Menu extras
"Menu extra" is the official name for the little icons that appear near the clock in OS X. They're a great way to add system wide functionality to your operating system.
Subscreen partitioning is a Cinch
First, a Confession
It's hard to admit that I'm jealous of anything Windows. But I've been jealous of the subscreen partitioning feature in Windows 7. It's really cool.
Back in the day, most monitors were small. In most cases, applications were useless unless they were fullscreened. But times have changed. Modern monitors are enormous compared to their predecessors. Unfortunately, Windows users don't seem to have moved past the fullscreen paradigm1. Keeping several applications simultaneously visible is pretty much more efficient in every way. But most Windows users are too stuck in the fullscreen app paradigm to know any better. Windows 7 is looking to change this.
Windows 7 ships with a "snap to subscreen" feature that's just rad. And it's really intuitive. Grab a window and drag it to the top of the monitor, and the window will snap to fullscreen. Drag the window to a side and it will snap to a vertical split. This makes it easier to effectively use the monstrous monitors available these days.
The implementation is not quite perfect—as of the last time I checked—but it's a great start. Windows is still pretty crap at using multiple monitors, and snapping windows to a subscreen is no exception. Ideally, a window should be able to snap to the internal divisions between screens, allowing a vertical split on each monitor. Currently it only works on the outermost edges of the outside monitors.
The "snap to maximize" is also a bit worthless. True, there are occasions where an app should take up the whole monitor. But a more generally useful case would be a horizontal split, to compliment the available vertical split. Unfortunately the fullscreen is so entrenched in the Windows psyche that this will prob'ly never be fixed.
As exciting as this development is, screen partitioning is not enough to convince me to switch back to Windows. So I set out on a quest to find a subscreen window resizer. I'm happy to report that I've found it! I've been using these two utilities for quite a while—one for at least a year—and they fit the bill perfectly.
Enter Cinch
Cinch, by Irradiated Software, is an amazing implementation of subscreen partitions for OS X. It's simple, mouse driven, and gives great user feedback. Dragging a window to the left or right edge of the screen will resize the window to fill half the screen. Dragging it to the top of the screen will fill the screen. And dragging a Cinched window away from the edge will snap it right back where it came from. If that sounds a bit confusing, check out the screencast on the product page and it'll make perfect sense.
Unlike the Windows implementation, Cinch can snap to internal divisions between screens. Sometimes it's a bit tough to hold it at the edge just right to get the window to snap, but the functionality is there. Irradiated suggests making just a bit of a monitor position offset to give you an edge to run the cursor up against, and I've found that to work just fine.
But most of the time I don't have my hand on my mouse. Thanks to great system-wide hotkeys, I spend a lot of time with my hands on the keyboard, which is the one place where both Windows 7 and Cinch fall short. And Irradiated Software thought of that too:
See Also: SizeUp
SizeUp; is a handy little app by the same company, and the perfect complement to Cinch. SizeUp lets you quickly reposition windows to fill half, quarter, or full screen via system-wide hotkeys or a menu extra. The hotkeys make tiling, moving and maximizing windows a cinch.
Multiple monitor support is seamless in SizeUp. Windows can be easily sent between monitors or Spaces. They even magically resize themselves relative to changes in monitor size. As you can imagine, this feature comes in handy on my desktop box.
Unfortunately, SizeUp can't work perfectly all the time. Some applications enforce a minimum or maximum window size, and some windows don't resize at all (a la iTunes' mini controller). When an app just doesn't want to cooperate, SizeUp does the best it can, putting the windows where you want them and getting them as close to the requested size as possible.
Both SizeUp and Cinch are under active development. And really rad.
- 1. It’s a bit humorous to see a 32 inch monitor with Microsoft Word taking up the full screen, but only showing a single page surrounded by wasted space... It’s also a bit sad.
Magical MagiCal.
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to get to a calendar in OS X? Yeah, me too. You either launch iCal and wait for it to load, or you open the "Date & Time" preference pane and risk changing your time zone to Port-au-Prince.
And then you meet MagiCal by Charcoal Design. Not only is the name clever—MagiCal, Magical… get it?—it's a super useful app. MagiCal hangs out next to the clock until you need it, then jumps to life as a sweet little "month at a glance" calendar. It's packed with features, too. Clicking on a date will launch iCal and take you to the day's schedule. You can skip months, or jump to an entirely new date with a couple of clicks. If you want it for longer than a second or two, tear off the calendar and drag it around as a standalone window.
MagiCal can completely replace your system clock, if that's what you're into. It's crazy customizable, so you can make your date/time experience as complex or minimalistic as you want. MagiCal's bang/buck ratio is amazing. It has more features than you can shake a stick at, and it's absolutely free1!
- 1. Like any free app, if you use it and love it, please support the developers so they can keep cranking out great software.
Create cross-platform synergy with Synergy.
If you ever use more than one computer on the same desk, you need Synergy. Synergy is a protocol that allows several computers to seamlessly share the same keyboard and mouse. It's cross platform: I use it to control my Mac laptop, a desktop PC running Windows and a Linux box. I plop my laptop down on the desk, it automatically connects to my desktop computer, and I can use it just as easily as I would a second monitor.
The protocol is really slick. Once it is configured, move your mouse to the edge of the screen and the cursor jumps to the next computer. Keyboard control and window focus follow the mouse. It even shares your clipboard—you can copy something on one computer and paste it on the next. On most platforms Synergy can synchronize screen savers and sleep as well. Check out this quality illustration of the idea:
Image source: synergy2.sourceforge.net
Since Synergy is a protocol rather than a program, there are quite a few apps to use with it. I wouldn't use the official Synergy application on any platform other than Windows. Here are some great alternatives:
On a Mac, I recommend installing SynergyKM. It provides an easy to use preference pane, a graphical tool for aligning displays, and sweet keyboard remapping, so your ⌃, ⌥, ⌘ and Windows keys get along, no matter which keyboard or operating system you're using. It supports multiple profiles, so you can set your laptop up for home and work. It even claims to use Bonjour to automatically configure client computers1.
Linux configuration can get a bit tricky. The command line version gives you the greatest control, but takes a .conf file or two to get going. If you're not feeling up to that, check out QuickSynergy, a GTK 2 app that makes configuring Synergy a breeze. To automatically start Synergy when you boot up (or log in) check out this guide.
QuickSynergy sources and distro-specific instructions here
Image source: quicksynergy.sourceforge.net
And for the unfortunate Windows users, check out the official Synergy2 application. It works great on anything >= Windows 95, so if your computer has a mouse you should be set…
- 1. But that hasn't worked out for me yet. YMMV.
Keep your computer up late with Caffeine.
Caffeine is a menu extra1 that does one thing, and does it well: it keeps your computer from going to sleep.
Do you get tired of wiggling your mouse to keep the screen from dimming while you're watching a YouTube video? Do you ever wish you could close the lid of your MacBook without it falling asleep immediately? Wouldn't it be great if you could keep your computer awake for an hour or two before power management kicked in? Want to easily disable or enable your screen saver? Check out Caffeine to turn your Mac into an insomniac.
- 1. Menu extra: n. An icon on the right side of the menu bar. "That's a sweet menu extra you have there... what does it do?"
Jumpcut keeps your clipboard around a little longer.
One of my biggest problems with the "clipboard" paradigm is that it only holds on to the last thing I clipped. I'm forever forgetting that I just clipped something I wanted, and haphazardly replacing it by copying something new1.
Jumpcut gives the OS X clipboard a healthy sense of history. It's a simple little menu extra2 that keeps track of a configurable amount of recent clippings, just a hotkey or a mouse click away. If the top of the screen is too far, you can hit ⌃⌥V to pop up a bezel window that pages through all your recent snips. This slick little app has become an indispensable part of my workflow.
