It’s one thing to dance on someone’s grave while the body below is still warm.
But it’s something else again to customize Apple’s latest and greatest version of Mac OS X without even trying out all of the 200 new kitty cat’s features. Mountain Lion still has that new car smell and water beads up on the hood, yet here we are with an app that tweaks what Apple doesn’t want tweaked.
At least Mountain Tweaks is free (and it works on Mac OS X Lion, too).
Limited Tweaks For Free
One man’s tweak is another man’s George Barris Kustom car job. Mountain Tweaks gives Mac OS X Mountain Lion a couple of dozen variations on the same theme.
With the act of simple button clicking, your Mac becomes the pick of the kitty litter in the neighborhood. Wait. That didn’t come out right.
Mountain Tweaks does stuff to your Mac that you’ll write home about, tweet about, and post on your Facebook wall (so everyone will know how cool your Mac really is).
What’s so special about an app that tweaks? First, Mountain Tweaks really works with both Mac OS X Mountain Lion and the now archaic, over-the-hill OS X Lion.
Whether you’re using Apple’s latest and greatest cat, or last year’s model, Mountain Tweaks couldn’t be easier to use.
Can you point? Can you click? Go crazy and do both.
The list is long and pretty and furry and self explanatory.
- Show/Hide the user Library folder.
- Change to a 2D or 3D dock.
- Enable/Disable system window animation.
- Enable/Disable mail reply animation.
- Remove/Add Reading List Icon in Safari.
- Enable/Disable Spelling Correction.
- Enable/Disable repeating keys.
- Enable/Disable permanent scrollbars.
- Show Hidden Files.
- Disable Crash Dialog Pop-Up.
- Get a new Stack List View.
- Highlight Stack items on mouseover.
- Change iCal leather interface to aluminium
- Change Address Book leather interface to aluminium
- Disable resume for a single app
- Enable the hidden FTP-server
- Customize Launchpad folder background
- Disable local Time Machine Backups
- Enable Airdrop on old hardware
- Enable colours in the Finder sidebar
- Enable iTunes Dock Animation
- Enable TRIM support in Lion
- Enable secret iCal debug-menu
- Remove Spotlight icon
- Disable gatekeeper
- Highlight non-retina images
- Remove leather from Contacts (ML)
- Remove leather from Calendar (ML)
Anything that gets rid of the faux leather from Calendar and Contacts is worth its weight in donation ware donations, right?
The most useful functions are visually resurrecting the now hidden Library folder in Lion and Mountain Cuz. Speaking of hidden, MT also displays those difficult to see hidden files.
This app is total alchemy personified and can turn a leather interface into aluminum. But you can also change the Launchpad folder’s background to something more soothing (like photos of the friendly staff at Hooters).
Even better, those colored icons that used to live in the Mac’s Finder Sidebar, but which Apple sucked out all the color, can now have color again.
Annoyed by the Mac’s ability to correct your spelling with words you didn’t mean to write? Mountain Tweaks disables the Mac’s built-in spell checker. There’s a lot more going on, including an option to enable AirDrop on Macs that Apple prohibits (because they want you to buy another Mac), but you get the idea.
A few dozen tweaks for a new cat out of the bag.
WhitIV says
Friday, July 27, 2012 at 11:06 PMI downloaded this Mountain Tweak based on this article, and so far I like what I see. I donated to the developer directly through the app. Did the same thing with Carbon Copy Cloner a couple of times, and now it’s gotten me CCC for no additional charge. Sweet. Don’t forget Karma, folks.
Standard Bear says
Friday, July 27, 2012 at 11:27 PMThese little enhancements are cool. I wonder why Apple inserts so many hidden features in each version of OS X but doesn’t bother to turn them on.
Maybe they’re just trying to make the geeks feel special. But it doesn’t take much effort to use tools like Deeper or Onyx or Mountain Tweaks to unlock them. For free.