Apple's desktop operating system, OS X, is starting to look more and more like iOS, the system that runs iPads and iPhones.
One of the features that's crossing over, the Notification Center, helps keep you on top of emails, app updates, and so much more. With a quick glance at it, you can get a sense of your computer's current state of affairs.
Here are some excellent tricks we learned via Addictive Tips to make the Notification Center work a little harder for Mac users.
Access it more easily
Notification Center's default setting lets you activate it by clicking in the top-right corner of your screen. Surely we can do better than that.
Open up System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, then select Mission Control. Notice the unchecked box next to Notification Center. Check the box, enter a memorable keyboard shortcut, and then you're never more than a couple keystrokes away from seeing your notifications.
Change the background
You can do some lightweight remodeling to the Notification Center by following these instructions:
Navigate to Library > CoreServices. Right-click on the Notification Center app and select Show Package Contents. Open the Contents folder that appears, then open the Resources folder. The default background image is named linen.tiff and it lives in this folder. Put an image in here and rename it linen.tiff.
Then use the Activity Monitor to kill Notification Center. Open it again as you normally would and you should see a brand new background.
Mute the sound-based alerts
You can squash annoying notification sounds by navigating to System Preferences > Notifications and unchecking the "Play sound" box.
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