Personalize & Enhance Your Mac Desktop with GeekTool!

GeekTool is a free, easy & fun way to enhance your Apple desktop with live updating information such as the time, date, CPU usage, weather, to-do lists, and more! Not only is this a useful way to have information right where you can find it, but it also makes your Mac stand out from the crowd. There are TONS of creative possibilities too with GeekTool, with personalization limited only by your imagination.

This tutorial will teach you the basics and how to add the date, time, weather, and titles to your desktop. *NOTE* - This is a PrefPane for Apple computers only, all this awesomeness will not work unless you have a Mac with OS 10.6.

1. Go to the GeekTool website and download GeekTool 3.0. Follow the installation instructions.
2. To find the new sweet module you downloaded, go to your System Preferences. GeekTool will be at the bottom under "Other".
3. Open up GeekTool and check it out!

*NERDY NOTE* - You see that there are three different icons called "Geeklets" in the GeekTool pane; File, Image, and Shell. File is for text files or log files placed on your desktop, Image is for placing picture files either from your hard drive or the internet, and Shell is for Terminal commands that runs directly on your desktop.

Go ahead and minimize all windows you have open so you have a nice clear view of your desktop with just GeekTool on top, and I'll walk you through step by step!

1. Look at "Manage Groups" on the right side of the GeekTool pane. Click the plus sign to create a new group. Name this group "Date". This will just help you keep everything organized.
2. With your new group "Date" checked, grab the "Shell" Geeklet and drag it to a clear spot on your desktop.
3. The black Properties pane will come up, name the box "Date" and for Command type: date +"%A %d %b"
4. The date will then appear in the box in small, black type. To change the size, color, and font, click under "Style" on the Properties pane where it says "Click here to set font and color."
5. On the Properties pane you can also control how often the date is refreshed. In the "Refresh every" box, enter the number of seconds you want GeekTool to refresh this box. For the date, 3600 seconds is a good amount.

For this date code, date +"%A %d %b" , it will display as "Thursday 20 Jan". If you want to break up the date into separate Shell Geeklets, the code would look like this:

date +"%A" = Day of the Week (ie Thursday)

date +"%d" = Day of the Month (ie 20)

date +"%b" = Month (ie Jan)

That way, each of the parts of the date could have their own font, size, color, placement etc.

Sure, you have a little clock up at the top of your Mac desktop, but if you want to display the time with some personal pizazz, this is the way to go!

1. Look at "Manage Groups" on the right side of the GeekTool pane. Click the plus sign to create a new group. Name this group "Time". Again, this is just to help with organization.
2. With your new group "Time" checked, grab the "Shell" Geeklet and drag it to a clear spot on your desktop.
3. The black Properties pane will come up, name the box "Time" and for Command type: date +"%I:%M %p"
4. The time will then appear in the box in small, black type. To change the size, color, and font, click under "Style" on the Properties pane where it says "Click here to set font and color."
5. On the Properties pane you can also control how often the time is refreshed. In the "Refresh every" box, enter the number of seconds you want GeekTool to refresh this box. For the time in minutes, 5 seconds is a good amount.

For this time code, date +"%I:%M %p" , it will display as "04:41 PM". If you want to change around how the time is displayed, the code would look like this:

date +"%H:%M %p" = 24 hour clock (ie 16:41 PM)

date +"%I:%M:%S %p" = Clock with seconds (ie 04:41:28 PM) *Be sure to change the refresh rate to 1 second!*

Every morning when I get up, the first thing I do is look at the weather online. This used to mean firing up my browser, getting distracted by my homepage, following an endless trail of links, and 30 minutes later I still haven't gotten around to checking the weather. Now I just open up my lappy, and there is the weather right on my desktop!

1. Look at "Manage Groups" on the right side of the GeekTool pane. Click the plus sign to create a new group. Name this group "Weather".
2. With your new group "Weather" checked, grab the "Shell" Geeklet and drag it to a clear spot on your desktop.
3. The black Properties pane will come up, name the box "Weather" and for Command type: curl --silent "http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=NLXX0002&u=f" | grep -E '(Current Conditions:|F<BR)' | sed -e 's/Current Conditions://' -e 's/<b>//' -e 's/<\/b>//' -e 's/<br \/>//' -e 's/<BR \/>//'
4. This code uses Yahoo! Weather, and the one I just used as an example is for Amsterdam. In order to find the weather for your city, go to Yahoo! Weather, type in your city or zipcode to find your city. Once you get to the page for your city, look at the right side of the page for the orange RSS button. Click that button to get to the RSS feed for you city. When on the RSS feed page, look at the URL. Copy everything after the "p=".
5. Now check out the code I gave you in Step 3: curl --silent "http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=NLXX0002&u=f" | grep -E '(Current Conditions:|F<BR)' | sed -e 's/Current Conditions://' -e 's/<b>//' -e 's/<\/b>//' -e 's/<br \/>//' -e 's/<BR \/>//' .The section I bolded that starts with "p=" is what you need to replace in the code for the weather of your own city.
6. *PRO TIP* - If you click on the ellipses after the Command box in the Properties pane, you can open up the Edit Script window so you can see all your script at once.
7. The weather will then appear in the box in small, black type. To change the size, color, and font, click under "Style" on the Properties pane where it says "Click here to set font and color."
8. On the Properties pane you can also control how often the weather is refreshed. In the "Refresh every" box, enter the number of seconds you want GeekTool to refresh this box. For the weather in minutes, 360 seconds is a good amount.

For this weather code,it will display as "Current Condition, Degrees" (ie Fair, 30 F).

If you want to label these cool new things you put on your desktop, there's a very simple way to do it with GeekTool!

1. Go to the Group you want to add a title to, for example "Date". Check the box next to "Date". Now you can see your date and move it around.
2. Drag a Shell Geeklet onto your desktop. Name the box "Title" on the Properties pane, and in the Command box type: echo "my title" . For example, mine is echo "What's today?" .
3. Now your title will pop up in your box. Format the font, size and color using the Properties pane.

Now how easy was that? And your desktop looks really awesome and is much more useful than just a place to dump the files you don't know what to do with. Check out the GeekTool site for examples of all the cool desktops people have designed with GeekTool. Come back to my HubPage soon for even more GeekTool goodies!