Übersicht - Mac Desktop Widgets

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Übersicht - Mac Desktop Widgets

I've always been a huge fan of desktop customization, and I'm not just talking about the wallpaper. I like changing icons, colors, menus, fonts, widgets, the works. I found an awesome app that lets me do some of that on my Mac.

The Past

One app that I've missed from my Windows desktop is Samurize. Samurize lets you create all kinds of system monitoring type widgets that can live wherever you want them to on your desktop. It has died out and hasn't been actively developed for a long time, but it still works quite well and has a nice GUI widget designer. I dropped Samurize and started using Rainmeter, which is almost the same as Samurize. It is actively being developed, but the configuration language isn't fun to work with. I needed something like one of these apps for my Mac.

The Answer

I found Übersicht while looking into apps that I could use to create system monitoring widgets. I already use iStat Menus, but I like having more information on my desktop without cramming my menu bar full of icons.

I love the simplicity and extensibility of Übersicht. Übersicht uses HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and CoffeeScript. This means it's easy to write and customize widgets. Widgets can show data in all sorts of charts and graphs, and they can automatically adjust to different screen sizes. It's just like building a web page; so many resources are available for help. It can run a shell script or AppleScript, anything you can run in the terminal, and then you can use the output of that command to then display in your widget.

My Widget

A widget that I created is a simple Network Throughput Monitor. I like to see what my computer is doing when it's online. I like to know if data is coming or going. What better way to know if something is happening than a widget that shows your systems download and uploads speeds.

If you want to try my widget out, check it out on my project page.

Conclusion

Making stuff is fun. Customizing is fun. Übersicht is fun. I plan on making some more widgets that match my network throughput monitor. There are already a few widgets in the Übersicht widget library that I modeled mine after. I'll keep the trend going. I recommend giving Übersicht a try.