How to Put a Calculator in the Mac Notifications Center

The Mac Notifications Center can do more than tell users when there’s an email in their inbox or when an appointment starts. For instance, users can add a calculator in the Mac notifications Center. This makes it quickly available when the user needs to do some quick calculations with only one or two clicks.

Apple designed the Mac Notifications Center to use widgets that make users more productive. Add a calculator, weather or social networking widgets that let users post to Facebook or Twitter right from the right side bar on a Mac. We’ll show you how to add a calculator, but this works with other widgets for apps that come with every Mac or that users install from the Mac App Store. You can learn how to post to social networks from the Apple support site.

How to Put a Calculator in the Mac Notification Center

Calculator in the Mac Notifications Area

We’ll show you how to put a calculator in the Mac Notifications Center.

The Mac Notification Center sits on the right edge of the screen. To put a calculator in the Mac Notification Center, open the Notification Center by clicking on the small icon on the right-most part of the menu bar. It looks like a bullet list.

The Notifications Center holds two tabs. One shows the “Today” notifications. That’s where OS X puts the widgets like the Calculator in the Mac Notification Center in the above screenshot. The other “Notifications” tab next to the Today tab holds app notifications from any app installed on the computer that uses the Notifications Area to tell users timely things like when an iTunes podcast becomes available to download or when a calendar appointment notice pops up to let the user know their appointment will start soon. Users can dismiss these notices by clicking on the tiny X at the top of each section of notifications.

To put a Calculator in the Mac Notification Center Today section click on the Edit button at the bottom of the Notifications Center. The Notifications Center doubles in size and all the available widgets not already activated will show up as available and ready for the user to add. Find the Calculator tool and click on the tiny green plus icon next to it.

how to add a calculator in the mac notifications are

Click on the green plus icon to add the calculator in the Mac Notifications Center.

Click on the green plus sign next to the name of the widget in the right column of the Notifications Center to add it to the Today screen.

After adding the calculator in the Mac Notifications Center, users can click on the Notifications icon and start using the calculator. If it’s not showing after using the above steps, click the Notifications icon and then click on the Today tab.

How to Remove the Calculator

If users want to get rid of the calculator or any other tool on the Today tab, then they should open the Notification Center by clicking on the menu bar icon, click on Edit at the bottom of the area and then click on the red minus icon instead of the green plus icon. This removes the widget from the area.

how to remove a calculator in the mac notifications are

Click the red minus icon to remove the calculator.

OS X includes a few tools that a user can add. Get rid of any tools you don’t plan to use by clicking the minus icon next to that widget as well. For example, I don’t use the Stocks widget. It just takes up space. I removed it from the Today area by clicking on the red minus icon.

How to Put the Calculator at the Top or Bottom

reorder widgets using the hamburger icon

Drag the tiny hamburger icon to reorder widgets.

If the user wants to keep the calculator widget at the top because she uses it a lot, then open it up by clicking on the Notifications Center icon in the upper right corner. Click on the Edit button at the bottom of the Notifications Center. Now drag the hamburger icon at the right end of the dark gray bar that holds the tools title. It looks like three horizontal lines.

Create a Keyboard Shortcut to Open Notifications Center

Open the Notifications center quickly with a keyboard shortcut. To do this, open System Preferences using the icon on the Dock or by clicking on System Preferences from the Apple menu in the upper left corner of the OS screen. Find the Keyboard preferences in the second row and click on it.

Open Keyboard Shortcuts

The Keyboard System Preferences will open. On the left side column click on Missions Control and then put a check mark in Show Notification Center.

Add Notifications Area Keyboard Shortcut

A box shows up to the right of the “Show Notification Center” item. Click in it and enter the keyboard shortcut you want to use. Use the F8 key, which doesn’t do anything in OS X unless the user opens iTunes. On most Macs this requires the user to press the Fn key and the Play/Pause key above the 7 and 8 keys. The Fn key will make the F-keys live instead of the shortcut keys which share the F-keys.

Close the Keyboard Shortcuts box and try out your new keyboard shortcut. It should open the Mac Notification Center and show the new calculator. That’s the last step to put a calculator in the Mac Notification Center.

Related Posts

Advertisement