Geeklets is a site run by the UK based MacOSXTips, and it allows for users to submit their own GeekTool scripts and rate others. It’s newly launched so there’s a limited supply of scripts and vote data to work with, but this is definitely going to be a great repository for all us GeekTool fans. Jan 04, 2009 Thought I'd share my Current Geektool Desktop. Still a work in progress, most specifically needing my Google Reader / NetwNewsWire Unread Feeds (see two messages). I am using Bowtie for the player (it seems to use less resources than my Geektool Geeklet) and Mirage2 to make the Dock clear. 5 Examples of Mac Os Desktop Customization using GeekTool. Among the Mac Os X desktop customization tools available, GeekTool is my favorite one. It is a really neat utility that will allow you to run little scripts or “geeklets” to display useful informatiom such as RAM, CPU usage, calender, images and etc. On your Mac’s desktop.
Build an Attractive, Informative Mac Desktop with GeekTool aurel / 27 avril 2014 It may be covered with applications and windows most of the time, but your Mac’s desktop can also be an excellent source of information, including the time and date, available hard drive space, battery status, system performance, and more. I love GeekTool, but ran into a roadblock when one of my geeklets caused it to freeze on startup, and I couldn't remove the offending widget from within the System Preferences panel. So, after digging around, I discovered that the geeklets are stored as plist files at /Library » Preferences » org.tynsoe.geeklet.
I’ve been a big fan of GeekTool for a while. It’s been one of the subtle things that I’ve felt that separates OS X from Windows. For a while I had several widgets (called Geeklets) run by GeekTool to display various information on my desktop. A post last week by Patrick Welker (@_patrickwelker) opened me up to a new way to put widgets on my desktop.
Übersicht, from Felix Hageloh, is a great update to the GeekTool concept. Like GeekTool, Übersicht will alllow a user to create self contained widgets and have them rendered on your desktop. But what makes Übersicht stand apart from GeekTool is getting the widgets to be based on HTML 5 using either Javascript or Coffeescript as the widget file. Shifting over to using HTML 5 in Übersicht generates a much more visually appealing presentation than previously possible with GeekTool.
Widget Layout
The basic compoents of a widget includes:
- command [required]: The shell command that will be used to help capture what information you want to see on your desktop.
- refreshFrequency [required]: How often you want to run the shell command to refresh the information. The integer is listed in milliseconds.
- style [required]: The CSS styling to render the information you want shown on your desktop.
- render [required]: The function that is used to parse the information from the
command
to thestyle
to display on your desktop. - update [optional]: When the widget is first run, it will take the
command
output and display the contents via therender
section. Theupdate
section replace the contents displayed based on therefreshFrequency
.
An example of a simple widget to show your public IP address using a simply Python script: Gist link
Felix Hageloh, lead on the Übersicht software project, has more details on widget development on GitHub.
Widget differences
There are some subtle differences how GeekTool and Übersicht parse commands. GeekTool can take a shell command that you’d run in Terminal and use it for a Shell Geeklet. One common GeekTool GeekLet is displaying the availabile hard drive space on your Mac, using the following shell command:
Übersicht can parse the same command, but like most other scripting languages, it needs to know where to start and when to stop when parsing information. The section of a widget, labeled
command
, needs to be encapsulated in a set of double quotes - '
. To do this with the disk space shell command it will need to be properly escaped like this: If you get an error with your widget, and it includes actual text from your command, take a look at how well your command has been escaped.
Intel r pro wireless 2200bg network connection. Once you have the shell command working, you can start on laying out your widget.
Javascript vs Coffeescript
Widgets for Übersicht can be written in either Javascript or Coffeescript. Continuing on the example monitoring your hard drive space, I wrote two widgets as an example in Javascript and Coffeescript. Both widgets were written to display the same information from the following shell command:
Coffeescript verson: Gist link
Pure Javascript version: Gist link
Here’s a comparison of the output of the two scripts:
Geektool Windows
Widget Gallery
The makers of Übersicht also have a gallery of widgets other users have created and were willing to share.
Some other widgetsI’m looking at:
- Sysmon Set: a whole set of widgets to monitor your system.
- Pretty Weather: a stripped down version of the weather widget I’m currently using. Looking at replacing the predicted high temperature with the current temperature. [1]
Work in progress
I’ve moved over all my core GeekTool widgets to Übersicht and have started looking at some new ones too. Some progress pictures of my desktop as I’ve developed new or updated widgets for Übersicht.
Progress screenshot:
See Full List On Brettterpstra.com
Additional progress screenshot:
- This has caused me to learn more about the forecast.io API than I ever thought possible. ↩
Comments from original WP Post:
Jason.Verly: You'll need to make some adjustments to the widget placement in the 'Style' section. For some reason all the widget creators liked the bottom right corner.
Jason.Verly: I have some screencasts set for later this fall.
Geektool For Mac
CrazedLeper: Ok, I installed the app and the widgets but, is there a way to customize them? I can't find a way to move those that are overlapping and some are just plopped in the middle of my screen.
Geektool Scripts Geeklets
Jose Duran: Hi, Would it be possible to get a quick explanation as to how to customize in youtube ???? also what is the program should we use to make adjustments in style ???? as long as it is impossible to do it via Debug Console. Thanks a lot