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Geektool is a handy little System Preferences Pane that lets you add useful info to your desktop.
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hey everyone today I'm going to show you
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how you can make your desktop a lot more
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useful by installing just a little
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system add-on called geek tool and it's
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a system preferences paint and it can
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live in your menu bar as well and it
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pretty much just adds things to your
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desktop that can make it more useful it
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integrates really nicely and it's not
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very intrusive at all so the geek to web
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page URL is pretty long so I've made a
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custom short URL for you guys and that
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is tr. us/ gek tool3 and that's where
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you can get to the geek tool download
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page and the newest version is geek tool
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3.0 and it's only a 5 megab download so
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when you install geek tool it's a system
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preferences pan so it's going to pop
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open system
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preferences and it's going to install
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right into there and you'll see it down
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in the other section and right here it
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is geek tool so I'm just going to load
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this and what you're going to see here
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is two different windows so your geek
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geekit settings and geek tool 3 now you
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see here you have three different types
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of geekletes that's what they're called
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file image and shell and I can drag
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these from the Icon onto my desktop so
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I'll drag a file an image one and a
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shell one I'm going to explain this to
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you here um off to your right hand side
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you have the manage group sections you
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can have different groups of geekletes I
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guess for different areas on your
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desktop if you wanted and you have some
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options enabled I can show it up in the
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menu bar so it'll live right up here and
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I can open the preferences and quit it
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and whatnot and automatically check for
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updates
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obviously so now you have your three
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different geek lits on your desktop each
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corresponding to something else so first
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let's look at the file one right here uh
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you can change a couple different things
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you can name it change the size also by
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dragging right here so whatever you want
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place it anywhere on your desktop that
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you feel
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necessary and you can have it monitor a
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file so let's say you wanted to monitor
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the activity of your Mac you can just
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look in here and you can choose a log
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file and it'll display all the
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information that's happening so you can
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kind of monitor everything and then you
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can set the text alignment and the file
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encoding background colors fonts
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everything like that and it'll live just
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right on your desktop and the next one
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is image now I can choose a URL to an
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image so if one you have one that
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actively updates let's say a radar image
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you can set it as that and then have it
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the refresh interval to be maybe five
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minutes whatever so every 5 minutes you
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have the new radar or you can select a
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local path so let's say I have something
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on my desktop that I want to use as the
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image that displays I can do that and
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now you can see the imag is in there I
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can scale it up to whatever I want and
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have it just like that and the last one
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here is your shell so what you can do
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here is you can do um specific commands
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and you put them in there and it'll show
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you different things as text so for
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example I have a couple different
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commands here I'm just going to demo for
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you the first one is the command to
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display the date and uh these are just
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some simple ones you can try out there's
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more advanced ones and I'll show you
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where to get those in just a second so
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here's one for the month now I'll just
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paste it in here and you can see it's
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just date plus percent B and now if you
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look down in my little shell geek liet
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it says may and I can display a status
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youc image so it shows green that it's
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working maybe I don't want that and then
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I of course I can set the font and the
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color so let's say I want it in Impact
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uh maybe 36 so now I have that set up
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and I can do that now let's say I want
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to add another shell command here and I
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want to grab the date command so the the
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day command is
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date plus percentage
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a and now you can see It'll say Saturday
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and of course I could change the font
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and different things for that too as
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well so let's make that impact
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24 close that
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out and you can see what I'm kind of
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doing here just making different things
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that work pretty well now if I want the
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specific dat date I can put in this
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command so date plus percentage
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lowercase D and it'll show me seven and
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then you know once again change it to
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what I want so now I have a couple
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little things set up here and it will
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show me the date so I can configure
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these however I want them and place them
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wherever I feel necessary on my desktop
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and it's it's kind of
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cool and now you can see I have that
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there now I could move these all over
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maybe in the corner if I wanted them
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down here here and uh set them all up
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with different fonts and different
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colors sizes you can make something that
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looks pretty neat now when I ex exit
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system
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preferences you'll see that these things
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are embedded on my desktop I can't
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select them I can't drag them around
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anymore um same thing with the date
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commands out in the corner they're there
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permanently until I of course I can
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change them or delete them when I'm back
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in system preferences and these things
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will update dynamically um so when it
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becomes the eth it will change to the
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eth when it comes the 9th it'll change
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to the 9th when it's not Saturday
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anymore it'll change to Sunday obviously
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and you know June you get the idea you
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can do this with the time um with you
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know and all kinds of stuff and if you
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want more commands for this right on the
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web page where you download geek tool
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there's another section here for more
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useful scripts and uh you get all these
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different there's pages and pages and
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pages of different scripts um you that
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you can put in for the shell commands
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and they will display different things
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for you so for example here is a quote
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of the day thing and you can see a
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little preview of it and then these are
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the geekletes you can download some of
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them just have the code that you can
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paste in so very neat and very handy
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application you can see here is just a
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quick demo doesn't look very good if I
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took time to configure it and had a
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little bit of formatting there I could
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have something that looks kind of cool
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down in my corner and it's something I
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can always see it makes your desktop a
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lot more useful instead of just a
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picture and that's pretty much all there
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is to geek Tool uh it's very simple once
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you get the hang of it there's tons and
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tons and tons of commands you can out
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there if you can find um with just that
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one web page and that's pretty much
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about it so I find this pretty useful
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and it doesn't take a lot of CPU power
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it just kind of sits in the background
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and it's real quick access just look at
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it say oh yeah that's that's what's
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going on and then beond with your day so
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I hope you found this video useful and
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thank you for watching
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