Ubersicht: interesting and informative widgets for the desktop OS X
Tips Makradar / / December 19, 2019
Many users, recently switched to OS X with Windows, surprised that widgets are arranged on a single screen, rather than on the desktop, as they used to. Apple has about it a philosophy, and eventually, you know, so really convenient as working table almost always hidden windows applications and often no time to admire the wallpaper, and not what widgets stare. On the one hand, it is reasonable and proper, but on the other - there are exceptions, when people do not clutter up your desktop files and folders, minimalist set wallpaper in this case, a sin not to take advantage of free space to display some useful information. Regular means that, of course, can not be done, but with the help of a tiny utility Ubersicht - quite possible.
What is it?
Ubersicht It is a free application that displays on your desktop poppy minimalist widgets written c using CoffeeScript and conventional Java-script. They are very simple, if you wish, you can see documentation and write your own widget. The very idea of such widgets is not new - I remember how to use Ubuntu -Conky, on whose footsteps obviously and walked Ubersicht.
How it works?
Download applications for link and copy it to a folder Programs. Included with the application is one demonstaratsionny widget that will introduce you to Ubersicht.
the application icon appears in the menu bar, from which you can open the configuration and specify a folder for the widgets, as well as enable Ubersicht autorun at system startup.
All widgets are stored in a folder ~ / Library / Application Support / Übersicht / widgets, Which can be accessed from the drop down menu in the status bar. To install a widget, you just need to put in this folder, to remove - to remove out (move or delete). All widgets in the folder widgets automatically enabled when the application starts.
Where to get new widgets?
The project is still quite young, the public release took place a couple of weeks ago. However, at the moment there are a couple of dozens of different widgets from the clock and calendar, and ending weather widget and monitors the system resources. Almost all of them are created by users who are interested in Ubersicht and download them can be official page project.
How to configure it?
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) Ubersicht no different than a friendly user interface and all settings are made through widget configuration files. Why fortunately? I think a little geek will not hurt anyone, and you may even like it, especially for novice users, Show them a little magic (Tsiferki change in the code, and that's our widget has become a different color, I have a friend - he changed size, etc.).
Edit a file need index.coffe, which is in each widget folder. Open it with any text editor, change the desired parameters and save - changes take effect immediately and you will see them.
A couple of examples
I did not read the documentation and the habit understood "at random." In fact, everything turned out to be easier than ever and after a couple of minutes I was already here a desktop. Is that the weather had to tinker a little longer, but that I also will tell on.
in configuration files, code is divided into sections, each of which is responsible for a certain parameter. For example, in section style we focus settings widget layout, background color, font, etc. Customize virtually all widgets comes down to the fact that we need to change a couple of numbers in this very style section.
That's setting the position of the widget top-cpu. Here you can specify the distance from the edges of the screen, where it will be located, simply take and adapts to your screen. Change can be not only the magnitude values (bottom - 0-700px), but the value itself (bottom change on top).
Also keep in mind that for the location, you can specify not only the size in pixels, and as a percentage. Here's an example for the weather, I chose 45% from the bottom edge and 50% of the left, it turns out well in the center (5% correction for the Dock).
Configure the widget Weather
But setting Weather widgets took me a little more time, so I will tell about it a little more. In order to earn the forecast, you need to specify coordinates (latitude and longitude) of your location and service with an API key forecast.io, From which it will take the information.
Coordinates the easiest way to find out with the help of google Maps. Open the map, find your city (you can even street, house) and selecting Look for that next, Click on the map to display the coordinates of the selected location (Google displays them through the gap, but in the config file it needs to be removed, this is important!).
API Key you will get by registering on page for developers forecast.io. Once you are logged in, scroll down the page to the bottom and you will see it.
Now you need to insert the extracted data in the widget configuration file. That's how it should look (look carefully, if a mistake - the script will not work). Do not forget to remove the gap between the latitude and longitude, as well as quotes.
- apiKey = '6f18946e7d91695f8765018286583955'
- location = '47 .837929,35.138403 '
Location widget is adjusted in section style and you already know how to do it. As a result of these manipulations we get here a beautiful, minimalistic weather widget on your desktop.
conclusion
Yes, these widgets are very modest and may not satisfy demanding users, but some people may not like the complexity of the setup. But partly, this is the charm, and sometimes do something "handles", rather than the full "automatic". Judging by the way the project to interested users, we can assume that he will gather around him a community that will delight us with new widgets and develop further. I think it's real, poskolu even now, after some two weeks of the existence of Ubersicht already a lot of fans and growing base of widgets.
We have questions, comments or suggestions? Welcome to the comments - I'm always happy to talk and help. Stay tuned, there is still a lot of interesting things!