There are a few tools that you can use to customize your desktop. Most of the apps in this list are free or free to try. They are fairly easy to use right away and you can find resources on the Internet to make them even better. This list contains apps that are most frequently used by users who customize their desktops. The list includes a link to the site and a brief description.

Adium

http://adium.im/

Adium is an instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more. You can even find custom themes to use with Adium. (FREE)
Here are two sites to find xtras for Adium:
http://www.adiumxtras.com/
http://www.deviantart.com/#order=9&q=adium

Bowtie

http://bowtieapp.com/

Bowtie is an application that allows you to control iTunes with customizable shortcuts, it submits your songs to Last.fm with support for Loving and Banning, and sports a very simple, yet powerful, html5 + css + javascript based theming system. You can find themes for Bowtie in a variety of places on the Internet. (FREE)
Here are three sites to find themes for bowtie:
http://www.jackrebel.com/category/bowtie-themes/
http://www.iconpaper.org/bowtie-en/
http://www.deviantart.com/#order=9&q=bowtie+theme

CandyBar

http://iconfactory.com/software/candybar

CandyBar is easy to use and gives you a safe way to customize icons found on your system and application toolbars. You can also customize your apps, folders, clipping icons, locations and more. (Free to try/$12.95 to purchase.)

DragThing

http://www.dragthing.com/

Use DragThing to keep all your documents, folders, and applications a single click away. It is highly flexible, allows multiple docks, each customized to suit your exact needs.
It stores frequently used clippings such as text and pictures, and lets you easily paste them into other applications with just a click. (Free to try/$29.00 single user. Other prices available for multiple users.)

Img2Icns

http://www.img2icnsapp.com/

Img2icns is an application to create icons from images or images from icons, keeping them organized for future use. Creating an icon is as simple as dropping one or more images into Img2icns and choosing an export format. (Free Version and $12.90 for Pro)

Magnifique

(site down)

Magnifique allows you to browse beautifully crafted themes and apply them to your system with ease. The site is currently down. I have found a download at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/30497/magnifique. I do not recall if it comes preinstalled with themes, if not, you would have to download from sites like deviantART or other locales.  (FREE)

GeekTool

http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/

GeekTool is a PrefPane for Mac OS 10.5. It allows you to display different kinds of information on your desktop, provided by 3 default modes:
File mode is used to monitor your MacOS X activity with /var/log/system.log, or any file that you want to follow.
Shell mode is used to launch custom scripts or commands.
Image mode helps you monitor bandwith usage, CPU loads, memory availability of your server, via tools like MRTG, Cacti, or RRD. (FREE)

NerdTool

http://mutablecode.com/apps/nerdtool

NerdTool is a GeekTool like application that displays shell output and more directly on your desktop. Unlike GeekTool, it is run like normal applications.
Nerdtool allows you to display many things directly on top of your desktop; weather reports, headline news, and system vitals are just a few uses. Nerdtool is capable of displaying shell outputs with ANSI escaped formatting, but can also manipulate the final output’s colors, size, and font. If more intricacy is desired, Nerdtool is also capable of displaying images, HTML documents, and other higher forms of media. (FREE)

Overflow

http://stuntsoftware.com/overflow/

Overflow is an application designed to quickly launch applications, open documents, or access folders while reducing the number of items needed in your Dock.
Any item you see in the Finder can be added to the Overflow interface, making it accessible through a few simple mouse clicks or keystrokes. You still have quick access, but now that item is tucked away in Overflow instead of cluttering up your Dock.
The interface is resizable, and fully customizable. Create separate categories for your applications, work files, games, or anything else you want to be able to access quickly. (Free to try/$14.95 to purchase.)

DateLine

http://machinecodex.com/dateline/index.php

DateLine is a small app that displays a linear calendar on your desktop in a transparent window. It provides easy access to iCal by double clicking on a day. The background and text colors are customizable with support for transparency. (Free/Unlock features for $4.95 donationware.)

Rainlendar

http://www.rainlendar.net/cms/index.php

Rainlendar is a feature rich calendar application that is easy to use and doesn’t take much space on your desktop. The application is platform independent so you can run it on all major operating systems: Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
The appearance can be customized with skins and you can even mix different skins together. Many of these skins can be found on http://www.customize.org/rainlendar or find skins at deviantART. (Rainlendar Lite is Free/$13.49 Pro.)

SuperDocker

(site down)

SuperDocker is a free utility that gives you the opportunity to customize some aspects of your system. For example, you can customize your Dock, your Dashboard, and even the Safari progress bar. And because the appearance customization is useless for some people, SuperDocker also brings up the ability to activate some hidden features. SuperDocker site is down but I found a site that has a download: http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/SuperDocker-Download-30474.html (tested and it worked). (FREE)
Here are a few links to download docks:
http://www.deviantart.com/#order=9&q=mac+docks
http://www.leoparddocks.com/Browse_Leopard_Docks_Designs.php
http://www.dockulicious.com/docks/
http://www.jackrebel.com/category/mac-dock/

Secrets

http://secrets.blacktree.com/

Secrets provides handy checkboxes to turn terminal commands on and off, and doubles as a menu of secret settings. A “Top Secrets” entry shows a list of popular options, but many more options for various applications can be selected from the application sidebar.
Clicking on any of the listed features will show you a short description of what it does in the bottom of the window; click on the More Info button for a detailed description. (FREE)

Wallpaper Clocks

http://www.vladstudio.com/wallpaperclock/

Wallpaper Clocks is a desktop wallpaper that refreshes every minute to keep your time and date precise on the desktop. They have many to choose from and you can register to download the better wallpapers. (FREE and the plans are Lifetime for $29.99, 3 Months for $9.99 and 12 months for $19.99)

Yahoo Widgets

http://widgets.yahoo.com/

Yahoo Widgets are sort of like the Dashboard widgets. You can choose from more than 4,000 widgets from the Yahoo widgets site and place them wherever you want on your desktop. (FREE)

Check out the list of sites that consists of fonts, backgrounds and wallpapers, icons, clip art, stock photos, vector images and more in ‘Fantastic Resources For Desktop Customization.’ If you have a useful app you’d like to share, leave a comment with a link. Don’t forget, if you like this article, share it with others.

There are some really cool GeekTool desktop screenshots out there on the web. This list contains 20 screenshots uploaded in February from DeviantART and Flickr. (To view more information about the screenshot, click the link below their titles.)

FROM DEVIANTART

Geektool desktop by D-Money-16

http://d-money-16.deviantart.com/art/Geektool-desktop-124906820

Hit the Bottom by iamthejaypaul

http://iamthejaypaul.deviantart.com/art/Hit-the-Bottom-152531275

Mac desktop feb 10 by woomera

http://woomera.deviantart.com/art/Mac-desktop-feb-10-153983449

Modern X – Screenshot by FloStyler0408

http://flostyler0408.deviantart.com/art/Modern-X-Screenshot-154072937

screenshot 21-02-10 by multini

http://multini.deviantart.com/art/screenshot-21-02-10-154819762

Sing Along by Sharcuk

http://sharcuk.deviantart.com/art/Sing-Along-152549885

veritas pro by 11tsetm1

http://11tsetm1.deviantart.com/art/veritas-pro-153360965

FROM APPLEVIEWS FLICKR POOL

City by tomcraig

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33209565@N06/4264048772

Citypark Desktop by taipan_snake

http://www.flickr.com/photos/taipan_snake/4334310586

Current desktop wallpaper by KingScooty

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kingscooty/4389854481

Desktop 1-31-10 red by JediSLUzer

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jedisluzer/4326913578

Geektool Desktop by Peter Thomas Simmons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterorpete/4383831494

Geektool Desktop by Peter Thomas Simmons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterorpete/4383840322

Interloper Desktop by taipan_snake

http://www.flickr.com/photos/taipan_snake/4358157333

untitled screenshot by I2not_know

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35167705@N03/4392518048

minimal by jeffmincey

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffmincey/4372492100

My Current Desktop by DaveBinM

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davebinm/4391264252

Zoom in, there is some cool stuff going on…by Cain Novocaine

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29349409@N07/4344401351

Other Favorites

New desktop :D by Automatic Entropy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/automaticentropy/4344491243/

Peaceful (with sidebar) by TeknoFTW

http://www.flickr.com/photos/teknoftw/4369960534/

If you have any interesting or unique GeekTool desktop screenshots you’d like to share, click here to go to the Appleviews Flickr group and upload to share them with others. If you liked this article, don’t forget to spread the word and leave a comment.

Today’s desktop screenshot from the Appleviews Flickr Pool is by taipan_snake titled Interloper Desktop. I chose this desktop for the week because of the simplicity of the buildings and the setup of GeekTool and Adium.
He used GeekTool for the date and time.
The Bowtie theme he used is the Zukunft Bowtie Theme by janik at DeviantART.
Download the bowtie theme here: http://janik.deviantart.com/art/Zukunft-bowtie-theme-109443279
The icons are The Kohbens Iconset by Roberto Urso.
Downloaded The Kohbens Iconset here: http://www.robertourso.com/goodies/goodies.html
The wallpaper is interloper by ether at DeviantART.
Download the wallpaper here: http://ether.deviantart.com/art/interloper-153447829

To view taipan_snakes other work on Flickr, click his favicon (to the left).
Well done taipan_snake! Remember, to be included in the Appleviews Group Pool, you need to upload your work!

This weeks Appleviews flickr pool desktop is by something1138. It is titled Earth wallpaper with GeekTool. The only information he left about the screenshot is that he used GeekTool and where he got the icons. From what I can tell, he used GeekTool for the time, date, uptime, load averages, temperature, memory usage, and GT usage. He may have used GeekTool for iTunes information but I am not sure. For his dock icons, he got them from Nick Caron on Flickr (I went on the link but it was invalid). I chose this desktop because it has a unique look to it. Great job something1138! If anybody wants share feedback on the tools that you think were used on this desktop, feel free to comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers!

Here is an easy way to pull up your feeds from your Twitter friends timeline using GeekTool:
I found this command to be the easiest to implement and thought I’d share it with you. It isn’t too hard to do.

Twitter Feeds (the easy way)

Once you open GeekTool, open a new Shell Command and enter the following information:

curl -s -u username:password http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.rss | grep title | sed -e 's/<title>/ /' | sed -e 's/<\/title>/ /'

(NOTE: Insert your Twitter user name for username: and your Twitter password for :password)
Change the fonts, colors, etc. to whatever you choose and Voila! You’ve got a feed on your screen.
If any readers have other ways to add feeds, feel free to comment below and share the wealth with our fellow readers!

For the SuperMac design, we decided to go with a cityscape background and used PhotoShop to create an alley with rundown, broken PC’s. And the Mac to the rescue.  The tools we used to create this look was PhotoShop (for the design), GeekTool, Magnifique (Titanium), and the Moon Phase II Yahoo Widget.
The fonts used are as follows (they can be found at www.dafont.com):
Amsterdam Graffiti for CPU, Uptime and RAM
Graffonti Atomic Bomb for the Day of Week and Day of Month
Graffonti 3d Drop for the Month and Year
Here are the codes used in GeekTool:
CPU
top -l 2 | awk '/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print $12, $13}'
UPTIME
uptime | awk '{print "" $3 " " $4 " " $5 }' | sed -e 's/.$//g';
RAM
top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print "" $8 " "}' ;
Day of Month
date +%d
Day of Week
date +%A
Month
date +%B
Year
date +%Y


To download this image (without my desktop info), click the download button.

Image size 1,280 x 800

We really like how in the Batman Movie, the Bat symbol is displayed in the spotlight. Really cool. So, we decided to emulate the spotlight with the Apple Logo using PhotoShop on a Cityscape background. Here are the tools we used to tweak the background:
For the time in the top right corner, we used the Gorgy Clock Yahoo Widget.

For the CPU, RAM, and UPTIME, we used GeekTool:
RAM:
top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print "" $8 " "}' ;


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

UPTIME:
uptime | awk '{print "" $3 " " $4 " " $5 }' | sed -e 's/.$//g';
For the calendar, we used Dateline.
The font used in GeekTool and DateLine Calendar is Eurostile Regular.

Here is a download of the wallpaper (without my desktop screen) for all the Batman and Mac fans out there.

The size is 1,900 x 1,200

We’ve been pretty busy trying to figure out how to create unique desktops. Also, the current trend seems to be minimalistic, but it is hard to figure out. There are tons of different styles of desktops on the Internet. We decided to create a simple desktop + since we like the iPhone and its apps, we decided to be creative and make a ‘Brain Monitor’ app. LOL. The concept is simple. When you think of an Apple (or any other computer), you often hear the term “brain” of the computer. Hence, we found a brain on Google and hooked it up to the iPhone to create the app using PhotoShop. We used GeekTool for the Macs top processes, but made it look as if it were an actual app reading the ‘brain.’
P.S. We set up an account with Flickr so that readers can submit their designs and start a discussion on topics like GeekTool, Rainlendar, SuperDocker, anything that pertains to creating awesome desktops. This can be a useful tool for readers to share ideas and learn from one another. Click the icon to be directed to the Appleviews Flickr group.

I have noticed that some of my readers have shown interest in iCalBuddy and have probably came to the site to see how to use it. I have to admit, I emailed the creator to get help and he responded with information as to how to use it. As you can see on my second mac desktop design, I used it with no problem. So here is an article about what iCalBuddy does along with links from the web site to help those of you interested in it. I am no longer using iCalBuddy because I have upgraded GeekTool to the latest version.

Here is a brief summary from the web site:
iCalBuddy is a command line utility that can be used to get a list of items (events, tasks, todos) from the Mac OS X calendar (iCal).
Ali Rantakari, the creator of iCalBuddy, suggests that if you are going to use iCalBuddy with GeekTool, to try his custom build of GeekTool, which includes features, like ANSI escape sequence formatting support (like colors, bolding, underlining, etc.) and Unicode (UTF-8) support (used for displaying non-ASCII characters like umlauts, Arabic or Hebrew).

To download the iCalBuddy GeekTool 2.2.1 unofficial hasseg build, click here. There is also more information about the features you may find useful.
Note: There are two versions.
2.2.0 requires Leopard.
2.2.1 requires Leopard OS X 10.5+

In order to install it, do the following: (from iCalBuddy web site)
1. Extract the files from the zip archive by double-clicking on it in Finder
2. Double-click on the GeekTool.prefPane file icon in Finder to install it
3. If you already had GeekTool installed, System Preferences will ask if you want to replace it. Select “Replace”, quit and restart System Preferences and open the GeekTool preference pane, verifying that the version label now says “unofficial hasseg.org build.”
4. Unselect the “Enable GeekTool” checkbox in order to kill the old version’s background process, and then select it again in order to run the updated one.

Below are documentation links from the iCalBuddy website. It is filled with information. And if you have any questions, you may contact Ali Rantakari (which I have done when I first used iCalBuddy) and he will respond to your inquiries (or at least he responded to mine).

iCalBuddy Manual Reference Page

iCalBuddy Config Manual Page

iCalBuddy Localization Manual Page

FAQ Page

Here is the email that I sent to iCalBuddy:

iCalBuddy Response:

I hope that this article helps you understand a little bit more about iCalBuddy and know that I’ve been there with the frustration of trying to figure a tool out. If any of my readers have used iCalBuddy and have any tips or experiences with it, please, feel free to leave a comment and spread the wealth!
-TINA

Since Halloween is right around the corner, I wanted to make a realistic spider web effect sucking in the Apple logo. My husband is the guru when it comes to design, so he created a cob web and added the Apple logo and gave the effect of it being pulled into the spider web. In fact, there are spiders in the screen, can you see how many there are? I wanted to make this fun for those viewing it, so I had him add some spiders, and asked the audience to see how many they can count. To add to the effect, I used GeekTool to add a countdown of how many days left to Halloween and used the echo to add ‘days to go’ behind after the countdown number. There is of course a way to do it without having to add an extra shell command, but we didn’t see the code until after the fact. However, you can use the echo command to add text to your screen though, so this is why we added it to this article. We used the Moon Phase II Yahoo Widget for the moon. Here are the commands for GeekTool:
Days To Go shell command:
echo "days to go"
CountDown shell command:
echo '<?=(int)((strtotime("Oct 31")-time())/86400)?>' | php
To add the Yahoo Widget, click on the moon to be directed to the download page on Yahoo Widgets.

To download the background without my desktop screen, go to the Freebies tab in this site for the download. This concludes this article, if you have any other GeekTool commands or Yahoo Widgets, please, leave a comment to help fellow readers. Also, check out more designs by my husband at http://philipbrunner.com.

I was looking for Mac applications through Google the other day when I ran into this website (Vladstudio) that had wallpaper clocks. To my curiosity, I installed the Wallpaper Clock, which is free and added some of their free themes. What I found to be really unique about these wallpapers is that the clocks actually worked. Normally, I use GeekTool to produce my date, time, etc. but these functions were built into the wallpaper. The wallpaper that I used for the theme shown is the Metal clock. I still used GeekTool to add This Day in History and the Quotes using Kraken Thin for the font.  The website where I downloaded the wallpaper clock from has many wallpapers to choose from. Some are free and some are for registered users only. To become registered, they offer a Lifetime account (which is currently on sale for Halloween and never expires) at $19.99, a 3 Month account for $9.99 and a 12 Month account for $19.99. Below is the GeekTool command for the Quotes and This Day in History commands:
Quotes:
curl http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/feeds/rssfeed.aspx?type=quote | grep description | sed -e 's/\(.*<description>\)//' -e 's/<\/description>.*//'
This Day in History:
curl http://www.infoplease.com/rss/dayinhistory.rss | grep CDATA | sed -e 's/\(.*\[\)//' -e 's/\].*//'
This concludes todays customized desktop. Enjoy.
-TINA