Geektool Geeklets Mac With It

The current date is noted with a pair of pound symbols (.) In my example here, I chose to keep the calendar small and out of the way.

With GeekTool, you can put all of that information right on your desktop.

Heres how you can make your desktop more useful but keep it looking sharp.

GeekTool has come a ways since then, and setting up a gorgeous HUD using GeekTool is easierand GeekTool itself is more powerfulthan ever.

It installs as a preference pane in the System Preferences, and from there you can open use any of the three included plug-ins (called geeklets ) to run text commands.

The output from those commands is displayed on the desktop, organized and styled by you.

When installed from the app store, itll run as a separate application, not a Preference pane.

Geektool Geeklets Mac With It

While GeekTool isnt quite as graphically intensive as its closest Windows counterpart, Rainmeter (which weve already shown you how to configure in Windows,) you can still build a gorgeous HUD on your Mac with it.

You can set them up to fit a specific need, work with the desktop wallpaper that you have up, or just fit your mood.

For example, if you have a dark wallpaper, your date and time geeklets may need white text.

Switch to a brightly-colored wallpaper, and you can switch groups to change the font and colors without having to go into each geeklet to change them one at a time.

Click the checkbox next to the group name to activate or deactivate that group, or toggle them from the menu bar.

When the plug-in is in place, the properties window will change to allow you to change its size and position, type in the commands you want the plug-in to run, select the image you want it to display, or specify the text you want it to show.

Anything you can run in terminal will run in a geeklet, so if you love the command line, heres where you can put those skills to use.

Drag the bottom right corner to resize it to be as large as youd like the time to display on your desktop.

Give it a name, and then, in the command field of the properties window, type the following.

Then click the box to set the font and color, and increase the size so the time is displayed as large as youd like.

Set the color to something thats readable on your desktop background, and then change the font to something you like.

Drag another Shell geeklet to the desktop, adjust its size to match how large youd like the day to appear relative to the time, and then type the following into the command field.

Set the refresh timer high this time, maybe every 1000 or 5000 secondsafter all, the date only changes once every 86,400 seconds.

If youre up at midnight and it would kill you to see the previous date for 1000 seconds at most, set it lower.

Make sure to match the font with the time for a consistent look.

While you can add line breaks, you can only have one font and size for each geeklet, so if you want different fonts, sizes, or even positioning that requires spacing beyond line breaks, youll want to add individual geeklets and position them where you want them to show up relative to each other.

Drag another shell geeklet to the desktop, name it Calendar, and then paste the following into the command field.