Tag Archives: Mac OS X Lion

TinkerTool: Tweak Mac Lion Default Tools, UI Elements & Overall Usage [Review]

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Just like previous Mac OS X versions, Mac OS X Lion doesn’t allow users to modify native utilities' behaviors, tweak with system settings, and make changes to its UI elements. For this reason, many power Mac users opt in for third-party system tweaking applications,, such as Lion Tweaks, OnyX, Deeper, Lion Designer, Lion Secrets, to customize their Mac. If you’re looking for an application that lets you easily access advance system preferences to change OS user interface elements, tweak desktop environment, edit advance Finder settings, view and configure hidden Safari features etc., then TinkerTool is worth a shot. The application is primarily developed to let users easily access the hidden advance system preferences built into Mac OS X Lion. While It comes packed with a sheer number of system tweaking features, you don’t need to gain administrative privileges to change system core settings. The application doesn’t make any system-wide level modifications, and therefore, the changes you make to Mac OS X via this application will not change anything for other user accounts. Details to follow after the jump. Read More

Get The Mountain Lion Growl Notification Look In Mac OS X Lion

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Mountain Lion will debut soon. In the mean time, a lot of blogs have taken the developer’s version apart, detailed the changes, and posted quite a few screenshots that will make you anticipate the new version even more. For those that don’t have the Apple Developer ID needed to download the Mountain Lion Preview, you can still try out Messages on Mac OS X Lion, and get the new Mountain Lion notification look on Growl with Mountain Lion Growl Theme. Mountain Lion Growl Theme lets you view notifications as they would appear on Mountain Lion. Read More

Blacksmith Brings Mac Desktop Spaces, Launchpad & Mission Control To Windows

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Previously, we have covered some very good desktop management applications, such as Desktop Panorama, WindowSlider and mDesktop. All of these desktop managers have their own strengths and weaknesses, some provide you with unlimited side ways scroll capability, while other allow you to preview all the virtual desktops to locate and manage the position of every running application. Today, we have another, very comprehensive, desktop management application for you, which allows you to have more than just multiple virtual desktops on your system. Blacksmith is a portable GUI extension tool and virtual desktop manager for Windows that provides you with the feel of Windows, Android and Mac OS X Lion operating systems. More on Blacksmith after the break. Read More

Lion Secrets: Customize Mac OS X Lion Without Terminal Commands

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Mac users, like Windows users, can tinker around their system files and modify the default settings, but not everyone is well versed in executing Terminal commands without doing serious damage. That leaves many people wanting to customize their OS, but lacking the ability to do so easily. Lion Secrets is a Mac app that makes these modifications easier. The app gives you an easy-to-use graphical interface, while executing Terminal commands at the back end to reflect any changes that you want to make. The app allows you to modify both startup programs, system preferences, alerts and appearance in Mac OS X Lion. Read More

DrawnStrips Reader Is Comic Reader With Mac Lion Multi Gesture Support [Paid]

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Supporting Mac OS X Lion Full-Screen feature. DrawnStrips Reader is a freshly launched comic book reader that supports both widely used comics format – CBZ and CBR. The application not only offers a minimalist user interface, but also supports Mac OS X Lion multi-touch gestures, which make it easy to navigate through comic book. You no longer have to use keyboard shortcuts to control the comic book; using the Mac OS X Lion touch gestures including swipe, pinch and scroll gestures, you can flip through pages, zoom in/out and scroll up and down the page. Moreover, it puts a thumbnail bar at the bottom of comic page to let you easily jump to your favorite section. Read More

cmdQuit Disables Mac Lion Resume Feature, Quits All Apps With A Click

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Earlier this year, we discussed how red close button of Mac OS X app window behaves and recommended RedQuits to run command-Q command every time you click the red close button in order to completely quit the application in question. Since it becomes quite tedious to manually close applications using RedQuits or command-Q hotkey combination before shutting down the system, you may need an application like cmdQuit to automate the process. It has the ability to show/hide running apps, list all currently active processes and quit all running applications in one go. Read More

Lion Designer: Change Mac Lion Mission Control, Dashboard & Launchpad Background Image

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Mac OS X 10.7 Lion comes with a number of new features and utilities including revamped Dashboard & Login screen, Launchpad and Mission Control. Although Mac OS X Lion lets you customize these utilities, it doesn’t provide a convenient option to change their color scheme and background images. Take Launchpad for an instance, the only way to change the Launchpad background image is by changing the desktop wallpaper. Mac OS X Lion doesn’t allow users to choose a separate background image for Launchpad. Similarly, Mission Control, Login Screen and Dashboard background images can’t be changed unless you fiddle around with their configuration files and replace the default images present in Resource folder with custom ones. Read More

How To Prevent Applications From Restoring In Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

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Available only in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Restore feature resumes applications, after reboot or system shutdown, from where you left off. This may become annoying when it’s required to stop launching applications after system reboot on which you were working previously. Although Mac OS X Lion lets you choose system-wide applications and windows which are not to be resumed every time you login to Mac, there are certain applications which skip through this restriction. Also the option to disable restoration feature on per-application basis is nowhere to be found, you either have to disable restore feature for all applications or keep it enabled. Read More

Classic Trash X Is A Smart Way To Empty Trash In Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

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Originally written for Mac OS X Snow Leopard and former versions, Trash X has recently been updated with support for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Trash X is an extension of Mac native Trash utility. For those who have never tried Trash X before, it offers a number of options to easily send files and folders to Trash, shred files/apps and folders, eject mounted disk images, clean volume data for selected applications, all via a simple drag & drop. For instance, you drag a mounted application or external hard disk over its icon to quickly eject it. Similarly, when you drag the disks over Trash X icon while holding the command key, it will empty the Trash only on those volumes. File shredding functionality has also been integrated into Trash X. You can forcibly delete the file/folder or choose to shred the items in question. Read More

Hide Launchpad App Pages & Refresh App List With Launchpad-control

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We covered Launchpad-control since it helps displaying only important applications in Mac OS X 10.7 Launchpad. The Launchpad sorts installed applications in alphabetical order, making it easier for users to find applications from stack, and supports mouse-gesture feature to let users quickly navigate through application pages. If you’ve installed a great deal of applications, it would definitely become tiring to manually hide each application using the launchpad-control. Launchpad-control latest version 1.3 has been written to address this annoying problem. This update brings an option to hide applications by pages. You can uncheck the page you want to hide, and it will immediately conceal it with all underlying applications in Launchpad. Another noteworthy aspect is that it can do full reset of Launchpad by creating a fresh application listing database file. Read More

Deeper 1.4 Is Exclusive Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Tweaking Utility

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Deeper is a brilliant Mac OS X customization utility which includes a comprehensive list of options and tools to tweak with different indigenous applications, including, Safari, Mail App, iTunes, Dock, QuickTime, etc., and Mac’s Finder, System Dock, Spotlight, and Login screen. For those who are not familiar with Deeper, it accumulates a collection of tweaks in 10 different categories, allowing users to easily reveal numerous Mac hidden features, toggle applications’ user interface specific elements, and enable hidden features of aforementioned Mac applications. Read More

Bring Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Text Editor To Windows 7 With Lion TextEdit

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TextEdit is a Mac OS X word processor and text editor which comes pre-installed with Mac. TextEdit was a replacement for the legacy text editor known as SimpleText. Mac OS X Lion TextEdit for Windows is a portable Mac style text editor for Windows which can be used as an alternative to the native Windows Notepad. This Mac's TextEdit clone is yet another third-party attempt to create an application which aims to mimic features of a Mac application. Some other examples include, the previously reviewed PhotoBooth and JumpPad. Read More

Customize Mac OS X 10.7 Lion System Dock With Docker

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Since Mac OS X offers a very limited set of options to change different elements of system dock, including, position, icon size, application window minimize effect, etc, many users rely on 3rd party tools to change dock layout as well as its appearance. If you’ve been hanging around multiple tools to overhaul Mac system dock, have a look at Docker. Unlike other dock tweaking tools, Docker is an all-in-one system dock tweaker that caters to almost everything related with dock ranging from Dock Style, Icons, Indicator Style, docked application separator, 2D and 3D Dock Style, Standard and magnified size of items in dock, Disable bouncing icons, Hide in-active applications and more. Read More

Create Mac OS X Lion Install Bootable DVD / USB With Lion DiskMaker

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If you’re planning to upgrade your Mac OS X 10.6.6 or higher to Mac OS X 10.7, aka, Mac Lion, you might want to create a bootable Mac Lion install DVD disc or USB drive before installing it on your system or upgrading other systems to Mac OS X 10.7 as well. Lion DiskMaker may come useful to quickly install Mac Lion on previous Mac OS X versions without having to use Mac Lion redeem code in App Store. This AppleScript based application provides best alternative to tedious procedure of burning Mac Lion package contained Disk Image, namely, InstallESD.dmg  to DVD and USB flash drive. Not does it only save you Mac volume licensing count it also attempts to include all those files which are required to install Mac Lion. With LionDiskMaker, you won't have to look for Mac Lion package in Applications folder; when you launch it, it automatically starts finding Mac Lion package and prompts you about the search result. Read More

Hide Launchpad Applications With Launchpad-control [Mac]

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Supporting multi-touch gestures and full-screen mode, Lauchpad is a great little feature of Mac OS X Lion which lets you access installed application from a distraction free environment and also allows you to group similar applications into folders. Launchpad contains all those applications which are present in Mac Applications folder accessible from system dock. Since there is no native option available in Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) that can tweak with Launchpad application listings, you may need a tool, like, Launchpad- control to place those applications in Launchpad which you use most frequently. It provides nothing but a list of all installed applications to hide those items which you don’t want to show in Launchpad. Read More

TotalTerminal Replaces Visor In Mac; System-Wide Terminal With Hotkey

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Many Mac proficient users like to use Terminal utilities like, Click2Shell, cdto, etc., to quickly launch Terminal for performing numerous system tasks. Both mentioned tools open current location in Mac Terminal from Finder toolbar, preventing users from manually navigating to current location in Terminal. If you’re looking for a more convenient way to launch Mac Terminal window, try out TotalTerminal. It’s an Terminal.app plugin which provides a persistent Terminal Visor window. Although it isn’t meant to open current Finder folder in Terminal, you can quickly slide down Terminal from system menu bar by using default hotkey combination Ctrl + ~ to instantly start running required system commands. When this hotkey combination is re-triggered, it will hide the Terminal. Read More