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Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Poll. Your Favorite Mac Desktop
This article is intended to give exposure to other contestants that have submitted their works. The screenshots of their submissions are listed below. And you can cast vote on any that you like (you can choose more than one) at the end of this article.
Let's vote for your favorite Mac Desktop and support the one that you like!
Hint. You can use keystrokes Cmd-[↓] to quickly scroll down to end of page.
Lock Your Mac Desktop
There are times when we want to walk out of our Mac yet still have many running tasks to stop us from logging out. Surely, these can become an itch-scratching issue if we have no knowledge on locking our Mac.
In this article, we will share you two ways of locking your Mac desktop.
Check Your Hard Disk
Check Remaining Hard Disk Capacity
I remember in my old Windows day, I regularly check for my remaining hard disk capacity, just because I was too poor to have high-end hard disk. Now, we've large capacity of hard disk drive, making us overlook the need of checking remaining hard disk capacity.
To check on remaining hard disk capacity as well as used hard disk space, you can do the following steps:
- Go to Your Desktop
- Select your Hard Disk Icon
- Control-Click and select Get Info (keystrokes: Command-I)
- Expand the General section by clicking on the triangle next to the wording
Recover Deleted Desktop Picture
I have set up a cool image as my Desktop picture and that precious file is accidentally deleted. And I will be really confused if someone came and asked me to send that image file I used as Desktop picture.
I spent my precious two-hours time digging through folders to find where the file is saved inside my Mac and ended up in vain. But then I realized, I can use one trick to recover that deleted Desktop picture. Here is how the trick works:
- Open System Preferences
- Choose Desktop & Screen Saver and then go under Desktop section
- Simply drag out the Desktop picture thumbnail and you will get the copy of that picture file. It works like a charm
For additional illustration, I have embedded the video tutorial for this trick.
Stack Drawer - Cleaning Desktop
Not restricted to decorating your Dock, customizing stack drawer can also improve your productivity. Let's see how it can be done.
After reading article on LifeClever by Chanpory Rith entitled "How to Organize Your Cluttered Desktop and Regain Your Sanity", which talk about creating specific folder to organize your cluttered Desktop, I realize one thing : I am still too lazy to organize those cluttered files. Fortunately, I've several fancy drawer icons which could be used to attract my attention so that I can gladly place my files into those folders.
Photoshop Trick - Tiny Background Images
If you've ever noticed, you would find out that some of the Desktop Pictures provided inside your Mac have relatively small size and dimension that can fill the whole of your widescreen. This is because those background images can be tiled when it's being set as Desktop Background.
In Leopard, you can find some examples of background images inside folder Mac HD (which is your hard drive name) ▸ Library ▸ Desktop Pictures. Ripples Blue.jpg is one of the small sized repeatable background images I'm talking about.
However, this kind of background images can be easily created. Let's see how you can do it.
Leopard Take A Look - Desktop
I believe you don't want to miss all this features, such as Quick Look and Fan View.
Automatic, Fan and Grid View
Control-Click on your Folder that sits on the Dock. When the contextual menu appeared, mouse hover the View as and there will be three types of new view for Leopard : Automatic, Fan, and Grid.
If you choose automatic view, Leopard will automatically switch to fan view if your folder only has some contents and will switch to grid view for folder with a bunch of contents.