A Better Desktop Pictures Organization
What follows is a brief article on a better way to organize your Desktop Pictures on Mac OS
There are few things that bug me working on a Mac, and the things that do bug me I've just kind of learned to put up with. I'm one of those types that likes to change their desktop picture quite a bit, sometimes multiple times in a day. Besides the utility of plain backgrounds for when I'm designing stuff, it's mainly just because I like something new and interesting to look at every once in awhile. Over the years, you can imagine the collection that I've got of desktop pictures, well into the high hundreds. With so many, I've found organizing them can be a real pain. Here's what I've tried before:
1. Dumping all pictures into the "Desktop Pictures" folder so that they all show up in the desktop preference pane. The problem with this of course is that having so many images in one folder not only slows the preference pane to a halt, but it's also impossible to find what you are looking for choosing from a 4×4 grid.
2. Manually organizing all the images into subfolders and then using the "Choose Folder" part of the preference pane to select which one I want. The con with this of course is that it can get laborious to keep choosing different folders, especially if you are trying to go back and forth on deciding which one you want.
3. Using 3rd party apps such as "MacRabbit's Deskshade":. While Deskshade is an awesome app, and I own it and use it regularly to cover my desktop up, it's desktop picture central just isn't something I always want to have to rely on. If Apple included a way with the OS, I'd rather rely on that.
4. I used iPhoto for awhile and then organized all my collections into albums. Again, this was less than optimal for a couple reasons. First, all my other personal albums showed up in the preference pane, making scrolling through all the albums to find the desktop picture ones a bit laborious. And second, throwing in random desktop pictures to iPhoto mixes them in with the rest of my personal photos that I want to look at/edit constantly. I don't need desktop pictures mixed all throughout there.
So after this year's annual format in January, I set out to discover a better way... and I did. The goal was to retain the use of Apple's built in preference pane but still maintain my own personal organized collections. And here's how it works:
- First, make a folder titled "Desktop Pictures" in ~/Pictures.
- Now make as many subfolders as you want in that main folder. I've got mine separated into Apple, Colors, Minimal, Misc, Pattern, Pictures & Vectors as you can see in the image above.
- Now here's where the magic comes in, we're going to edit the XML file that controls the preference pane. Navigate to /System/Library/PreferencePanes/. Right click on "DesktopScreenEffectsPref.prefPane and choose "Show Package Contents." Now go Contents>Resources and again right click on "DesktopPictures.prefPane" and choose "Show Package Contents" and again go to Contents>Resources.
- Now that you're hear you'll find a file titled "Collections.plist." Open that in your favorite text editor and edit away. I use "Textmate": and you can see what my file looks like here (click for larger version):
- Save the file and you're done. Note that because this file is in your System directory, you may have to enter your admin password when saving the file, or save a copy to your desktop and then go replace it manually by trashing the original one first and then moving the new one from your desktop over to the folder.
That's it, now you have your own personalized desktop preference pane. You can even change options as to whether or not show the scaling options dropdown on a per-folder basis.
