Desktop Buttons – As Seen at The Apple Store
By, Sam Glasgow on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Look familiar? Above is an image of what the computer desktops at the Apple store look like. Those big buttons serve as launchers for applications. The launcher that powers those buttons resides in the /Library/Desktop Buttons/ folder is very easy to customize. Pictured below is my custom version with Safari, Mail and iChat.
Desktop Buttons OriginalDesktop Buttons Custom
To use either the custom version or the original, place the entire folder in /Library/. In the Finder this means click Macintosh HD then drag the desktop buttons folder to the Library folder inside of Macintosh HD.
Note: It will not work if you do not do place it in this location.
To start the launcher double click on the DesktopButtons file. Lastly you can make your own version of this by modifying the paths in the urls.txt file and replacing the images in the DesktopButtons file. To replace the images, control click on the DesktopButtons file and the press show package contents, from there navigate to the Resources folder where you will find several images that can easily be edited in the graphics application of your choice.
Enjoy the buttons!
Can you create the buttons they have on the children’s computers at the Apple store? I love the file running on those. It gives no toolbar or dock. Just a blank screen with buttons to launch the kids games and there are directional arrows on screen to scroll to a different page that has more games.
What you are describing sound more like “simple finder” than these buttons. To turn on simple finder type the following in terminal
To turn the standard finder back on click type this in terminal.
You can also download apple’s workgroup manager for more options… Download Here
Sorry it took me so long to reply (smile). It is kind of like Simple Finder I suppose but it is not Simple Finder. It takes up the whole display and it can not be closed. Thanks for the code. If I can’t find what I am looking for than this is definitely the next best thing. Sadly, no one at any Apple Store that I’ve called knows what it is.
This is great, Sam – thanks for the post. I’m curious, is there a way to disable responding to the “show desktop” command. In other words, would I be able to keep these buttons on the desktop even if I click “show desktop”? For example, if I have Safari open, but I would like to also open iChat, then it would be handy to just use the “show desktop” shortcut, and click the button.
Just installed this. Very useful! BumpTop handles it well, it simply overlays:
Glad to hear it. I just took the site back online and hope to be posting some new articles and videos soon.
Wait! What happened to my pretty screenshot? “http://airhogs777.wikia.com/wiki/File:Desktop_Buttons_and_BumpTop.png”
This image?
Yeah. Why can’t I see it in my original post? Did I mess something up?