Desktop Spotting

Two Beautiful Mac Os X Themes Optimized for Mountain Lion

Lukas — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:15:20 +0000

Previously we had introduced 5 great Mac OS X Themes on Desktop Spotting, but since not all of them may work well on the new Mountain Lion, here are two newly designed Mac themes which will give a fresh look and feel to your Mountain Lion desktops:

Nocturne Theme For Mountain Lion

Download Theme

White Mountain Lion Theme

Download Theme

Best iPad Wallpaper Apps and Websites

Lukas — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:55:38 +0000

Let’s face it, iDevices are usually not that much customization friendly as a result of Apple’s closed policies unless you are going to jailbreak them. But not all people are interested in having their iDevices jailbroken and you can even live without that for sure! There are still ways to give a shiny new look to your iPad’s both Home Screen and Lock Screen using designated apps or simply by browsing quality wallpaper websites to find the ones that match your taste. To ease this process for you here are our curated iPad apps and classy wallpaper resources for the stylishness of your iPad.

iPad Customization Apps:

Pimp Your Screen

Pimp Your Screen is one of the most popular iPad customization apps around which enables you to give your iPad a new look by choosing from a large collection of backgrounds, icon skins, app shelves, and neon combos. It also supports the Retina display for the new iPad. One good point about this app is that with its instant preview feature you don’t need to apply the changes you make each time to see how it would look on your iPad Homescreen. Pimp Your Screen‘s current version hast a 4.5 stars rating and is available to download for $0.99.

Granimator™

Granimator™ is a free creative iPad app which lets you design your custom wallpapers with a nice touch and sound experience. You can select from a various choices of shapes, styles and backgrounds which can be drawn onto the stage and edited to create wallpapers that match your taste and give a new look to your iPad homescreen. Each shape comes with a sound that can be varied. The background music can also add to the fun of playing around the App. Check out their introductory video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We8dyutGeGU

The current version of Granimator™ has a 4.5 rating and can be downloaded from iTunes for free.

10 High Quality iPad wallpaper websites:

Mantia

Designed by former Apple employee, Louie Mantia, Mantia is an awesome website for iPad, desktop and iPhone wallpapers. The website currently contains around 90 top-notch wallpaper all designed by him.

Polga

Established in 2007, Polga curates illustration and artistic designs for iPhone, iPod and iPad. You can find plenty of beautiful wallpapers for both iPad 1 & 2 (1024 x 1024) and the new iPad (Retina 1024 x 1024). Polga in Spanish means flea which makes me wonder why they have chosen the name for the splendid website!

Iconpaper

Founded in 2009, Iconpaper not only curates beautiful iPad wallpapers, but you can find a few Docks, Icons and Lockscreens for your iPad eye-candy.

VladStudio

Vlad Gerasimov is an extremely talented Russian artists and his VladStudios has been one of my favorite wallpaper sources (not only for iPad) for a long time. All the numerous wallpapers in the site are illustrated by himself which proves what a dedicated artist he is!

iPad Walls

The good point about iPad Walls is its clean and easy to navigate user interface. The iPad wallpapers are organized in different categories such as nature, abstract, girls and etc. Users can also add selected wallpapers to their favorites which gives the site a kind of social feature. The only con with the site is that it lacks the feature to view Retina wallpapers only.

2048px

With its minimalistic design, 2048px is strictly dedicated to provide Retina wallpapers for the new iPad. when you view it with an iPad it looks like to be a native iPad app enabling you to swipe left or right to browse through the wallpapers’ gallery. On your desktop, downloading a wallpaper is as simple as dragging and dropping it to the place you want it to be saved. The website is rather a new one and its archive is not that complete yet but even playing around the site would be much fun!

Other Worth mentioning iPad wallpaper sources:

If you know any other useful iPad wallpaper resources or iPad customization apps Let me know in the comments and I will add them to the list.

10 Inspiring Android Home Screen Layouts

Lukas — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:56:14 +0000

One of the advantages of Android phones over iPhone is that Android is an open source software which makes it highly customizable. There are a lot of apps and widgets available to help you decorate and personalize the home screen layout according to your interests. To help you get some inspiration to give a new look to your Android phone here are our top 10 picks for Android home screen setups. You can find the setup instructions and tutorials for most of them in the following links.

Multihome LG Optimus 2X Home Screen by Filip. Go to this link and hover the mouse over the screen for layout details

Motorola Triumph Android Customization by Stephhannieex333

Android Home Screen created with LuncherPro App by suprafreak1000

Minimal Android Home & Lock screen layout using Fancy Widgets App by desylvia

Windows Phone 7 (WP7) style Android Home Screen (How to link) by djNecro

Marvel Vs Capcom Home Screen by Max

Lollypop Minimalistic Android Layout by desylvia

Simplistic Android Home Screen layout by Paulo Cardoso

Elegant Android Black Layout with full tutorial by gseth.

Another Minimal Android Home and Lock Screen design by dxDreamX

If you have any questions about setting up these beautiful Android home screen designs don’t hesitate to follow the provided links and ask the designer in the comments!

MenuBarFilter Gives an iOS-like Dark Menu Bar to Your Mac OS X

Lukas — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:47:52 +0000

Do you enjoy the beautiful dark menu bar on your iPhone or iPad? Thanks to a tiny free software called MenuBarFilter you can easily turn your Mac OS X menu bar into a dark, iOS-Like one.

While this is not the only way to get a dark menu bar for Mac OS X (you can find another workaround in this GeekTool Tutorial), the good point about this Nocturne based software is that with a single click it inverts the colors of menu bar and the including widget icons to give a shiny look to your desktop. There are currently some minor issues with this software which hopefully should be solved with a new update; for example if you are running Mac OS X Lion, it might not always work perfectly in full screen apps. Also there is no way to quit the software rather than going to Activity Monitor and manually quit it from there.

MenuBarFilter Download and Installation Guide

Get a Minimal Windows 7 Desktop with Glass Onion Theme

Lukas — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:07:40 +0000

Glass Onion is an eye-catching Minimal Windows 7 theme created by deviantArt user SolMiler which comes in three different styles:Dusk, Dawn and Noon. It inherits the glassy look of original Windows 7 user interface and adds smoothness and simplicity to it.

It includes a set of simple yet beautiful icon set for Windows task bar(supports top, bottom and left taskbar) and also a gorgeous clock widget.

The wallpapers you see in the preview can be downloaded from here, here and here and the icon sets from here and here.

Download this minimal theme and you can find the full installation guide in the PDF file included.

Via: SolMiler

5 Beautiful Rainmeter Clocks for Your Windows Desktop

Lukas — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:30:44 +0000

Are you tired of your ordinary clock gadget on your Windows desktop and want to try some fresh and stylish desktop clocks? Thanks to the powerful Windows desktop customization tool, Rainmeter, there are lots of ways to customize the desktop according to your interests. Here are our top 5 picks among the Rainmeter clocks designed by deviantART users.

If you are not familiar with Rainmeter, read our instructions on Rainmeter for beginners first.

Loop Clock for Rainmeter:

These fantastic loop shaped analog clocks are a good example to show the power of Rainmeter in Windows desktop customization.

Download link via FreakQuency85

HTC sense clocks

This pack will give a HTC sense themed clock to your Windows desktop.

Download link via marcarnal

Grunge Clock for Rainmeter

These Grunge clocks come in two versions. To find out how to get the required fonts and other details regarding setting up the clock with Raimeter take a look at the creator’s guides here and here. You can find the download links at the top right of those pages.

Rainmeter Binary Clock

Rather than being a true binary clock, this nerdy clock is actually Binary Coded Digital Clock or BCD Clock. A BCD Clock takes the digits which make up the time and turns them into a binary representation of those digits. If you are interested you can take a look at this article to learn how to read a BCD clock. find the installation instructions here and here. Another binary clock for Rainmeter with a different design can be found here.

Download link

Vatch Clock for Rainmeter

Another stylish desktop clock for Rainmeter. This gorgeous clock is also available as a sidebar gadget.

Download link via GeorgeHarrison

Customize Your OS X Lion’s Dashboard, Mission Control and Login Screen Background Images with “Lion Designer”

Lukas — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:06:12 +0000

Have you ever been trying to customize your Mac OS X Lion’s different design elements such as the mission control or login screen backgrounds? Sure you could do these using hacks and tricks that required a little manual file editing and replacement, but now thanks to German developer Moritz Wette, You can easily do the customization with a free app called “Lion Designer“.

Here are some of Lion Designer features:

Customize new Dashboard background image
Customize new Mission Control background image
Customize folder icons of the new Launchpad
Customize folder background of the new Launchpad
Customize the login screen background image
Change the icon (apple) at the top of the login screen
Customize the size of the launchpad icons

The good thing about this app is that if you made a mess of your OS X’s design, you can easily roll back to its default with a single click. For your own images, Moritz suggests that you use PNG files that have the same or greater width and height as your monitor so that no tiling occurs.

Download Lion Designer

Watch this quick tutorial to learn how to use the Lion Designer app.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ArBZy_E870

Organize Your Desktop Icons with Fences

Lukas — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 21:19:00 +0000

Are you tired of your messy windows desktop filled with lots of unorganized icons? It’s a real pain in the neck each time you need to find the document or folder in such an untidy desktop. But the awesome icon organizer tool, Stardock Fences, can make the life much easier for those who spent most of their time on computers. After installing Fences you can easily arrange your icons into categorized containers and even hide all of them by double clicking on the desktop.

Some other features of this must-have desktop customization tool are as below:

Easy access to the settings panel by right clicking on your desktop to customized the look and feel of containers
Take and restore snapshots of your Fence layouts for backup
Drag and drop interface to create boxes and arranging the icons in them

Fences comes in two free and pro versions and is available for Windows XP 32-bit and Windows 7 or Vista in both 32-bit or 64-bit versions.

Download Stardock Fences

Check out the following video tutorial to find how Fences works:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFitvGamfw0&feature=related

GeekTool released in Mac app store

Lukas — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:22:02 +0000

We have previously mentioned the awesome Mac desktop customization tool, Geektool, in several posts. Fortunately the developer of this app has released GeekTool App on Mac App Store, and it had gained a lot of popularity only in a few days.

Geektool app comes with three default plugins:

File plugin to monitor MacOS X activity with /var/log/system.log, or any file that you want to follow.
Shell mode to launch custom scripts or commands like “df” to check space left on filesystems or “uptime” to monitor load on your machine.
Finally, image mode helps you monitor bandwith usage, CPU load, memory availability on your server with tools like MRTG or RRD.

The screenshot of Geektool on Mac App store features the Awesome Clock and Sand Desktop we had previously covered. So if you are interested in replicating this beautiful desktop check this video tutorial.

5 Examples of Mac Os Desktop Customization using GeekTool

Lukas — Tue, 31 May 2011 23:48:10 +0000

Among the Mac Os X desktop customization tools available, GeekTool is my favorite one. It is a really neat utility that will allow you to run little scripts or “geeklets” to display useful informatiom such as RAM, CPU usage, calender , images and etc. on your Mac’s desktop. Here are 5 good examples of Mac desktop customization using GeekTool. Click on the images for a larger preview and follow the links for downloads ans setup configurations.

Portal 2 Themed Desktop

This beautiful GeekTool desktop, inspired by Portal 2, uses the SOG theme we previously covered on our 5 Best Mac OS X Themes. The wallpaper, icon set and GeekTool scripts for the desktop setup can be found on its creator deviantArt page.

Nature Carbon GeekTool Desktop

Green desktops are refreshing and this one created by Flickr user, TiZuNG is an example of neatly done desktop which can be inspiring. The wallpaper is mod for Enclosed, icon set for dock is Flurry from Icon Factory and the icons for the bar of devices connected are from Pry icon set. The skin is a customized version of Bowtie Neon and all other things are done by GeekTool. Go to TiZuNG’ Flickr and hover your mouse over different items of the desktop for more description.

Onsager GeekTool Desktop

This simple but yet eye catching Mac Os desktop is completely customized by GeekTool only for the iTunes track which is shown with Bowtie. Alex Onsager has described the full tutorial of the set up in his blog.

Perspective Clock & Calendar

This is one of the coolest ways to display the time and date on a desktop! Ian Michael Smith has developed a package with GeekTool which helps you recreate his desktop with a few clicks.This desktop comes with an application named “MobileMode” that ejects external HD’s, closes all applications, and disables Geektool to preserve battery life with one click. Get the desktop package from here and the MobileMode App here.

The SpiderMac Desktop:

Last but not least is this Spider Man inspired desktop which although does not seem very practical for everyday use, the creativity of its owner can not be ignored! You can find the GeekTool commands and other tweaks on Zack Shackleton Flickr page.