Bored stiff with nothing around you except your Mac? You’re in luck, because there are plenty of things you can do on your Mac to stave off boredom. With apps like Automator and Grapher, you can spend quality time on your Mac entertaining and educating yourself at the same time.
We’ll look at ten things to do on your Mac when you’re bored. From decorating it to toying with the natively installed apps, we’ve covered it all.
1. Clean Up and Reorganize
To find the right mix between a fun and productivity, delete useless files and apps and organizing the useful ones on your Mac.
Delete unnecessary files and apps. To do this, from the menu bar, go to the Apple icon and click About This Mac > Storage tab > Manage. Then, from the Applications, Documents, and Music sections on the left, remove the apps and files you don’t need or use. Additionally, you can empty the Trash and automate future cleanup.
Once cleaned, sort the remaining useful data into different folders. Do this across your desktop (create folders to categorize the files), Finder (our Finder makeover guide covers this), and browser (deleting web history and managing bookmarks).
2. Decorate Your Mac
If internal cleanup and organization doesn’t sound as fun, try decorating your Mac. You can add stickers, apply fancy skins, and put snap-on cases.
Think stickers don’t sound that fun? You can even try painting your MacBook, as the YouTube Timmy Ham did.
By the way, decoration doesn’t only extend to the chassis. Read our Mac desktop personalization guide for detailed instructions on this.
3. Explore the World With Google Earth and Maps
Discovering the world is one of the best escapes when you’re bored. By using apps like Google Maps, Google Earth, and Apple Maps you can find new routes to go to work, look for fun places around your city, and even explore different countries in 3D and street view.
Another fun thing to do is to find out the true size of different countries. Since the Earth is round, flat maps are misleading (they stretch and squeeze different parts of the globe). But, by using websites like True Size, you can compare the actual size of countries with each other.
4. Talk to Siri
Though Siri is an AI and cannot answer questions creatively, by asking questions like “Are you married?” and “Can you rap?” you can try to start a conversation. Our list of funny things to ask Siri rounds up more questions that you can ask.
Try to ask Siri random questions, too—sometimes, the answers are witty and funny.
5. Learn a New Skill
You can use your Mac to learn new skills, like editing photos and videos or trying your hand at graphic design. Investing spare time in improving yourself is the best way you can spend it. If you get good enough at one thing, you can try freelancing to sell your skills online as a side hustle.
6. Record and Edit Videos
Recording a tutorial (even if you don’t upload it) is fun. You can record and edit videos of stuff you know about, all using native apps like QuickTime and iMovie. And if the final product is nice, you can even consider uploading it to YouTube.
Creating a YouTube channel just because you were bored sounds like a good story.
7. Check Out the iWork Suite
If you’ve only been using Microsoft Office, you can try out Apple’s iWork suite to eliminate boredom. For Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Apple has Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.
Though these apps are still improving, they can help with almost everything that you might use the Office suite for. And since these are free to use (and updates are free as well), you may just want to cancel your Microsoft 365 subscription (if you have one).
8. Look Up Random Words in the Dictionary
One of the best (and my personal favorite) pastimes on a Mac is looking up different terms in the Dictionary app. It works even if you’re offline and has an incredible amount of information saved up. And just like Wikipedia, you can hop from one search to another via linked terms.
So, if you want to read up about something, simply look it up and then start clicking different terms you want to read more about.
9. Set Up Automations With Automator
Automator is an app Apple pre-installs on your Mac. It lets you automate repetitive tasks or actions you take on multiple files. If properly added to your workflow, it can help you save a lot of time and effort. Our Mac Automator guide explains how you can use this app for your benefit in detail.
10. Mess Around in Grapher
Grapher is ranked down here only because it requires some math know-how. Otherwise, it’s hands down one of the most fun things you can do on your Mac without an internet connection.
To launch this app, press Cmd + Space for Spotlight Search, type in Grapher, and hit return. Now, from the dialog, choose either 2D or 3D graphs and play around using different equations.
Software engineer Michael Gottlieb has listed some of the coolest equations you can try on his website, MZRG.
There’s Always More to a Mac
Though not the most fun thing to do, cleaning up your Mac should always be a priority. It keeps your Mac’s performance up to scratch and makes you feel nice and tidy. However, doing some creative DIY Mac decoration is never a bad idea. If you don’t want that, you can still enjoy Apple’s Siri, Maps, and Grapher apps.
But this isn’t all that you can do when you’re bored. You can always watch YouTube videos, listen to podcasts, or start a new blog—or find things that don’t necessarily involve your Mac.
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