A look at GeekTool

In this week’s video, I look at GeekTool, a free system utility that lets you display images, text files, and the output of Unix commands on your desktop (or floating above other windows).

Download Macworld Video #106

• Format: MPEG-4/H.264

• Resolution: 480 x 272 (iPhone & iPod compatible)

• Size: 13.3MB

• Length: 7 minutes

In the course of the video, I reference a collection of sites where you can find more powerful examples of what you can do with GeekTool. These include:

• GeekTool
• Hints that mention GeekTool on macosxhints.com.
• Ultimate GeekTool Setup on Keynote 2 Keynote.
• GeekTool and bash one liners on Mac Geekery.
• Geek to Live: Monitor your Mac and more with GeekTool on Lifehacker.
• Mega Roundup of GeekTool Scripts on Francesco Mugnai’s blog (which contains links to many other sites).
• In the video, I show one GeekTool entry that displays my external IP address, which can be useful if you’re trying to debug a network connectivity problem. The Unix source for that entry can be found buried in this hint on Mac OS X Hints. To save you the digging, though, here’s the command: curl --silent http://checkip.dyndns.org | awk '{print $6}' | cut -f 1 -d "<". Just enter that as the Unix command, and you should see your external IP address in GeekTool.

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