Let's face it the Finder desktop that ships on Macs just isn't all that exciting and there is a lot of wasted real estate on a Mac desktop. So what can you do with all that space? Fortunately you can do a lot and this how-to will show you how.

After you've added all the information you can handle to your desktop, why stop there? By replacing your icons, changing your fonts and desktop background, you can take your desktop from zero to hero.

Difficulty level:
Medium

What you need:
> OS X 10.4 or later
> GeekTool 2.1.2
> A spectacular desktop image
> 30 minutes to spare

Optional Items:
> Yahoo Widget Application
> widescapeWeather
> Magifique
> RSS Feed Script

Optional Icon Packs:
> iCal
> Folders
> Hard Drives

Empty GeekTool

After installing GeekToolt, launch System Preferences and locate GeekTool under the Other category clicking it once with the mouse to activate it. You'll see a screen similar to the one above. Groups should be empty.

Before we configure GeekTool for your own custom desktop, we need to take a look at File, Shell (Command) and Picture from the drop down near the top of the GeekTool window since these are the three ways it will display information on your desktop.

File - Choose one or more files that you want to have shown in real time on your screen. You can even choose where you wish to position them on your screen. If the file contents change so should what you see on your desktop. Logs are great files for the File entry.

Shell (Command) - you can specify Unix (or shell) commands, and the output will be available anywhere, and in order for it to update you will also have to input a refresh time.

Pictures - Grab any picture on the internet via its URL and assign a frame type, transparency and so on to display the picture on your desktop in real time with an optional refresh setting. Great for web cams.

Creating an Entry

Click the New Entry button. Boom, you're making magic. Desktop magic.

Creating an entry, no matter what type, is a straight forward affair. Click the New Entry button (Duh), select if the Entry will be a Picture, File or Shell, and input the Shell command, or navigate to the desired file. Picture and File are straight forward. Shell on the other hand, involves actually knowing the shell commands. Lucky for you, we have a list of commands below. 

Now that you have your Entry in GeekTool, let's get it where it needs to be on the desktop and adjust its appearance.

Displaying Your Entries on the Desktop

GeekTool allows a certain degree of display customization for entries. It's because of this customization that GeekTool has been embraced by users. The font, color, alignment and drop shadow are adjustable under the File and Shell entries.

In addition, under the Picture setting you can add frame to that photo of NKOTB.

Adjust the areas in which your entry rests on the desktop via mouse or adjusting the X and Y coordinates.

All elements added in GeekTool are arranged spatially via the X and Y axis of your display. This coordinates can be entered manually, or you can click on an entry in GeekTool and the item on the desktop will have a bluish box you can re-size and move. 

Any of the Entries can be set to display as "Always on top" so that it appears above app and finder windows. 

Shell Commands

Here are some suggested Shell commands that you might try to use on your own customized Mac desktop. Experiment with each one or add your own! We highly recommend cutting and pasting the following Shell examples into GeekTool to prevent typos. Be careful not to introduce any carriage returns or extra lines. All these Shell commands should paste as single lines. If they do not then you need to try re-pasting it or entering it manually.

Top Processes Display

top -ocpu -FR -l2 -n20 | grep '^....[1234567890] ' | grep -v ' 0.0% ..:' | cut -c 1-24,33-42,64-77

Setup Time Display

date "+%l:%m %p"
   
Setup Date Number display

date +%d
   
Setup Month Display

date +%B
   
Setup Weekday Display

date +%A
       
Setup Calendar Display

cal

Setup Uptime Display

uptime | awk '{print "" $3 " " $4 " " $5 }' | sed -e 's/.$//g';

Setup RAM Display

top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print "" $8 " "}' ;

Setup CPU Display

top -l 2 | awk '/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print $12, $13}'

Setup RSS News Feeds Display

This one is a bit harder and requires some knowledge of Unix Shell Scripting - contact your local guru for assistance if you get stuck.

1. You'll probably want to change the default RSS feed in the news.sh file you can download here. Right now it's set for Yahoo Hot News from Canada. Find a feed you want and copy the link, DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK. It will take you to the feed. That URL will not work. You want your feed to begin with http:// for the shell script. 

Good: http://images.apple.com/main/rss/hotnews/hotnews.rss

Bad:  feed://images.apple.com/main/rss/hotnews/hotnews.rss

Replace

URL="http://ca.rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories"

With

URL="http://images.apple.com/main/rss/hotnews/hotnews.rss"

Unless of course you're down with Yahoo Canada's Hot News. 

2. Now place the downloaded copy of news.sh that you downloaded from Google in a location of your choice (i.e. your Documents folder). Make a note of the complete file path to news.sh.

3. Click New Entry in GeekTool and change its name to "News RSS"

4. Using the drop down directly to the right of Groups select Shell

5. Enter the following for the Command:

sh [location/]news.sh -[number]

[location] is the path that you were told to document in Step 1
[number] is the number of entries you want to appear for this use 4

Example:  sh /Users/loaner/Documents/news.sh -10

6. Make sure that "Always on top" is not checked
   

7. Using the mouse or keyboard position your RSS Feed where you want it on your screen

File Commands

Setup To Do List

You can use files to display text files statically on the screen as read only. One example is to create a To Do list.

1. Create a text file with TextEdit and call it Todolist save it in your documents folder or other location of your choice (not the desktop).

2. Enter some items even just examples of things to do in the file.

3. Click Format>Make Plain Text and save the file with the example To Do list.

4. Go back to GeekTool preferences pane.

5. Click New Entry and change its name to "To Do List"

6. Using the drop down directly to the right of Groups select File

7. Using Choose... select the file you created to set the file path in GeekTool.

8. Make sure that "Always on top" is not checked

9. Using the mouse or keyboard position your To Do List where you want it on your screen

Setup Various Object Labels Using Files

One use of files is to display labels for the items you place around the screen. We'll use some of the labels below to label the Shell examples above. 

1. Create a text file with TextEdit and call it uptimetext.txt save it in your documents folder or other location of your choice (not the desktop).

2. Enter the text UPTIME in the file.

3. Click Format>Make Plain Text and save the file

4. Go back to GeekTool preferences pane.

5. Click New Entry and change its name to "Uptime Text"

6. Using the drop down directly to the right of Groups select File

7. Using Choose... select the file you created to set the file path in GeekTool.

8. Make sure that Always on top is not checked

9. Using the mouse or keyboard arrange these to label the appropriate objects on your screen displayed by GeekTool

Repeat these steps above for the following:

Picture Commands

These can be used to display static pictures from the internet, but when used to display an updating web cam they will update as the camera updates the feed. Pretty neat. Try your own web cam like this one at ThinkGeek.com:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/cams/codemonkeys.jpg

Conclusion

The end result of my customization is shown below. Although I did not change everything the new desktop does suit my current needs. The level of customization is amazing and we would like to see what you come up with so please post a link to a photo of your personalized desktop in the comments.

Click to Embiggen