How To Make Leopard’s Finder Work Better.

Even San Diego’s wildfires couldn’t stop me from getting Mac OS X Leopard installed. What did I look for first? Free utilities that make using Leopard more fun.

I love Leopard’s Finder. Here’s how to make it better with a few handy utilities which allow you to customize your Mac in ways only Apple could forget.

First on my list is a set of utilities from MacDentro—one for Leopard, one for Tiger, but soon to be Leopardized.

One of my favorite changes in OS X Leopard is the Finder. Gone is the aging and polarizing brushed aluminum look, replaced by Apple’s new found love affair for all things plastic platinum.

The Finder has plenty of new tools built in, too, including Quick Look, Cover Flow, an improved SideBar, and, so far, anyway, a seemingly improved ability to handle broken network connections. I would rave about Screen Sharing, but that would take a whole article by itself.

Focus, Alex. It’s Halloween. It’s Finder Day at Mac360. Focus…

FinderClean
There are times when Mac users just want to tinker but not do any damage. FinderClean is your signal to start tinkering.

It doesn’t do much, but what it does can be handy and give you a little more control over the Finder in your Mac. For example, FinderClean unlocks a few of the Mac’s little secret settings. The kind that Apple uses but doesn’t tell anyone about.

Turn the Dashboard on or off. Face it, some Mac users just don’t like the Dashboard. All the Dashboard does is display Widgets, but both take up some memory, CPU sweat, and network bandwidth. If there’s nothing worth your time in Dashboard, unplug it with FinderClean.

More handy is the ability to do some tinkering on Spotlight, newly revamped for Leopard. FinderClean will let you Rebuild, Update, and Optimize Spotlight. It goes wonky sometimes, so a little attention makes it feel worthy and useful.

Did you know your Mac, Leopard or otherwise, has a bunch of hidden files all over the place? If you want to see what they are so you can delete them and completely hose your Mac, FinderClean has a setting which shows the Mac’s hidden files and folders. Happy deleting. And hosing.

Sometimes you just can’t delete a file in the Trash without restarting your Mac. FinderClean has a setting which forces the Trash to empty without the restart.

There are a few other features built in to FinderClean, for both Mac Leopard and Tiger users.

IceClean
Coming soon is IceClean, FinderClean’s always-late-to-the-party big brother. Not only does IceClean have a few of the features found in Little Brother Cleaner, but a bunch more.

For example, IceClean allows for more Finder options, easier visit to the Console, advanced Sleep functions, and much more. The current version is ready for Tiger, the next version, proverbially coming soon, will be for Leopard users.

YASU
What? Yet Another System Utility? Yep. Yasu. Except this nifty little Leopard utility is totally not free. But it is totally easy to use, considering you’ll shell out nearly a penny a day for the first year of use.

Yasu uses scripts to run various and sundry Mac utilities, Tiger or Leopard. For example, clear Safari’s browser cache, history, bookmark icons, download cache, or cookies.

It also clears a bunch of the Mac’s logs and cache files, and runs the daily, weekly, monthly cron scripts for those who know and love the intracacies of cron.

Not bad for $3.50, huh? It’s not totally free, but what’s yet another system utility worth to those of us who collect them and share with our friends.

What else is in Leopard’s Finder that I love? We’ll do an article on Screen Sharing soon. That little feature is very handy.

So, you’ve had Leopard for what? Four days? How is it working out for you? Talk Back to Mac360 with your experience in the Comments section below.