The Monster Guide to Customizing Apple’s OS X!
Being a somewhat new dedicated Mac user, I decided to help myself by doing this research, and then in turn help you by sharing it with you. I will be sure to call out which tweaks work with which versions, and show screen shots where appropriate. The topics I want to cover are:
- Menu Bar Tweaks
- Desktop Tweaks
- Dock Tweaks
- Finder Tweaks
- UI Tweaks
Menu Bar Tweaks
The Date at a Glance: One of the things I never got is why I have to click the time to see the date at a glance. I like being able to see it right away. Fortunately for us there is an easy way to get the date next to the clock on OS X.
- Go to the international pane of System Preferences.
- Select Formats, choose Customize next to Dates.
- Select Medium in the drop down, format the date how you want it to appear.
- Cmd-a in the white text field to select, then Cmd-c to copy.
- Go back to the main international pane, select customize next to Time now.
- Again drop down to Medium, select inside the white text field, place the cursor where you want the date to appear, then Cmd-v to paste your format. Adjust to look how you want.
- Close it and you should now have the date and time how you want it in the menu bar!
Gmail Notifier in the Menu Bar: I don’t think I know many people these days that don’t have a Gmail account for some purpose. If you want to know if you have Gmail at a glance without adding the account to a software client, download the Gmail Notifier for Mac. and get your notifications in the menu bar.
Get Control of iTunes from the Menu Bar: You Control: Tunes is a super cool application that several people I know use. Since now I have to temporarily ditch Quicksilver, I too and checking into this little helper application. It gives you total control over iTunes from the Menu Bar.
Tons of Extra Menu Bar items: Extra thanks to Arnan from sothq.net for this killer link! http://menu.jeweledplatypus.org/
Desktop Tweaks
Wallpaper and Icons: I can’t give this next website enough praise. If you want the highest quality wallpaper at Mac friendly resolutions as well as the most comprehensive set of beautiful OS X icons, look no further than interfacelift.com. Of course this is great for Windows users too, but there is no better site for finding beautiful wallpaper and icons. I check this site pretty much daily!
Detach Dashboard Widgets into Desktop Widgets: Most people don’t know that you can do this. It’s a super simple tweak. Activate the dashboard (F12) and begin dragging a widget, press F12 again to hide the dashboard and drop the widget wherever you want. Now you have that widget floating nicely on your desktop!
Empower Expose & Spaces! Expose is nice, but hot keys sometimes aren’t so hot. Go to your system preferences for Expose and Spaces and set Active Screen corners. I use top right for Spaces and top left for Expose. I also set bottom left to display my desktop. When you are a mouse wonder, this is a great way to surf your Mac. If you use parallels, hot cornering the desktop is a super quick way to hide Parallels from full screen mode and get back to your Mac FAST!
Dock Tweaks
Remove the fancy 3D Shelf in Leopard: Many people do not like the 3d look of the dock in Leopard. It has a much simpler 2d look in the side view. You can have that in the bottom view as well by typing the following command into the terminal, then logging off and back on.
“defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock”
Now you have a nice normal 2d dock.
Recreate the OS9 Apple Menu in the Dock: If you have Leopard this is even nicer, but even on 10.4, create a folder, add aliases to all of your favorite applications, and drag it onto the right side of the divider in the dock for a quick application launcher like the old Apple Menu. With Leopard you will get the nice new “Stacks” view, works fantastic!
Expert Application Launching with the Dock: Everyone knows how to launch apps with the Dock, but did you know you can launch applications doing specific things automatically?
Try selecting text and dragging it on to Safari for an instant Google Search, or select text and drag it on to the mail icon for instantly composing a mail with that text! Works like a charm.
Finder Tweaks
Clear and Repopulate the “Open With” Menu: Are there too many programs in your “Open With” menu? Getting rid of all of these applications is really easy. Delete one file and the list should clean out and you can rebuild it how you want.
Delete a file called “com.apple.LaunchServices” from the /Home/Library/Preferences folder.
Switch Between Finder Views Quickly: When you are viewing files in the finder, you can switch between views quickly by using Cmd-1, Cmd-2, Cmd-3 and Cmd-4.
UI Tweaks
Change the Startup Background Image in Leopard: The default image that displays when booting OS X Leopard is located in System\Library\CoreServices\ and is called DefaultDesktop.jpg, simply replace that jpg with one of your own!
Beef up Cmd-Tab: Cmd-Tab in OS X is pretty weak. It’s really useful for switching applications, but falls well short if the application has several child windows, you have more than one instance of an application open (Firefox!) or you have windows minimized. Witch solves these problems by really giving you the power back for application switching. It shows all application windows, visible or not, across all spaces!
Professional Application Launching: While I can’t quite recommend this app on Leopard, and the site is down to download it so you have to use a mirror, there is nothing like Quicksilver. It kills spotlight for speed and with it’s plugin architecture works flawlessly with many applications like Firefox, Entourage, iTunes and more. Download it and install it for sure if you are on Tiger, keep an eye out for an update for Leopard. This program is amazing. Read a previous article I wrote about it here.
There are tons more tweaks out there, and I am sure that the comments will start coming in to help you find more and more, but this is a great place to get you started!
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Where’s the digg link? I don’t even have a Mac and love this!!