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Comments

$\"Gravatar\"$ Erm, how can I change my recent-tile from grid to fan? Thanks.
Zee | 11.27.07 - 10:42 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ This article is great, but it would be even better with the inclusion of screen shots showing the individual UI components before & after each setting. Just a suggestion!
Tom Z | 11.27.07 - 11:43 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Re: the recent applications stack.

No need to use the Terminal command referenced and remove all of your stacks if you want it gone. Just drag it off the dock and it will poof into nonexistence like any other dock item.

-Matt
Matt | Homepage | 11.27.07 - 1:36 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Very interesting info, thanks.
Mat Brewster | Homepage | 11.27.07 - 2:17 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Zee - sorry, as far as I know there isn't a way to change the grid to a fan. If I hear of anything I'll post it here.

Matt - I tried that and I thought that the Recent items stack reappeared after you reloaded the Dock (i.e. if you restarted). I'll have to try it out again to make sure.
Matt | Homepage | 11.27.07 - 4:48 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ You've got some great tips but it seems pretty complex for the average users. Who will remember any of these? Maybe writing a small app that would take care of that would be a plus.

---------
www.MostOfMyMac.com
TheMacThinker | Homepage | 11.27.07 - 4:56 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ As was noted in the previous article, to restart Finder just use the Force Quit dialog. If you click on Finder, Restart is shown as an option.
Euchre | 11.27.07 - 6:46 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ A note about the dock transparency thing: The \"white and non-transparent\" setting seems to prevent you from changing the desktop background. Luckily, you can change the background with the \"grey and non-transparent\" setting (which I think looks better anyway.)
Steve | 11.27.07 - 8:57 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Make that \"menu bar transparency,\" not \"dock transparency.\"
Steve | 11.27.07 - 8:58 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Heh, cool tricks
Anglictina | Homepage | 11.27.07 - 9:27 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Is there a way to turn on mouse-over affects for Stacks using the fan?

I tried defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack-fan -boolean YES with no success :/
Matt | 12.08.07 - 6:17 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Uhh, that would just break Spotlight altogether, not just a simple \"turn off the icon\".
Ceri Davies | 12.17.07 - 11:18 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ thanks, nice list.
anon | 12.23.07 - 5:24 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Don't you think you should warn people before telling them to use a sudo command? That's some serious stuff there. Otherwise, thanks for the tips, although I knew most of them. And I'd just like to say that the Recent stack only works if you put it in a shell, not a command. At least, for me.
Henry | 12.29.07 - 5:56 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ I'm adding this blog to my blogroll. I love it!!
tmlsuperspice | Homepage | 12.30.07 - 8:49 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Anyway to make spaces work like the other X managers, where you can see all the desktops and drag the application to different workspaces?

Since I may not be saying this clearly... is there a way to make \"Spaces\" look and work more like this?
http://www.gnome.org/learn/users...workspaces.html

Thanks so much.. $\"\"$
Anonymous | 01.01.08 - 3:48 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ @anon - try pressing f8
Anonymous | 01.10.08 - 8:22 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Well i tried to type those commands and after each killall Dock - but it seems it does't work since i don;t see any affect at all. what do i do wrong?
man | 01.14.08 - 9:30 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Dashboard dev mode:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

revert:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO
devDelay | 01.15.08 - 6:48 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ That menubar trick is NOT without a tradeoff!!

I found 3d performance to be generally degraded with transparency disabled with that hack (It tells macos that your hardware is older than it thinks it is otherwise). When running the maximum number of spaces, and hitting F8, it is a very noticeable difference. I had been using it since I bought my MacBook Pro, and didn't think much about 3d stuff being sluggish until I reinstalled and realized that things were a lot snappier. Turned the hack on again, and sure enough, things got slow. Removed it, things got faster.

Maybe you won't see as much difference on cheaper video cards like the 915 in MB's, but this is generally not a good hack, because it means your CPU has to do more work and your overall system performance is degraded.
Casey | 01.16.08 - 11:01 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ I really like the command to change TM backup intervals but there is a slight problem with it. when you look at the TM preferences the next backup timer still says that the next backup will happen in 1 hour even if I change it to, say, 6 hours using your command. as a result actual backups happen once every 6 hours but the next backup time is displayed incorrectly. do you know a command to fix that?
V.K. | 01.23.08 - 12:52 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ The following perl script will search all of your system defaults. It takes one command-line argument (a regurlar expression) and searches all defaults. I call it grepdefaults, so for example I can search for all defaults with the word \"space\" in them:

>grepdefaults \"space\"
com.apple.Safari: \" applescript workspaces\",
com.apple.Safari: \"mac applescript workspaces\",
com.apple.Safari: \"mac hacks workspaces\",
com.apple.Safari: \"applescript spaces\",
com.apple.dock: workspaces = 1;
com.apple.dock: \"workspaces-app-bindings\" = {
com.apple.dock: \"workspaces-cols\" = 4;
com.apple.dock: \"workspaces-rows\" = 4;
com.apple.dock: \"workspaces-switch-modifier-binding\" = 262144;
com.apple.dock: \"workspaces-switchDirectly-modifier-binding\" = 262144;
com.apple.systempreferences: WorkspacesNavLastRootDirectory = \"/Applications\";

Feel free to pass it on.

#!/usr/bin/perl
@domains = split /, / => `defaults domains`;
for (@domains) {
chomp;
next unless ($domain = $_);
push @contents, map {\"$domain: $_\"} `defaults read $domain`;
}
$pattern = shift;
print grep /$pattern/, @contents;

Watch out though cause I don't think this is the standard perl directory on macs. Try /bin/perl perhaps instead of /usr/bin/perl
Anonymous | 01.24.08 - 8:26 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Used the menubar trick to disable the transparency but when tried to reverse to original I got left with a MacBook that doesn't boot (stuck at the grey background with apple image and the spinning thing).
Kero | 02.12.08 - 9:46 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ But how do I run a script at startup?
Heath | 03.15.08 - 1:03 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ I like the TimeMachine interval trick, but I've noticed if I set it to a large value (like 12 hours, or 43200 seconds) it resumes backing up every hour. Anyone know what the limit is?
Dalkorian | 03.26.08 - 4:50 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Do you people here ever manage to do anything important or productive with your computers, or are you forever tinkering with appearance?

Now, if anybody can suggest a CLI to import my latest raw photos into Aperture and colour correct them, sensitively crop them then export them as jpegs and make a DVD with slideshows incorporating a suitable sound track, I would say you were probably onto something. Until then ....
Alan Williams | 03.29.08 - 10:48 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Hi, thanks for the hacks.

I wonder if there is also a chance to set the disk Time Machine uses for backup in the terminal. I would like to use it in a script that automatically changes the destination once a TM is mounted (e.g. local disk vs. network mounted disk). Does anybody know?
Carsten | 05.30.08 - 10:53 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ right click a stack for options> fan, grid, or list.
MIKE Darrow | 06.12.08 - 7:44 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ You can restart spaces, spotlight and dock etc. by clicking on the apple icon on the left top of your screen, choose force quit and select finder. It will relaunch in seconds.
Leonard | 07.22.08 - 8:55 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ I have just bought an iMac and when I connect my external hard drive to it I am instructed to \"write enable\" the disk so I can save to it. The help menu does not tell me how to write enable it. How do I do this?

Thanks
Dale
Dale Rhodes | 09.20.08 - 6:32 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Hi - i was wondering if you can set the spotlight default to include system files, and what the terminal command for that would be? any hints?
thanks, michael
Michael | 12.18.08 - 8:34 am | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ (mactweakers.net is under construction)

Very great tips with terminal...

I'm going to put some of these on my site (still working on it) if that is okay....

Someone had asked if you could do this with a program... superdocker, tinkertool, ect... there are many programs to do it with (google them)
b419kid | Homepage | 12.21.08 - 3:34 pm | #

$\"Gravatar\"$ Hi. Removing the stripes in finder list view is great. Is there any way to do it in the search view as well?

Thanks

Digby
D Maass | 12.22.08 - 10:54 am | #

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