I tried this app a few years back and found it difficult to figure out how to use. I found the need for something like this again, and tried it again. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize I needed a different version for Lion so setting it up wasn’t working (the site wasn’t incredibly clear about that months back: It is the standalone app you need for Lion BTW. The System Prefs Pane does not work). So finally, I tried it yet again, saw the warning, and got it running fairly quickly.
I’ve read the first page of reviews: you don’t _have_ to be a geek to use this app, but it helps. If you know a few Unix shell commands and are willing to learn, you will be well rewarded. Since GeekTool free and anything you leaner can be used in the CLI, you won’t be wasting money or time.
My favorite feature is the ability to make things float over everything else. (I wish it would optionally bring things to the front automatically for a second when updated.)
I already knew all the essential shell commands, so once I got a working version, it was easy to adapt to. (Note: any command that self-updates in place such as “top” will cause problems since GT takes care of refreshing.)
I found just loading the security, system and kernel logs works well, and is light on the processor load (since displaying logs is essentially a tail command: 0.1%CPU {2.53GHz/DC} & ~30MB RAM). Also, I loaded uptime, calendar, and a few other slow refresh commands. It you find that geek tool is taking up too many resources, lower the refresh times.

If you read the sites about configuration, there are a ton of helpful tips, and prebuilt sets one can download. Try DuckDuckGo.com and look for “GeekTool” with “tips” or “configuration” if the developer’s site isn’t enough. (I noticed documentation is getting better on the dev site last time I checked about a month ago.)

BOTTOM LINE: If you want to know what is going on in your system without buying various monitoring programs, want complete configuration, and are willing to read a bit, GeekTool is well worth your time.

Like the user below me, I downloaded it from MAS and I found it to be difficult to use without doing some research. There are tutorials on the web that helped me learn this tool.

wouldn't be without it, an amazing little tool and in case you were wondering the Lion version (experimental) is here


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1760713/GeekTool-3.0.2.zip/

Freezes constantly, eats memory like it's air. I loved version 2, which inexplicably stopped working today, and had tried but continually uninstalled version 3 because it was so inelegant by comparison. I was amazed tonight to find that nothing had changed in more than a year. I guess development is either slowed or dead. Unless I can get 2 working again, looks like goodbye Geektool.

While I'm happy to see this is finally being updated, there are still several problems, and one of them is quite unforgivable:

- GeekTool is currently taking up 200MB of RAM. This is unacceptable and makes it unusable for me. Such a small problem should not take up so much RAM. NerdTool by comparison takes up only 16.6MB (that could probably be improved too, but it's certainly better than 200).

- You can't put a drop shadow on the text from a shell script.

- You can't customize terminal colors as you can with NerdTool. I.e. I don't like what it picks for the default green, it'd be nice if that was something I could change.

- There's no way to change advanced text output like line spacing.

On the plus side though, unlike NerdTool, you when it says "stay on top", your tools will stay above the menubar which is very useful for doing stuff like replacing MenuMeters.

I am following the GeekTool guide at LifeHacker. My background color (desktop) is blue. The text GeekTool defaults to black. Nothing is visible.

I check all colors in preferences and yet nothing is visible. I don't know if this curious piece of software is working or not.

Welcome Lifehacker readers and good luck!
Recently featured over there, but I guess I'm shy and stick with Growl etc.

I'm running Leopard (10.5.1) on a MBP and I have been having sleep issues with Geektool running. Of course, I can close the lid and it will fall asleep, but if Geektool is running and I just let the Power Saving preferences take it's toll, it doesn't fall asleep.

If the refresh time on a GT entry is greater than the sleep time, the machine will fall asleep. But that kind of eliminates the whole purpose of the utility if I can only refresh every 10 minutes. Does anyone have a solution to this problem, or at least experience the same problem I'm having?