Culture

The Winter Bloom Desktop

by admin

As reported on LifeHacker.

by Alan Henry

We’ve seen some great OS X desktops featuring GeekTool, but you don’t need it to tweak your Mac’s desktop into something that’s even cleaner, or at least a little more personal. That’s what reader DJDC did with this great-looking Snow Leopard desktop. No fancy Geeklets, just a clean, consistent look and a wallpaper that brings it all together.

Want your Mac to look the same way DJDC’s does? Well, one thing worth noting: he’s running OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), so if you’ve upgraded to Lion or Mountain Lion, keep that in mind. Some of the icon and UI tweaks that were easy in Snow Leopard are difficult in Lion or Mountain Lion due to new security controls over system icons and elements. It’s a bummer, but if you know a way around them in later OSes, we want to hear it in the discussions below. Until then, here’s what you need to get the job done!

  • The Flower of Wisdom wallpaper from DeviantArt
  • The Clean icon set coupled with iStat Menus to replace the menubar icons and add system monitors
  • Custom dock icons that DJDC made himself (and you can too!) with the Entypo Pictogram Suite
  • Mirage to adjust the dock’s transparency, add separators, and settings (He also edited the the Dock.app’s DockMenu.plist to include a “remove from dock” option for the Trash Can)
  • The Grandesign Neue Serif font to replace the system font
  • The Bowtie desktop accessory to control music playback
  • DJDC’s own Bowtie theme from DeviantArt to tweak Bowtie’s appearance in the lower left (he notes the final version looks a touch different than this one)

This week’s desktop is a great example of how you can spend a little time and energy and get a workspace that’s really reflective of your personal taste and aesthetic. Sure, it’s easier to just leave your desktop the way it shipped and work with what you’ve been given, but a little effort turns your system into something that suits you, not the other way around. Have questions about how DJDC did it? Head over to the original thread in our #featured-desktop forum to discuss it and ask your questions!

Do you have a good-looking, functional desktop that you want to see featured here? Submit it—along with where you got the wallpaper, skins, and geeklets—to us for review. We have two different ways you can share it with us:

Linux, Mac, Windows, all are welcome. Whatever you choose to use, include a description of how you made your desktop when you send it in. Without that, we can’t tell others how to make it for themselves so they can be featured too!