The uses for this obviously vary from person to person based on their workflows. You can group them into categories, and turn them on and off as desired. The crazier you get with GeekTool, the more Geeklets you may find yourself creating. Suddenly those log files don’t seem so bland anymore…well, maybe not. Your Geeklet updates in real time, so you can adjust your settings on the fly. Click the aptly named button, “Click here to set font & color…” Up pops an OS X window that should be familiar for selecting font, font color, font size, and so on. Now we come to the part that the designers like. If it’s necessary, there’s space to set a refresh time in seconds. Once it’s where you want it, define the image or file location of the data you want displayed, or drop a shell command in there. It was time consuming to say the least - but you can still tweak these settings in the Properties window if you need to fine tune. In earlier versions, there was a lot of trial and error involved as you had to enter the coordinates and dimensions of a Geektlet. The great thing about the latest version of GeekTool is that you can drag and drop your Geeklet wherever you want it on screen. Once there, the Geeklet properties window will populate, which is where all the magic (configuration) happens. To begin using a Geeklet (as they’ve been deemed in the 3.0 version), select the File, Image, or Shell that you want to use, and drag it to your desktop. But fear not, there are a multitude of examples out there to lean on if you need some help with this geekier part. Run either a Shell Command, or point at a Shell Script file to run. If your bash-fu is strong, you’ll be running wild. Shell – This is where the real power lies with GeekTool.Image – GeekTool’s developer identifies this as useful for viewing the images generated by monitoring tools. While Analytics and whatnot may be just what the doctor ordered, you can display any image, or image URL with this.File – Originally intended for viewing Console type log files. Point it at any text file you choose - those with text-based todo lists will love this feature.There are three types of information you can display using GeekTool: Since it’s a Preference Pane, it lives in the System Preferences (found under the Apple menu or in your Applications folder). It’s not very difficult, so let’s get started. So now you’re probably primed and ready to put GeekTool to work for you. I however, threw in some extra Geeklets on my desktop to show you what you can do. Not so much for me, which is why I pointed you in the direction of some great examples. Clearly some people have a solid eye for design, and the time to monkey around and put in some extra awesome. So some good stuff, eh? It’s pretty neat to see the way that GeekTool can be used to morph meaningful data into specific wallpaper images, or going that extra yard, to coordinate with a custom GUI theme. Or if you’re ADHD, here are a couple quick examples: To get some inspiration - and a great feel for what we’re talking about - check out Flickr for photos tagged with ‘geektool’, or LifeHacker’s Featured Desktops. The great part is that it’s super easy to do with GeekTool - but more on that in a bit. And while the content that we’re seeing displayed with GeekTool hasn’t changed much, some designer-types out there have taken the display of that information to the next level. For those of us who began playing with GeekTool long ago, it was used in a very utilitarian fashion - the output was simple lines of text displayed on the Mac’s desktop (three year old screencast here shows what I mean). It’s interesting (to me at least) to see how the use of a simple yet powerful tool evolves. Simply put, GeekTool displays information at the desktop level (meaning it’s not clickable), right on top of your wallpaper image, in a ‘Heads-up-display’ fashion. If you fit either of the above stereotypes, then today is your lucky day, because I’m going to point out some great examples of GeekTool, and just how to put it to good use for yourself. But despite its widening usage, many still are unfamiliar with this fantastic utility (you’ve probably seen it, and not even realized) or just don’t know how to leverage it. Once a tool employed mainly by hardcore users, GeekTool seemed to begin exploding across OS X desktops in 2009.
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