any newer model, you can just unlock it with the Touch ID or using your Apple Watch, so the password will not cause you any troubles or inconveniences. While we are here, we can look at one more option: you can actually show a message on the lock screen. If this option is dimmed, just click on it, and it will prompt you to authenticate the change. As I said, I can do it with the Touch ID.

Thanks to that, you can set a note that everybody will see on the lock screen. In other words, if you forget your Mac somewhere, it's easy for somebody to just open it and see in that note either your phone number or email address where they can contact you to return it. You can type here whatever you want, and it can be a really long note.

Let's move on and have a look at Wi-Fi settings. There is one new option in macOS, but let's start with the basics. All the way down here, select Ask to Join Networks. When you are not connected to any known network, the Mac will always keep on searching for available Wi-Fi. If this switch is not activated, it might automatically connect to any available network, even those with a very low security.

Using this toggle, it will always have to ask you before joining any unknown network, so it's really useful to have it activated. Also, keep in mind that sometimes you may join networks that you don't fully trust, like maybe at some coffee shop or the airport. So every time you join a new network like that, make sure to go into the details of that network and maybe turn off Automatically Joining it if you are not so sure about its Wi-Fi security.

Once we are here, activate the new macOS feature called Rotating Wi-Fi Address. By the way, I talked about this in my other video where I showed you all of these secret new features in macOS, so check it out right after we are done with all of the privacy and security stuff. After you activate this, your Wi-Fi address will from time to time change, which will reduce the chances of your Wi-Fi address being tracked. This is an easy way to help increase your privacy.

But be aware of the negative effect of this option, especially if you're playing online games. It's recommended to have a fixed Wi-Fi and fixed IP address. If this change happens, it might actually disconnect you from the game, and trust me, there is nothing more annoying than that if you're just about to win a race or win another battle.

Let's get serious again. Now, even if you have the Wi-Fi set correctly, you might sometimes download the wrong file, or it might download automatically. It would not be such a big problem because you can easily delete the file. But Safari is set by default to automatically open these files after downloading, which is not only annoying but potentially dangerous.

For this, we need to leave system settings for a moment and go to Safari. Here, open the menu on top and go to Safari Settings. On the first General tab, you can find an option to Open Saved Files After Downloading. So in other words, if you download a picture or PDF—or anything Apple considers saved—it will automatically open it straight away.

It's not so hard to click on it in your downloads folder in the dock and open it yourself whenever you want, so go ahead and take it off. Once we are here in Safari, go to Privacy Settings and make sure that this option is actually ticked on: Hide IP Address from Trackers. In general, Safari is already blocking trackers from profiling you across websites. I'll show you that in Safari Privacy Report in a second, but with the ability to hide your IP address, trackers cannot determine your location or your browsing history, which is really good.

However, you are still leaving traces on all of the websites you visit. We can prevent even that! If you are subscribed to any iCloud Plus plan, which most of us are, you can also extend this feature to stop websites from tracking you as well. It's called Private Relay. The option will appear here, but first we need to activate it in system settings.

So, let's go back to the other desktop and set it up. First, go to your Apple Account, choose iCloud, and here click on Private Relay. Once it's activated, you will find that this changes in Safari Settings as well. Now you can choose to Hide Your IP Address from Trackers and Websites. Private Relay is very useful because it enables total IP masking from both the trackers and the websites.

So now, nobody will be able to see what sites you are visiting—not a single party, not even Apple! It's worth mentioning that Private Relay also masks your IP address from profiling you across different applications on your device, so not only on the Safari browser, but you will be safe in any other games and applications you are using.

Now, to finish with Safari, I mentioned the Privacy Report. You can't actually set anything here; it's more like information showing you the number of trackers which were prevented from profiling you, but it's still useful. Usually, you will see quite a large number here. If the number on yours is much lower than that, double check in Safari settings that you have the Cross-Site Tracking Prevention active.

You will also find it on the Privacy tab, same as the IP address. As you can imagine, this feature is not available on Chrome or other browsers, which is obvious because Google's main business is coming from ads. So if you use Chrome on your Mac, be aware of the large number of people who are following you on every website.

Regardless of all of these settings, you will still see ads on the web. Look at this website, for example; basically half of it is just ads. So to avoid accidentally clicking on any of them and eventually visiting unwanted websites or downloading the wrong file, it's better to just remove these banners completely, and Safari can do it now!

Click on this button in the menu bar and select Hide Distracting Items, and now I am in full control over that. With every click, I can remove any section of a website! It appears to be even more successful on top of this; they are probably blocked already by the previous tracking preventive settings we did. Now the web looks much cleaner, and it will stay like this even after refreshing the page.

Now we are done with Safari, but not with this video. There is a lot more to see! If you have already learned something new, please leave a like on this video. It's a small thing for you, but it can mean a lot to my channel in order to reach more people and share these tips among them.

But now, back to system settings. This time go to Software Update; you can find it on the General tab. Here, click on the info icon next to Automatic Updates. If you want to be safe from all security threats, you should keep your macOS up to date. I recommend having all of these checkboxes selected.

Remember, it's not just important to keep your system up to date to get all of the security patches, but also all of your applications you are using should be in their newest versions as well. Despite my recommendations, you can see that I have these two picked up, but the only reason for that is because I want to check what is new in the updates in order to create these videos for you.

I would never uncheck this last one: Install Security Responses and System Files. It's an important option that allows macOS to install security updates in the background, even without requiring a system restart. This feature is fairly new to macOS, so make sure you have it ticked on as well.

To be more on the safe side with the apps we are putting on our Mac, we can block installing all of the applications from outside of the Mac App Store because applications from there are managed by Apple for higher security. We can do that on the Mac. You can find this option here under Privacy and Security, nearly at the bottom of this page. In the drop-down menu, just select Applications Only from the App Store.

You can switch this anytime. For example, if somebody else is using your Mac, you can block them from installing some apps outside of the Mac App Store. But for yourself, you can still keep it active and change it to Trusted Developers because there are still so many applications missing on the App Store.

Now, let's go back to the top level of system settings and go to General again. Here, you will find one more tab for sharing. To make it simple, you should have everything turned off here. Even if this is off, I can still share files between my devices and connect to any external screen; it has nothing to do with that.

But if any of these switches are on, basically, anybody on the same network can see your computer; they can see your name of the computer and even the stuff you have shared. It's not such a big security problem, but it's better to stay on the safe side and disable it as well.

Let's finish this video with Siri. “Hey Siri, how are you?” Well, you might not be so happy anymore after I disable you a little bit. Let's go now to Siri in system settings and here you should see one option: Allow Siri When Locked. There are people capable of accessing certain things just by using Siri, and there is really no reason for you to be using that on the lock screen, so I would really recommend switching this off.

It was a fairly long video. I believe you have been already doing a lot of these techniques; if not, then hopefully you have learned something new. There is one more thing you should secure for yourself now, and that is to get all of the tips and tutorials in the future. You can do that by simply clicking on the Subscribe button because I have a lot more things to show you. So see you in the next video!