Customize your Mac Page 2 of 3

18 ways to make your Mac more personalized, productive, or just plain fun

System enhancers

Replace Your Icons While the standard OS X icons are quite lovely to look at, you may want to freshen things up every now and again. Or you may want to use icons on certain folders that better suit their purposes—a flaming hot folder for your Hot Projects folder, for example.

Thankfully, replacing icons on OS X is as easy as copy-and-paste. Choose File -> Get Info for the icon you want to use, click once on the icon in the Get Info box, and press Command-C to copy it. Then open the Get Info window for the program, folder, or file whose icon you’d like to change, click on the small icon, and hit Command-V to paste your new icon.

But where do you get new icons to use? Apple’s screen saver link also includes some icons, or you can visit two well-known online icon repositories: InterfaceLIFT and The Icon Factory. Download from their huge assortment of free icons, and copy-and-paste to your heart’s content.

If nothing online exactly matches what you had in mind, and you’re very artistically talented, you could try designing your own. The $15 shareware program Iconographer is an excellent icon editor. Keep in mind, however, that this program helps you design icons from scratch, and that may not be something you’re interested in doing.

Alphabetize System Preferences The System Preferences application groups panels by type—Personal, Hardware, etc. If you have trouble remembering whether Sound is in Hardware or Personal, though, this organizational strategy can be frustrating, as your eye searches for the target in the various groups.

If you’re tired of playing the category guessing game, there’s a simple fix: select View -> Organize Alphabetically, and you’ll see a simple alphabetized arrangement instead. (This layout is also smaller than the standard setup.) To return to the category view, select View -> Organize by Categories.

You also can select any individual preference panel you wish by typing a few letters of its name—just press Tab key to make sure that Appearance is highlighted, then start typing. Sha, for example, will let you jump to the Sharing System Preferences panel.

Create New Locations If you often move your laptop Mac between various places, each of which requires different network settings, consider using OS X’s location feature to ease the task. Open the Network System Preferences panel. Click the Location drop-down, and choose New Location from the menu. Give your new location a name and then click OK. You can now move through each of the network port configuration screens (Ethernet, Bluetooth, AirPort, etc.), setting things as you need them.

When you move the Mac to another place, do the same thing again, creating a new location. In the future when you move from one spot to another, you can switch to your saved location through the Apple menu’s Location entry.

As a real-world example, if your home network uses static IP addressing, you might want to create a “Travel” location that uses dynamic IP addressing—thereby enabling your Mac to get an IP address when you connect to remote systems.

You can also create a special “not connected” location. After creating a new location, click the Show drop-down menu, choose Network Port Configurations, and turn each interface off. When you’re done, you’ll have a “disturbance free” location created—free from the temptations of the Web, the interruptions of iChat, and the endless stream of inbound e-mail.

Using iChatState, you can put any number of auto-updating messages in your iChat status line. Here you can see my machine’s free RAM and CPU utilization, though I could just have easily shown load averages, iTunes information, how many unread emails I have, and more.

Upgrade Your iChat Status The iChat status message, which appears just below your name in the Buddy List and defaults to Available, is visible to all your buddies. While you may find it sufficient to type in a short but sweet expression, you can do more with the status message. Download the free iChatState, for instance, and your status message can show iTunes song and artist information, a countdown timer, your Mac’s free RAM, uptime, and CPU load, the active application, and much more.

If you’re more of a visual sort, you might prefer the free DuckCall, which will use your iSight to take a picture every 30 seconds, and then set your iChat icon to that image. The software’s a little rough, but it works.

Get More Mail Info in the Dock If you like Mail’s unread message indicator in the program’s Dock icon (the red badge with white text), you’ll love the $8 DockStar. With this program installed, you can have up to five separate mailboxes tracked in Mail’s Dock icon. You control the shape and color of each indicator, as well as what it counts—show the total count in your “To Do” mailbox, for instance, instead of “unread.”

DockStar lets you track email counts in Mail’s Dock icon for up to five different accounts. As seen here, you can vary the color and shape of each status indicator, making it easier for your brain to remember which badge goes with which mailbox.

Customize the Login Screen Background When your Mac is sitting at the login screen, you’re looking at something known as “Aqua Blue,” one of Apple’s standard desktop images. Because it is one of Apple’s standardized images, you can easily replace it with one of your own choosing. Perhaps you want to replace it because you’ve seen enough of Aqua Blue, or because you have a nicer image you’d like to use. Another practical reason, though, is to include some contact information—in case your laptop is ever lifted by a “casual” thief, some properly worded text on the login window may encourage the machine’s safe return—something like “This machine phones home every 10 minutes and reports its location” may do wonders to the casual thief’s conscience.

To replace the picture, navigate to /Library -> Desktop Pictures in the Finder. Drag Aqua Blue.jpg to the Desktop (or other location in your user’s folder) to create a backup of the file. Now all you have to do is find a JPEG image you’d like to use—make it the same size as your machine’s native resolution—and name it Aqua Blue.jpg. Drag and drop it into the Desktop Pictures folder, and provide your password when prompted.

With a simple file substitution, you can change the screen behind the login window. I’ve chosen one of Apple’s stock images in this screenshot, but you can use anything you like. As a casual theft deterrent, consider adding your name and contact information (and “Reward!”) to the chosen image.

That’s it; you’re done—the next time you logout, you’ll see your new desktop background. To return to the normal image, just drag in the backup copy of Aqua Blue.jpg that you created as the first step here—this will overwrite the customized image you previously created. (You’ll need to supply your password when prompted.)