GeekTool for Mac3.3.1

Indispensable for Mac nerds.

version 3.3.1 available (since August) at https://www.tynsoe.org/v2/geektool/

Nice and multifunctional application. Easy to understand how it works. Not only for advanced Mac users. Give it a try and you'll like it. Cheers

up to version 3.1.3 for El Capitan (as of 21.Oct.2015): http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/ -HI-

First, great system tool. You can use it as little or as much as you want, and it's very extendable if you take the time to run with it. For an idea of the capabilities (and for some creative ideas) do a google image search for GeekTool. Second, the software was recently updated to 3.1.2 for compatibility with El Capitan. For some reason the auto software update detection in the 3.1.1 app isn't detecting this, so you'll need to download it directly from the developer's site: http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/download.php

Love it, nothing wrong with it, free. What more do you want? I have used it for years and since I may not upgrade past 10.8 in my lifetime I may be using it forever.

Clumsy to use; no way to uninstall the program.

I found Geektool to be a mixed bag. The features it provides are very helpful, but the abysmal user interface and the nonexistent documentation make the learning curve very steep. E.g. I spent a whole day experimenting and googling to figure out how to call a shell script file from a geeklet (you have to use "source ~/.bash_profile" on the second line after the shebang, or the output of commands won't be displayed). Also, while Geektool runs without problems on my 10.7.5 machines, it behaves completely haphazard on my 10.8.5 server (Geeklets not being displayed at all, clicking the "close" button of a geeklet not having any effect, etc. etc.). On most of these cases, it helps to kill GeektoolHelper in Activity Monitor. Do not expect to get any help from the forum on the developer's website, as it is overrun with spam.

Absolutely bizarre that there is no GUI means of deleting a single geeklet within a group; that you have to go through the faff of not just deleting a plist entry but also quitting not only the application but also the helper application to stop the one you want to get rid of persisting anyway and yes am quite aware the workaround would be to put every single .glet into a separate group but this is rather beside the point and also not much use if you've already got all your geeklets in one. This seeming interface idiocy spoils exploration of the app somewhat... Quite content to stand corrected if there is some really obvious "Delete" button that I'm just not seeing somehow but regardless Geektool should just let you delete a .glet on highlighting it and pressing the delete key (it's not as if backspace in that context is assigned to anything else!) But perhaps this would all be too... ungeekily straightforward?

Fantastic app. It's called GeekTool for a reason; you have to already have some geekery ability to make it do much of interest. If you don't know what a shell script is, or how to write one, or are totally unfamiliar with things that live in /usr/bin, you won't be able to do much besides put images on your desktop. And most other things don't make a lot of sense then. But if you are a Geek, it couldn't really much get easier to use. It could use improvement in certain areas. For instance, it often reshuffles the order of which geeklets get loaded first. This can ruin a carefully-crafted desktop. If you try to fix this, you can, but you run into the fact that GeekTool keeps track of its geeklets by means of hexadecimal UIDs instead of the names that you already gave your geeklets when you created them. So to shuffle their order in the plist, you have to write down which UID goes with which geeklet. There should be a box or something in the app's preferences that allow you to change the load order of geeklets, and shows you a list of them by name (not UIDs). It would probably work smoother if there was something in the preferences that allowed the user to set a custom $PATH. One gripe: 3.1.1 came out, and it destroyed the look of Monaco at 9pt and 10pt. They are now antialiased, where they never were before. Monaco looks *terrible* antialiased at those sizes, and having it antialiased makes things displayed look much, much less geeky :) Indeed, I'd love to see it get the ability to optionally disable antialiasing for *any* font (like in Terminal).