System Settings palette

I’m posting In case someone finds this useful. I know there’s a version out there with a series of icons like the old System Preferences, but I find a simple list does it for me.

The modern less-friendly System Settings has been out for over three years now and I still have issues finding basic stuff like sleep settings. So I created a group called System Settings with a palette set to show up when a hot key is pressed. Each macro in the group is named in a way that’s natural for me, and consists of an Open URL setting using Apple’s scheme for opening System Settings panels, sometimes followed by an action or two if the URL doesn’t quite open to the right place.

Some of the actions do the same thing but with a different name as I remember it different ways sometimes. For example Sound and Audio both go to the Sound panel.

I only include stuff for which I have difficulty remembering where they are.

Here’s what the palette currently looks like, but I’ll likely add a few more.

And here’s one of the macros as an example. Most of the macros have just the Open URL settings, but this one needs to position you to where the Extensions panel is hidden.

Image 2026-01-18 at 1.23 PM.jpeg

Extensions.kmmacros (25.6 KB)

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@Richard_Tench

Thanks for posting this information.

In the spirit of adding to your helpful information...

I found this web page describing this topic a bit more. It is a bit old but the main themes hold true.

I also put together a simple AppleScript to help get the System Settings URL for your specific version of macOS as these URLs change over time.

AppleScript

(*

To find the Pane ID of a specific pane, open the System Settings app and select the desired Settings Pane. With the pane selected, open the ScriptEditor.app and run the following script to copy the current Pane ID to your clipboard and display any available anchors

*)

tell application "System Settings"

set CurrentPane to the id of the current pane

set the clipboard to CurrentPane

--get the name of every anchor of current pane

get the id of the current pane

end tell

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That’s the one I referenced in my post, thanks for the link.