Tom Balev Today I will try to show you the procedure by which you will be able to display various texts directly on your desktop. However, it would not be interesting if it remained only with "stupid" texts. In this way, we can display on the desktop, for example, a calendar, to-do directly from an application such as Things or Appigo Todo, display the time or date. All this without much effort.
Necessary equipment
First of all, you need to download the following to your Mac:
and if you want to set some nicer formatting, I recommend additionally downloading some nice fonts for free from the site www.dafont.com
Installation
First, install GeekTool, which is the main part of this tutorial and ensures that you can display basically anything on your Mac's desktop. After successful installation, you should see the GeekTool icon in System Preferences.
The next step will be to install iCalBuddy, which will ensure the connection between the calendar and GeekTool.
Approach
1. Displaying GeekTool on the desktop
Launch GeekTool from System Preferences. Here, drag the Shell item to your desktop. You will be presented with another window where you can set the settings for that particular field on your screen.
2. Adding events from iCal
Type the following command in the "Command box" field: /usr/local/bin/icalBuddy eventsToday. The desktop window should now refresh and you should see all of your calendar tasks for today. As you have surely noticed, the "eventsToday" command ensures that today's events are listed. But what if you want to display the following days as well? If you want to list the following 3 days, you simply add "+3" to the end of the command, so the entire command will look like this: /usr/local/bin/icalBuddy eventsToday+3. Of course, it doesn't end there. On the following page, you will read about several commands with which you can modify the behavior of the field according to your wishes. Click here for more setup examples.
3. Display to-do
The procedure is the same as for the 2nd point, with the difference that instead of "eventsToday" you write "uncompletedTasks". You can also find other extensions on the mentioned page.
3b. To-do view from Things, or Todo
If you use the app Things, so in the settings you will find a direct import into iCal, which will import all the tasks from the given category.
If you use Todo for a change, Appigo offers a solution in the form of Appigo Sync, with which you can synchronize your calendar with your iPhone or iPad via Wi-Fi.
In a similar way you know also display the clock on the desktop.
Simply put in the "Command Box" "date '+%H:%M:%S'". You can find a detailed description of formatting in the documentation on the Apple site
Formatting
Well, the last step will be to set a nicer formatting. You can achieve this by changing the font, its size and color. Don't forget that it's better to set transparency, or shadow, so that your taxts look good on any background, regardless of its color.
In conclusion, I will add that after a successful setup, check the Activity Monitor and use the processor with GeekTool - it should occupy a maximum of 3% of the processor's performance. If it happens to be constantly taking up more (even after restarting the application), consider the necessity of this add-on. If you have any questions or did not understand something from the text, I will be happy to answer you in the comments below the text.
Thanks a lot. It's really great :)
CPU usage: maybe setting refresh every: 3600 seconds would help
wouldn't it be easier to steal an android phone? :-)
I don't know, it suits me, but when I have you on the line (I'm looking online and I saw the android from the speed camera), I want to ask, can you communicate with the exchange via mapi?
Fero Fero, you're close again. :-D We're talking about computers here and you're mixing up phones. :D
PS: I don't want flame...
somehow the clock doesn't work for me :-( .... ical is OK, but the clock is not
Check if you accidentally put it in there with quotation marks. And the apostrophes don't have to be written there either.