Monday 25 May 2009

50th post! Geektool, Butler, Applescript to do lists on the desktop!

Hi,

I love using Geektool for system and network monitoring and other stats and things. I particularly like having my to dos and reminders visible on the desktop so there's less chance of forgetting them. However, although it's easy to set up Geektool to display a txt file, updating said file means having to launch TextEdit (or other text editor), making the changes, saving, closing ... So. I thought it might be simpler to make an Applescript program to enter the text I want to write, triggered by hot keys via Butler; so that's what I did. If you want to do this yourself you'll need Geektool and Butler installed on your mac, then use TextEdit to save a .txt file in your documents folder (call it scrible.txt) and finally you'll need the little Applescript program 'scribler' (which does require Leopard, I'm afraid, but if you'd like to use this in Tiger let me know and I'll do a version for you). 

1. Once you've got Geektool, Butler and scribler installed, create a blank .txt file and save it in your Documents folder as scrible.txt (the next version of scribler will do this automatically, but for now you'll have to do it yourself).

2. Launch System Preferences, click on Geektool, and create a new entry like so:



3. Launch Butler, add a new file, and give it a key combination like so:



And that's it. hit your key combination, enter your text in scribler, press return, and you're done; your to do/reminder, etc., will soon appear on the desktop.

Cheers,

Kev.