(Prior to macOS Ventura 13, Settings were referred to as Preferences.)
There are multiple ways to open the Particulars settings window.
The default mode of Particulars is to present system information on the desktop. This can be disabled, usually in favor of showing Particulars in the menu bar.
Adds a Particulars item to the macOS menu bar which allows quick access to system information. Secondary-clicking on the menu bar item shows a menu with settings, copying, and other functions.
The system information that Particulars displays on the desktop or in the menu bar is defined by the detail level. There are 3 standard levels. Each level is a superset of the previous level. Hardware shows computer name, model, serial number, CPU, RAM, GPU, and operating system. Status adds current user, uptime, and disk free space. Network adds the configuration of the primary active network interface.
The 4th detail level, Custom, reveals checkboxes for each particular piece of system information that can be used to configure a custom detail level:
Enables the app to automatically launch when the current user logs in. This setting is often combined with Hide dock icon, so that Particulars runs as a background app.
(When enabling this setting on macOS Ventura and later, macOS presents a Login items added notification. When a Mac with Particulars enabled to launch at login is upgraded from macOS Monterey or earlier to macOS Ventura or later, Particulars updates its launch at login setting to be compatible with macOS Ventura. This update also results in this notification.)
Enabling this setting removes Particulars from the macOS Dock. This setting is often combined with Launch at login, so that Particulars runs as a background app. Enabling and disabling this setting will automatically restart Particulars to make the change effective immediately.
When enabled, relaunch the application or use the menu bar item to open the settings window.
Sets the display (or monitor) on which Particulars will show desktop system information. If this display is later unavailable, Particulars will use the primary display until the preferred display is reattached.
System information can be positioned in 9 different places on the desktop. Choose 1 of the 9 positions from the 3x3 grid of radio buttons.
| Top Left | Top Center | Top Right |
| Middle Left | Middle Center | Middle Right |
| Bottom Left | Bottom Center | Bottom Right |
Particulars has 3 built-in themes: System, Classic, and Mono. The System theme is the default and uses the current system font. (Current versions of macOS use the San Francisco font.) The Classic theme was the default before Particulars 47 and uses the Lato font. The Mono theme uses a monospaced font. Mono will use Menlo, or SF-Mono if installed.
Alternatively, a custom theme can be used. The Custom theme gives full control over the font, size, color, and opacity of the system information on the desktop.
In all cases, if a font fails to load, Particulars defaults to the Default theme.
Text shade can be set to Auto, Light, or Dark. In Auto mode, the desktop background image is analyzed and the mode is chosen based on the color content of the background. Auto mode will reanalyze the background if it is changed or another space is activated. (If Auto mode encounters problems loading or analyzing the background image, it defaults to Light.)
(When using a Custom theme, the Text shade option is hidden and Auto mode is disabled.)
Sets the preferred text size to any value between 12 and 24 pt.
Text may be scaled down to fit on the desktop.
(The Text size option is hidden when using a Custom theme.)
Sets the case of letters in labels. It can be Unaltered, lower or UPPER case.
Turns drop shadow on or off.
By default, the menu bar widget follows the system appearance (Light or Dark mode). The appearance can be explicitly set to light or dark, with or without vibrancy. When vibrancy is enabled, the widget pulls colors from windows behind it into the background.
Sets the preferred text size in the menu bar widget to any value between 9 and 24 pt.
Text may be scaled down so that the widget is no taller than 75% of display height.
There are checkboxes for each particular piece of network information that can be displayed:
* Showing the SSID requires that the user grant location permission on macOS 14.4 and later
(Displaying network information can be enabled or disabled globally in the Detail Level of the General tab.)
By default, MAC (Media Access Control) addresses are formatted with colon separators and in lowercase. There are other MAC address formats available.
| Name | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Plain | lowercase, no separators | 0123456789ab |
| Unix (default) | lowercase, colon separated | 01:23:45:67:89:ab |
| Cisco | lowercase, dot separated | 0123.4567.89ab |
| Windows/IEEE | uppercase, dash separated | 01-23-45-67-89-AB |
Particulars shows the DHCP server address and the length of the DHCP lease. Enabling this setting will also show the remaining lease time.
Use this setting to have Particulars display subnet masks in the short CIDR (Classless Inter-domain Routing) notation. For example, 255.255.254.0 will show as /23.
By default, Particulars only displays information about the primary active network interface. To show information about all active network interfaces, check this setting.
This settings adds the operating system version's marketing name (e.g., Ventura, Monterey, etc) to the Operating system output.
The Show disk space as dropdown has 3 options:
By default, Particulars only shows disk space for the boot disk. Enable this setting to show disk space for other disks.