Axel Wefers adds another terminal command to affect the appearance of the MacOS X Desktop.

To disable outlines around icon names on the desktop, enter at the terminal:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain Desktop.HasDarkBackground 0

To enable outlines around icon names at the desktop, enter at the terminal:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain Desktop.HasDarkBackground 1

Booth commands require the desktop to be restarted. Either log out and back in, of Force Quit the Desktop.

---

Brian Ellis Sends this terminal command line tip:

Just found a nifty Mac OS X Dock hack I haven't seen anywhere at ResEx yet... it was buried deep in MacOSRumors, but amazingly it actually works. Typing...

defaults write com.apple.dock showforeground true

...will cause the active application to be highlighted in the Dock by a blue arrow instead of a black one. It's not exactly the coolest looking thing in the world (I personally would have sprung for a nice alpha-blended glow, but that's me) but it comes in REALLY handy, especially considering the fact that OS X has bugs where sometimes the frontmost window can be covered over by other windows but still be frontmost. :)

---

---

Axel Wefers passes this tip to toggle MacOS X ZoomRectangles:

To enable Finder Zoom Rectangles at the MacOS X Desktop:
Open the Terminal and enter:

defaults write com.apple.finder ZoomRects true

Restart the Desktop via ForceQuit and voila...

To disable Finder ZoomRectangles, enter:

defaults write com.apple.finder ZoomRects false

Again restart the Desktop...

---

I posted this tip the other day, and somehow deleted it while creating the news archive page. So if you missed it, here it is again. If you want to see all the hidden files and directories, open up a terminal window and type

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowAllFiles TRUE