When to use Präteritum vs Perfekt in German?
Please, can someone explain to me how the two are different in terms of when you use them? Is one more spoken and the other written? I'm just a bit confused how to use these tenses correctly!

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In written texts, we use Perfekt when talking about an action whose result is still visible. It's similar to the present perfect tense in English. For anything else in the past, especially common narration, we use Präteritum.

In spoken language we use Perfekt for almost anything in the past, except for a few verbs, like auxiliary verbs (sein, haben) and modal verbs (müssen, sollen, wollen, ..), which we mostly use in Präteritum.

Answer

I think we almost always use the Perfekt when speaking. For example:
Ich aß einen Keks. - wich ist totally correct to say, but we don't really do. You'll mostly hear:
Ich habe einen Keks gegessen.
The Präteritum is sometimes used when speaking about diffrent actions in a time period. Maybe like:
Erst habe ich einen Keks gegessen, danach ging ich spazieren.
Of course it could happen, that you hear the Präteritum in a conversation, but the Perfekt is much more commen to use (like all the time). The Präteritum is defently used in books and other texts.

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