3/20/2023 0 Comments Geektool vsRemember I said it should update every three seconds so you can see it is doing that. Now if I click off you can see that it just stays there in the background on the Desktop. So I can put a clock on my Desktop that easily. You can see it displays the date there as it would return from a terminal command but in addition I can now customize that by changing the font and color. Or I can use something like all sorts of different things to display the current date. I can do something like top which will display information about things that are running on my Mac and I can have it update every three seconds. Probably the most ultra geeky thing that you can do is to use a shell script. It is really there on the Desktop in the background. It will be updated but I can't change it or affect it. Again if I am not in Geek Tool you can see it is just static information on the Desktop. So this could be something here where you can have logs or some other information that appears and it changes. Let me get my Apache firewall log if I want to be really geeky and it will put that information there on the Desktop and as that file changes it will be updated. ![]() So like I can for instance use a log file here. This text I can put anywhere I want and I can resize the window. So this will put some text here on the Desktop. In addition you can drag file information. Weather is an obvious one but you can think of probably other images that are out there where there is a static URL but the actual image there changes like say maybe a webcam or something. So everyday I can look and see the new weather information. But the cool thing is that it will update as the image changes. I can't drag it again until I select Geek Tool again and then I can drag it. ![]() If I click out of Geek Tool and I'm just in the Finder now I can see that it is just there on the background. What will happen is I can put that here and I can drag it and enlarge it. I'm going to paste in an URL of a weather satellite image that is updated from the US government. What is more interesting is to put a URL. Now that image can be something locally like a local image that you've got but that doesn't really give you any functionality. Then under Properties here, I can set Properties of that image. It is going to create this little space here on the Desktop that I can move around anywhere that I want. For instance let's try dragging an image out. Now you drag and drop things out of here onto your Desktop. So here is what Geek Tool looks like when you run it. Just do a quick search for it and it will come right up. You can get Geek Tool in the Mac App Store. Things that you can see on your Desktop that are kind of there in the background. Geek Tool is an interesting way for you to extend your Desktop by adding little widgets to it. On today's episode let's take a look at Geek Tool. Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. For you, dear TUAW reader, I persevere.Check out MacMost Now 891: Customizing Your Desktop With GeekTool at YouTube for closed captioning and more options. GeekTool is strange enough about dragging Geeklets around, you don't want to try it on a network-attached monitor with a terrible refresh rate. I'll tell you outright that I don't recommend trying this, at least not using currently-available tools. Heaviest processes by memory and CPU usage.Calendar for the month with current day highlighted. ![]() These were dragged to the iPad to create a workable display configuration, including: Next, I opened up GeekTool 3 and duplicated a few of my Geeklets (little widgets that run shell commands and scripts to print data onto your desktop). That part was easy enough, and I found a few screen resolutions that work pretty well. I set up ScreenRecycler on my MacBook Pro and used iTeleport to turn my iPad into a third monitor. See the gallery for less-blurry images of the results. I'm sure there are a good number of people who could care less about this kind of thing, but ever since I saw Steve's post on Air Display, I started pondering the possibilities. Maybe add some news and weather, and your "Today" list from your favorite to-do app. Imagine this: you put your iPad into its dock next to your desktop (or laptop), and it transforms into a heads-up display of all the important stats from your machine.
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