By Graham K. Rogers

In the latest version of macOS, Sierra some System Preferences have seen changes. As many new Macs no longer have internal disk drives, the CDs & DVDs preferences panel may not be shown. The panel is used to control the actions of the computer when a disk drive is available.

The CDs & DVDs panel does not appear in the panel for System Preferences on my MacBook Pro. However, this may be available on an older Mac with an optical drive. It has remained unchanged from previous versions of OS X. Apart from minor word changes, this information has remained the same and I include it for information purposes.

These preferences allow users to control how the computer will behave when blank disks - or disks that have media on them - are inserted in a drive. Five disk options are available: blanks CDs, blank DVDs, music CDs, picture CDs and video DVDs. As before, blank disks options are separated slightly on the panel from those for media disks. Buttons for the blank disks have more options.

Beside each of the two blank disk items is a button with a number of choices, the top in each being, "Ask what to do": the Finder will alert a user and the user can then open an application, or deal with the disk in another way.

Other options available are: Open Finder, Open iTunes, Open Disk Utility, Open other application, Run script and Ignore. The blank DVD menu also has the additional item, Open iDVD. As an example of thoroughness, the tiny icons for iTunes and iPhoto actions have been updated from the previous versions in Mavericks as they were when moving from Mavericks to Mountain Lion.

The specific media items (music, pictures, video) each have as the top selection the probable default application for most users: iTunes, iPhoto or DVD Player (respectively). The user may select other applications, depending on the software installed on the computer. The buttons also allow a user to run a script or "Ignore".

See Also:

• Accessibility (1) - General and Vision
• Accessibility (2) - Media, Hearing and Interacting
• Accessibility (3) - Interacting: Switch Control and Dwell Control
• App Store
• Bluetooth
• Date & Time

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life. He can be followed on Twitter (@extensions_th)