by How to make the most of Mountain Lion’s Messages Service
If you haven’t made the most of Mountain Lion’s new Messages app, we’ll get you going.
With every new device and new software release, it becomes increasingly clear that Apple’s plan for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad is to make them all work seamlessly together, with iCloud as the hub they all draw from. Nowhere is this more clear than when it comes to iMessage, Apple’s way of sending text and multimedia messages to your contacts for free. This feature has been available to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users for a while, enabling owners of those devices to talk to each other over Wi-Fi or 3G. But it has only become part of OS X with the arrival of Mountain Lion. The app lets you send messages to other Apple users, using either their phone number or email address, and to see your conversations. It actually serves as the replacement for the old iChat app. You can use the same app to talk to your AIM Buddies, your Google Chat contacts, and more. It’s now more of an instant messaging center than ever before.
While it’s easy to get Messages set up and working, there are a few things you can do to make it simpler to use. So check out our tips here to get the most out of it and chat smarter!
What You’ll Need:
>> OS X 10.8 Mountian Lion
1. Adjust Your Alerts
First, pull up Messages preferences and customize your alerts.
Go to Messages preferences, then click the Alerts tab. Here, you can choose Messages behavior when you receive a message, say, or an invitation to video chat. Choose the event to tweak from the drop-down menu, choose its sound, whether the app’s icon bounces, and more.
2. Adjust Your Notifications
You can also customize the kinds of alerts you get from Messages, and how they look.
Slightly different from the alerts, which occur within Messages, notifications from Messages are handled in Mountain Lion’s Notification Center. Go to System Preferences > Notification Center and select Messages to choose how they appear onscreen (if at all), and more.
3. Change the Appearance
Set the appearance of Messages on OS X to look like the iOS app, or however you like.
By default, Messages for the Mac uses slightly different font settings from Messages on iOS. To make the two the same, go to Messages > Preferences > Messages and click My Background Color. Click Aqua if you want the blue, then click Set Font and change it to Helvetica Neue.
4. Add Receiving Addresses
With the right adjustments you can receive messages from multiple accounts.
5. Change Sending Address
You can also change the sending address that accompanies your messages to others.
One of the handy results of adding multiple addresses for receiving messages is that you can choose any one you like to be your “Caller ID.” So when you send iMessages to someone who doesn’t already have you stored in their contacts, that’s the address they’ll see as the sender.
6. Send Multimedia and Files
