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Access Apps & Documents on Your Mac Quickly with XMenu

Matt Smith — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:31:42 +0000

After a decade as a Windows user, I recently purchased a MacBook laptop. There are many things that I like about it, such as the long battery life and the amazing integration of the touchpad into the navigation of OS X. There is one thing that bugs me about it, however – Finder. Compared to Windows 7, Finder feels clunky. I don’t like the way Finder looks, I don’t like the location of the sidebar, and I don’t find Spotlight as quickly or as accurately as I’d like.

I have, however, found a solution – Xmenu. This decidedly un-Mac-like app adds menu icons to the upper right hand corner of the Mac menu bar. Let’s have a look at why this app has won me over.

Quick & Easy Access

One beef I have with Finder is ease of access. To maximize usable screen space on my Mac, I keep my dock hidden. If I want to open Finder I either need to go to the dock to open it, which involves mousing over it so it appears, or I need to Command-Tab and then select Finder.

Xmenu, however, adds icons to the upper right hand part of the menu bar. These icons can display a number of folders including the Applications, Developer, Home and Documents folders. Once an icon is added, you simply need to click on it to open a display of the folder’s contents. This is readily accessible so long as your menu bar is visible (and it almost always is).

This may seem like a minor complaint to resolve, but I’m sure some users share my desire to remain on-task at times. Xmenu is extremely quick, and doesn’t require that I open a new window over whatever I’m working on. For this, it has my love.

Custom Folders & Snippets

As mentioned, Xmenu comes with a number of default folder options. Xmenu will display everything that is in those folders. This can also become a bit unwieldy in certain situations, as you may have a lot of apps or documents that can be displayed. I know that I do.

Fortunately, Xmenu has a solution to this. There is a user-defined folder, and the contents of it can be changed by adding files to the Library/Application Support/Xmenu folder. Adding files to this folder can provide you with a smaller selection of choices more closely related to the project you’re working on at the moment.

Another cool features is the Snippets option. You can add files to Snippets by placing them into the Library/Application Support/XSnippets folder. As with the user-defined Xmenu folder, doing this will add the files to the appropriate Xmenu icon. However, clicking a Snippet doesn’t open the contents. Instead, the contents of the file are automatically copy-and-pasted into your currently open application. Snippets is very much like the copy-and-paste function, but you can store multiple bits of content in the XSnippets folder and paste them whenever you’d like.

Conclusion

Xmenu won’t be for everyone. While I don’t like Finder much, I recognize that it is user-friendly in many ways. While quick, Xmenu isn’t as attractive or simple. It displays a large list of information from certain folders, and you have to do the rest.

Do you have a favorite application that runs round Finder? Be sure to let us know in the comments. I enjoy Xmenu, but I’d also like to check out other alternatives.

Two Free Alternatives To OS X Spotlight [Mac]

Matt Smith — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:31:59 +0000

There are several features that I like about OS X, but Spotlight is not one of them. Spotlight is a desktop search feature for Mac OS X and when it was released in 2005, it was very nifty and useful. It felt cutting edge, even quick. However, it doesn’t seem to have aged very well. Spotlight only finds what I’m looking for about 80% of the time, which is not a good success rate for a search program. Apple’s love of simplicity gets in the way, as well – there just aren’t many options available for refining a search.

Fortunately, there are some alternatives to Spotlight available. Let’s take a look at three free alternatives to Spotlight that Mac users may find more functional.

Find Any File

At first glance, Find Any File couldn’t be more basic. Once you open the program you are greeted by a single line of options and a search field into which you type whatever you’re searching for. The program did not even ask for installation – it just went, and suddenly I was greeted with the option to search for files with a name containing, equal to, beginning with or ending with the term I entered.

However, Find Any File becomes extremely robust once you begin clicking the More Choices button. You can refine your search by modification date, creation date, file size, location (in a folder or not in a folder), file type and creator. This list of search options should make finding any file extremely easy – although you’ll have to know a lot of precise information about the file that you’re searching for.

NotLight

As the name of NotLight implies, this program was born out of the frustration of its creator, Matt Neuburg. He was “sick and tired of Tiger’s lousy Spotlight interface” and so he wrote an alternative search program that he (and others) could use instead. While some of the frustrations Matt Neuburg listed at the time of NotLight’s release have been addressed, many haven’t, and NotLight remains a useful Spotlight alternative.

The interface of NotLight is just slightly more complex than that of Find Any File, but it makes up for that by providing a paragraph of text with each type of search supported by NotLight that explains how the search works. This information isn’t helpful because the search functions are not always intuitive and because this helps you avoid errors in your searches that return poor results. NotLight also supports searching individual folders, which is enabled by dragging a folder into the program.

EasyFind

By far the most user-friendly program here, EasyFind is a robust SearchLight alternative created by a company called Devon Technologies. Functionality, EasyFind isn’t that different from Find Any File or NotLight. It finds files in the same was (simple hard disk search) and it includes a number of similar search options, such as the ability to search file contents, all or any words in a file name, etc. EasyFind does not include the ability to search by file size or document extension, however.

This is made up for by EasyFind’s much better interface. Find Any File and NotLight are great programs, but they’re completely functional, consisting of a few simple buttons and drop-down lists. EasyFind places all the relevant options on the main program window, giving users no need to dig into menus or waste extra mouse clicks in order to find more functionality. For most users, EasyFind will be the easiest Spotlight alternative to use.

Conclusion

The three programs above should cover all of your search needs in OS X. While Spotlight can do the job in some situations, these freeware alternatives provide search options that Spotlight doesn’t. Do you have a favorite Spotlight alternative that isn’t covered here? Let us know in the comments.

How To Easily Change The Look Of Finder on Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:31:01 +0000

Apple is famous for its simple, clean and minimalist look on their products. Not only the hardware, but also the user interface of its operating system and applications. I’m sure most Mac users are fine with that, otherwise they wouldn’t choose Mac, would they?

But some people – especially those who switched from the Windows world – are accustomed to an interface makeover and want to change their Mac appearance every once in a while.

Mac OS X comes with features that will allow you to change its look. Even though these features are not on the extreme level, they are sufficient to give your feline a fresh new look.

Here are several quick things that you can do to change the face of the app that Mac users use the most: Finder.

(Slightly) Alter The Appearance

Logically, when we want to change the System Appearance, the best place to start is the “System Preferences – Appearance“, isn’t it? Surprisingly, there are only two options available here.

There’s “Appearance” which consist of two options: Blue and Graphite. This option will only change the Red-Orange-Green button on the top left of every window to shades of Grey.

And there’s also “Highlight color” that will change the – um – highlight color of selected item(s) in the Finder.

So you can choose another color aside from the default blue.

Playing With Icons & Colors

You can change a folder’s or another Finder Item’s icon with another icon just by dragging and dropping. To do that, right-click the item/folder that you want to change and choose “Get Info” (or select the folder and hit “Command + I“).

Then after the Info window is open, drag and drop the icon that you want to use to replace the icon located on the top left corner of the window.

We’ve discussed this topic more comprehensively before so be sure to check that article out.

Info window is also the place to change the color code. Choose a color from the “Label” and your Finder item(s) will be coded in color.

It’s a nice and colorful way to group similar folders or finder items.

Go Inside The Folder

If you go inside the folder, you can customize other things such as the font and icon size and the background. Hit Command + J (or Right Click and choose “Show View Options“) to open the “View Options” window.

From this window you can change the icon size (small or large) and the size of the font (from 10 up to 16). There are also checkboxes giving you options on what columns you want to display.

If you want to apply the settings to other folders, click the “Use as Defaults” button.

But something amazing happens when you switch from the list view to icon view.

The View Options window will give you other different options, such as sliders to change the icon size and the grid spacing, icons arrangement, and the ability to change the background.

You can choose to use the default white as the background, or you can change it to one of the available colors from the color picker. Click the “Color” radio button within the “Background” section of View Option window and click the color box to summon the “Color Picker” window.

You can also use an image as the background. Click the “Picture” radio button and click the image box to browse for the image file that you want to use. You can also drag and drop any image from the Finder to this image box.

And you will have a unique folder that you can brag about to your friends.

This customization is perfect to quickly tell you what kind of content the folder has. For example, if you saved your 2009 Christmas holiday pictures inside a folder, you can use one of the pictures as the background.

But please note that the background image size is static and can only be applied in the icon view. Meaning, it will not be resized automatically when you resize the Finder window and will disappear when you switch the view.

And another thing is, I also found out that you can’t use an image larger than the screen size as the background. So you might need to resize the image a little bit to fit the background.

Have you tried customizing Finder? Do you have your own tips and tricks to customize Finder’s appearance? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below.

Turbocharge & Customize Your Mac Finder Windows [Mac]

Bakari Chavanu — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:31:16 +0000

If you are relatively new to the Mac and you rely on the default setup of the Mac Finder, you are probably taking longer to find items on your hard drive than you actually need to. The Finder, like other applications, can be customized and turbocharged so that you can access and open items faster.

(Note: for additional tips about the Mac Finder and other Mac related tools and how-tos, download the free MakeUseOf Mac manual. If you’re an advanced Mac user, you might want to check out this MUO article about TotalFinder – A Mac Finder Alternative with Some Cool Extras).

Customize The Toolbar

As with all applications, you should see what can be customized in a program’s toolbar. The Finder is no different. So first, open a Finder window (Finder>New Finder Window) and let’s see the few items there by default.

(1) Forward/back buttons for navigating open windows.

(2) Icon, List, Column, and Cover Flow buttons for file viewing and arrangement.

(3) Action button (more about this later) for creating new folders; duplicating, burning, and labeling files and folders

(4) Search bar for finding files and folders in your hard drive.

These items are a good start, but there’s a few more handy items that you might want to add to the toolbar. So click on View>Customize items.., in the menu bar to see what else can be added.

All of these items are pretty self-explanatory. You can drag any item onto the toolbar for easier and quicker access, since more than likely you will have one or more Finder windows open at any given time. You can also of course drag items out of your toolbar that you are not using. If you don’t need these items labeled, click the Show Icon Only drop-down button on the bottom-left.

Files & Folders

The Customize items are great, but more importantly you can also drag any file or application in your hard drive onto your Finder toolbar. It’s like having a dock of items in the Finder that you can activate or open.

Simply click on an item and drag it to the toolbar. An alias of that item will be created in the toolbar and the original will remain in its place. To drag the item out of the toolbar, hold down the Command key and click and drag it off the toolbar.

Applications that you have in the toolbar can be useful for opening accompanying files. So for example if you have a picture file that you want to open, simply drag that file from its folder, place it on top of the Preview icon in your toolbar and it will open that file. You can also activate an application that you put in the toolbar by simply clicking on it.

You can drag as many items you like in the toolbar. When a window is dragged to a smaller dimension, overflow items can be accessed by clicking the arrow icon that will appear in the toolbar.

Finder Preferences

Again, as with any application, open its Preferences and see what you can customize to fit your needs. Click on your desktop and then go to Finder>Preferences. There you will find four sections. Let’s examine some possible items you might want to change.

General

You probably will want to uncheck the boxes for items on the desktop. Having your Finder filled with Hard and External disks, and CD/DVD icons does nothing but add clutter. These items can always be accessed on the Sidebar of any opened Finder window.

Each time you open a Finder window, you can have it open to a selected window by default. So for example, if you find yourself opening your Documents or Pictures folder a lot, then change the drop-down button under “New Finder windows open:“.

Labels

Using the Actions button (noted above) in your toolbar, you can select one or more file or applications and label them with a selected color. I use the colors to make certain items stand out in a folder, but you might want a more systematic approach to your color coding. So you can change the names for each color to say Red for Urgent files, Green for Complete Drafts, etc.

Sidebar

The Sidebar is where you can click on or off items that you want to appear in any Finder window that you open. You will probably want to keep all the items checked, except for a few items in the Search For area.

Advanced

Items in the Advanced area are pretty self-explanatory as well. If for example you don’t need to be warned that you’re emptying Trash on your computer, then simply uncheck that item. If you want all your trashed items securely deleted, then check that box.

The key to becoming a Mac power user is knowing how to get things done faster on your computer. Let us know how you have customized your Finder to get things done faster.

TotalFinder – A Finder Alternative With Some Cool Extras [Mac]

Jeffry Thurana — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:31:06 +0000

Ask any Mac user to make a list of applications that opens the most on their machine and you’ll definitely see Finder there.

Then someone would say that it’s unfair to allow Finder to be on the list because Mac users don’t even have a choice. Finder always starts automatically with Mac OS X, and there’s no way to close it.

I think that’s not a valid statement. Most users wouldn’t want to close Finder even if they can (And FYI, you can close Finder as long as you know the Secret). That’s because Finder is one of the most useful applications on the Mac. You do your daily copy, move, launch and other kinds of file management there.

So it’s a bit strange that if you compare it with other native Mac apps, Finder seems to get less attention. It gets small tweaks here and there over time, but in general it’s still the same old Finder that we know and love from back then. At least, that’s the way it appears to our non-techie eyes.

Not For The Faint Of Heart

The state of Finder as it is today might be fine for most users, but I know many power users who wish to be able to do more with Finder. That’s why there are Mac finder alternatives out there.

One of the alternatives is TotalFinder. This SIMBL plugin will bring your Finder to a new level. If you are truly a power user, I think you would want to try out this app.

However, there are a few things that should be noted up front about this Mac finder alternative:

TotalFinder is Snow Leopard only. This is due to the fact that SIMBL plugins like Afloat and SizeWell only work for Cocoa applications and unlike its previous Carbon version, Snow Leopard’s Finder has been re-written in Cocoa.
It is also still in the early Alpha stage. Trying it means preparing yourself for bugs and crashes. You should back up often (that’s why it’s not for the faint of heart).
This app will stop being a free app after it goes out of Alpha.

So why bother trying? Why recommend this app despite the disadvantages? I’ll tell you why.

It’s For The Fun Of It

There are several cool things that make this so-called still-buggy app worth a look. But before we get to that point, let’s start from the very beginning, shall we?

The installer comes with many words of warnings: about the free Alpha period, about SIMBL, and about the need to finish all Finder activities before proceeding. Click continue only if you are ready.

Please also note that there’s an uninstaller inside the disk image, should you need it.

After the installation, Finder will be restarted and you’ll quickly notice two different changes: a new icon of Finder (wearing shades), and… the tabs! Yes Sir! Your Finder can do tabs now. Can you guess what the tabs appearance is similar to?

However, the slider which usually sits at the bottom right of the Finder window in icon view mode is missing. So you can’t adjust the icon size.

You will also notice the TotalFinder icon in the menubar. Clicking on it will bring out the information about the expiration date, and also the Preferences – the place where you can adjust the app’s behavior.

There are four tabs there:

Visor: Gives you the ability to assign shortcuts to summon (or hide) Finder from within any application, and whether to stick Finder to a specific Space or make it available to all Spaces.
.DS_Store: If you move your data around a lot between Mac and Windows, you must be familiar with .DS_Store files. These useful clutters are everywhere, but visible only if we view the storage under a Windows machine. This tab gives you the ability to control the behavior of .DS_Store files.
Tweaks: You can choose whether you want to show hidden files or not from here. There’s also the option to put Folders always on top.
Purchase: This is where you can update TotalFinder to the next version (or make the purchase when it’s not free anymore).

The Conclusion Is….

TotalFinder might still be in Alpha, but I’ve survived the first few days of normal usage without crashes. Lucky me.

Personally, I think the coolest feature of TotalFinder is the Tab, and that feature alone should earn this little app a little bit of your time.

But is it worth whatever money that the developer will charge in the future? I honestly don’t know. All I know is that at this moment TotalFinder is still a free Mac finder alternative and I’m making use of that.

But I do hope that the developer would consider at least providing a free version (with less features, maybe?) of this app in the future so that more users could experience how great Finder could be.

How about you? Would you try TotalFinder? Do you know other alternatives to Finder? Please share using the comments below.

Slimming Down and Power Up Your Mac’s Service Menu

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:00:51 +0000

Suppose you have a document file you want to send via email, what should you do? Here are the not-so-orderly sequences: 1. You open Mail, 2. Create a new message, 3. Click “Add Attachment”, 4. Browse to the location of the file, 5. Select the file, 6. Click “Attach”, 7. Then you can write the body of your email, 8. Add the recipient(s) and finally 9. Click “Send”.

What a sequence, huh? If you have many files to be sent by many emails, you’d spend quite some time in the process.

Actually, you can eliminate several steps from that sequence to save time. Many Mac users that I know overlook the power of “Service Menu” to simplify the long process of working between applications.

What’s on the menu?

When I mention the Service Menu, many of my friends ask the same question: “What?”

So here’s the explanation I quote from Mac OS X’s Help:

Some applications provide “services” that let you use features of that application while working in another application. For example, the Mail service in the Finder opens the Mail application so that you can email a file directly from the Finder without opening the Mail application separately.

So, to email a file you should: 1. Select the file from finder, 2. Choose Finder â†’ Services â†’ Mail â†’ Send File menu,

3. Write the body, 4. Add Recipients, 5. Send.

Please notice that we have cut out 4 steps and saved few minutes.

Another great thing about Service Menu is the fact that it’s available from any application to do almost anything. Just click on the application’s name on the menu bar next to the Apple logo, and you’ll find “Services” there.

And we can cut out more steps ““ and thus save more time ““ by using shortcut keys.

Slimming Down The Service

Powerful as it is, Service Menu has its share of problem. As time goes by and as your Mac increases the population of applications, Service Menu also grows along with them. The menu gets so overpopulated with services that it becomes annoyingly crowded. In real life, most users will never use most of the services.

It would be very nice if we could get rid of the useless services and reserved the place for a few ones that useful. To do that, we need the help of Service Scrubber.

After you open the app, you’ll see a window filled with services. Removing useless services is just a matter of unchecking the option box in front of the application’s name, and click Save.

In less than a minute (or just a little bit more), your service menu will be slimmed down from this (notice the arrow on the bottom):

Into this:

Please note that there are some items in the Service Scrubber’s windows that are grayed out and cannot be deactivated.

Power Up The Procedure

One more extremely useful thing you can do with Service Scrubber is manipulating the shortcut keys.
You can change, disable, or add shortcut keys combination to any service.

All you have to do is double click on the key column next to a specific service, and an editing window will pop out. Modify the “Keyboard Shortcut” value, and then click “Apply Changes”.

But as with enable/disable services process above, I found that you couldn’t modify nor append shortcut keys to the grayed out items.

Do you use Service Menu? Or do you have better alternatives? Share your thoughts and opinions below.

Simple Ways To Organize Your Files In Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:01:29 +0000

Most modern computer users might find it difficult to imagine living in the time when the size of computer hard disks was within the range of a few megabytes. But users from the early days of computers knew the storage space limitation so well that they learned to be very selective in choosing which files to keep and which files to throw away.

Thanks to the luxury of virtually unlimited storage space that we have today, computer users have developed the “save everything now, think about them later” attitude. The problem is, for some “too many things to do” people ““ like me (and maybe most of you) – “later” might never come.

Then one day, the hundredth time you find yourself rummaging your hard drive(s) for that one specific file that you really need without a clue about the file identity, you’ll wish you’d done something earlier in the file-organizing department.

The Grouping & The Searching

The most common solution to file organization problems is to group the similar files into folders. For examples: all the files related to Project X would go into folder “Project X”, while all the MP3 files will go into the “Music” folder.

Problems arise when you have to decide where to put files from Project X that are also a MP3. And most of the time, it is far more complicated than that.

To help you increase the effectiveness of using folders as a means of organizing files, you can try Smart Folder.

Go to Finder then to File â†’ New Smart Folder menu (or Command + Option + N)

You can also create a smart folder by doing a search in the Finder window.

Set the rules of the folder by choosing the options available there.
Click the plus button (+) to add more rules.
Click the minus button (-) to delete a rule.

A few things that you can set for example: the location of the file, the kind of file, last opened date, last modified date, name, etc.

Don’t forget to hit the “Save” button after all the rules have been customized and tick the “Add To Sidebar” box to put the smart folder to the sidebar so that you can access them easily.

This way, you can set the contents of the smart folder to be PDF files which were created within a week and have the word “billing” in the name. Once a PDF file is more than one week old, it will automatically be out of the smart folder.

If you no longer need the smart folder, just right click and choose “Remove from Sidebar” from the pop-up menu.

The Tagging

Mac users can improve the usability of Smart Folder and Spotlight searching by adding tags to the files. You can assign multiple tags to a file or folder and go beyond the grouping files inside folders.

The traditional way of doing tagging is by adding Spotlight comments from the file info window. You can access the file info windows by right clicking on the item and choose “Get Info” from the pop-up menu, or select the item and press Command + I.

But doing the tagging one file or folder at a time is a tedious and time-consuming activity. Not to mention boring. The simpler way is by using TagIt.

It is a small application that will help you to tag multiple files easily. TagIt also makes the process of searching files based on their tags easier. And as a bonus, you can also assign ratings to the file(s) or folder(s).

You can search tags directly from Spotlight by using the search string “tag:the_name_of_the_tag” sans quote.

Few possible scenarios of using tags to files and folders are:

Assign “Ongoing” tag to something that you are currently working on and change the tag to “Done” after finishing the project.
Assign the client’s names as tags to the file.
Use the ratings as the “Importance” level.
Add the team member’s names.
Add the revision number.

And by adding tags to the Smart Folder’s rules, you can organize your files and folders so much better.

What about you? What method do you use to organise files? Share using the comment section below.

5 Uses For Stacks You May Not Have Thought Of [Mac]

Jackson Chung — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:30:29 +0000

Generally, Stacks has been ill-received by the Mac community due to its lack of functionality although it was pretty hyped up before Leopard was launched.

In my opinion, Stacks isn’t as bad as most people make it seem. I’ve found several useful reasons to keep it around, one of which is detailed here: Use Stacks To Save Websites For Later Reading.

After a bit of brainstorming, I managed to find a few more good uses for Stacks. Some of them may not be new tricks but I’d like to share them with you anyway.

Mail Attachments Stack

For those of you who use Apple Mail as the default mail application, this may actually come in useful for you. You can create a Stack to show all of your recent mail attachments.

Here’s how it works: every time you use Quick Look to preview mail attachments or directly open them by double-clicking on the attachment, they are automatically stored in ~/Library/Mail Downloads/

Simply drag the Mail Downloads folder to the Stacks section of the Dock and let go.

You may be overwhelmed by the thousands of attachments you have in there. It’s a good idea to arrange it by ‘Date Created’ and display it as Fan or List view so that you’ll know which are the latest attachments.

Any attachments which aren’t previewed with Quick Look or opened directly in Mail or instead, saved to the ‘Downloads’ folder will not show up in this folder.

Recent Applications/Documents/Servers Stack

This is a Terminal trick to make a Recent stack show up in the Dock. If you take a look at the Appearance preferences (System Preferences ->Appearance), you’ll notice a section which lets you determine the number of recent applications, documents and servers to display. This will generate a list located in the menu bar, click on the Apple icon -> Recent Items.

This is what you’ll need to do if you want that list to appear as a stack. Open Terminal (located in the Utilities folder or just Spotlight for it) and copy and paste these 2 lines of commands individually:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’

killall Dock

After the Dock relaunches, the Recent Items stack will appear.

Right-click on the stack and there is a contextual menu which will allow you to display the recent documents or servers instead.

The ‘Favorite Items’ stack doesn’t really work in Leopard – it merely displays the ‘Places’ section of the Finder sidebar. If you want to display your favorite items…

A Favorites Stack

A Favorites stack is basically a stack of anything which you add to the Favorites folder. This function is not unavailable in Leopard, it’s just slightly harder to find.

The old ‘Control-Option-Click’ shortcut to make an item a Favorite doesn’t work in Leopard. Instead, what you need to do is click on an item to select it, click on the File menu, press and hold the Shift key and click ‘Add to Favourites’. Or select an item and press Command-Shift-T.

The shortcuts/aliases are stored in ~/Library/Favorites/. Drag that folder to the Stacks section in the Dock to make your Favorites stack.

Preferences Stack

By making a Preferences stack, it’s possible to shave a few seconds off your navigating time. It’s not very difficult to make this stack. I’ll just need to explain something: the preference panes you see in System Preferences are located in various folders. Also, it’s not necessary to add all the preference panes to the Stack. For instance, I hardly ever go to the Speech preference pane so I can exclude that from the Stack.

To make this stack, create a folder called Preferences and place it in your Home folder.

Open a new Finder window and go to System/Library/PreferencePanes. Command-click on the preferences you want to add to your stack, then Command-Option-click and drag them to the Preferences folder in the other Finder window. You should end up with a folder of aliases to the preference panes.

These are only the default preferences from Mac OS X. The other preference panes for example Perian or Flip4Mac WMV are located at ~/Library/PreferencePanes. Repeat same procedure to put their aliases into the Preference folder you’ve created.

Once you’re done, drag the Preferences folder to the Stacks section of the Dock.

Stacks as actual drop boxes

By creating stacks for the Public Folder located in your Home folder; and the Public folder in the Dropbox folder (not applicable if you don’t use Dropbox), you can literally create drop boxes as dumping grounds for everything you want to share with others.

Drag-and-drop anything into these stacks and they’re automatically shared within your LAN or through the internet (in the case of Dropbox). To find out how to set up sharing within your local area network, take a look at this Macnifying OS X article.

Are there any other useful Stacks tips you’d like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments.