Incredibly customizable, MaxMenus lets you stash menus in the corners of your screen, or keep them hidden until you press a keyboard shortcut.

The Dock was designed to replace the vintage Apple Menu of Mac OS 9 and be the sole repository for all files and applications you need to access quickly. Unfortunately, it’s just a small strip at the bottom or side of your Desktop, and while you can tweak a few options (choosing hierarchal nested folders or Stacks, for example), many Mac users long for the anything-goes customizability of the Apple Menu of old.

If you’re looking for a capable replacement for your Dock, check out MaxMenus from Proteron. MaxMenus lives in System Preferences and lets you create menus for each corner of your screen, as well as allowing you to summon them anywhere on the Desktop by pressing a few predetermined keys.

Need to get organized? We will show you how to use MaxMenus and tailor it to your exact specifications.

Difficulty level:
Medium

> MaxMenus 1.5.1 or better ($29.95, tinyurl.com/5fntl6)
> Mac OS 10.4 or later
> Applications and files in need of organization
> 30 minutes to spare

1. Getting Started

The bottom-right MaxMenu defaults to System Preferences, so you can launch the MaxMenus preference from here.

Download the MaxMenus installer and double-click the MaxMenus icon to install it. After the installation, you’ll notice that not much appears to have changed. To activate the app, you must close the System Preferences window. Colored quarter circles will then appear in each corner of your screen, and clicking any of them will reveal one of the default menus. You can trigger others by holding down Control or Command while clicking the corners. The beauty of MaxMenus is its versatility and customizability. Click on the bottom-right yellow circle to launch System Preferences, and select MaxMenus.

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2. Tweak the Appearance

If you make the opacity of the circles 0%, they won’t show up at all.

You can modify the colored circles so they don’t clash with your Desktop. The Choose Menu lets you select which one you’d like to modify. It should already be set to Upper Left. Click the Edit button. A little green square will appear in the top right of the new window. Select it to reveal Mac OS X’s Color Palette. Drag the opacity slider to 0%. Now, when you close System Preferences, the green circle has disappeared, but the menu is still functional: Click the top-left corner of your screen to activate it.

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3. Take a Shortcut

Many of us use Hot Corners as defined in System Preferences > Screen Saver and Exposé. Using MaxMenus at the same time can accidentally trigger a Hot Corner, diminishing its usefulness. No problem: We’ll give your menus keyboard shortcuts instead. Click Edit for one of the four MaxMenus. Uncheck the Screen Corner box, and check Assign This Menu a Hot Key. Type a shortcut of your choice. We’ve found that few apps use the Shift and Control keys together, so try Shift-Control-1. Close System Preferences and try your new shortcut: The menu now appears wherever your cursor is.

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4. Easy Alterations

Dragging items from the Finder to a menu is a snap.

To alter the default menus, select one, and the bottom-left section of the Preference window displays the items in it. You can add folders, apps, or even files by dragging them from a Finder window onto that section. Click and drag items to reorder them. To remove an item, drag it out of the window and it disappears. You can alter your custom menu’s text and icon size by using the Size pop-up menu.

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5. Deeper Customization

Text labels can help remind you what’s in your menus.

Many default options for your menus appear on the right, and some, such as displaying your mounted volumes or showing a list of your open apps, can’t be dragged from the Finder. This area also lets you create separators within your menu, and add descriptions to make it easier for yourself and others to understand your setup. To add these items, drag and drop them to your desired location.

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6. Roll Your Own

Need a new menu? Pick New Menu from the Choose Menu field.

You aren’t limited to using or modifying MaxMenus’ predefined menus—you can easily delete them and create as many new ones as you want. To do so, click the Choose Menu field and select New Menu. You will be presented with the same options to set the menu to a corner of your screen or give it a keyboard shortcut. To delete it, make sure it’s selected in the Choose Menu and click the Delete button.

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7. Even More Shortcuts

It’s easy to add shortcuts to individual menu items too—just mouse over one and type a shortcut for it.

The long way to add keyboard shortcuts to your menu items is to use the Hot Keys tab, where you click Add, navigate to the proper file or folder in the file browser, and define the keys needed to activate it. But there’s an easier way: Close System Preferences and bring up one of your menus. Mouse over the item you wish to add a shortcut to. Key it in, and the shortcut is set as soon 
as you release the keys.

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8. Look What the Mouse Dragged In

Here we’re dragging a folder from our Desktop to another folder inside MaxMenus.

Select a file or folder in the Finder and start to drag it. As you do, trigger one of your menus using its keyboard shortcut. This lets you drop your item inside a folder within that menu. If the folder is open, you can drop your item onto its name. If it’s closed, mouse over the folder to open it. You can even navigate through other folders present within it, just like spring-loaded folders in the Finder.