Menulets: The Missing Manual

4.6. Menulets: The Missing Manual See the menu-bar icons in Figure 4-9? Apple calls them Menu Extras, but Mac fans on the Internet have named them menulets
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Menulets: The Missing Manual4.6. Menulets: The Missing ManualSee the menu-bar icons in Figure 4-9? Apple calls them Menu Extras, but Mac fans onthe Internet have named them menulets. Each is both an indicator and a menu thatprovides direct access to certain settings in System Preferences. One lets you adjust yourMacs speaker volume; another lets you change the screen resolution; yet another showsyou the remaining power in your laptop battery; and so on.Figure 4-9. These little guys are the direct descendants of the controls once found on the Mac OS 9 Control Strip or the Windows systemTo summon the various menulets, you generally visit a certain pane of SystemPreferences (Section 4.5.1) and turn on a checkbox called, for example, Show volume inmenu bar. Heres a rundown of the various Apple menulets that you may encounter,complete with instructions on where to find this magic on/off checkbox for each:Tip: The following descriptions indicate the official, authorized steps for installing amenulet. There is, however, a folder on your hard drive that contains 25 of them in asingle window, so that you can install one with a quick double-click. To find them, openyour hard drive System Library CoreServices Menu Extras folder. • AirPort lets you turn your AirPort card on or off, join existing AirPort wireless networks, and create your own private ones. To find the Show checkbox: Open System Preferences Network. From the Show pop-up menu, choose AirPort. • Battery shows how much power remains in your laptops battery. To find the Show checkbox: Open System Preferences Energy Saver Options tab. • Bluetooth connects to Bluetooth devices, pairs your Mac with a cellphone, and so on. To find the Show checkbox: Open System Preferences Bluetooth. The Show Bluetooth status in the menu bar checkbox appears at the bottom of the Settings tab. • Clock is the standard menu-bar clock thats been sitting at the upper-right corner of your screen from Day 1. Click it to open a menu where you can check todays date, convert the menu-bar display to a tiny analog clock, and so on. To find the Show checkbox: Open System Preferences Date & Time. On the Clock tab, turn on Show the date and time. • Displays adjusts screen resolution. On Macs with a projector or second monitor attached, it lets you turn screen mirroring on or off—a tremendous convenience to anyone who gives PowerPoint or Keynote presentations. To find the Show checkbox: Open System Preferences Displays Display tab. • is the oddball: Theres no checkbox in System Preferences to make this menulet appear. The fact that it even exists is something of a secret. To make it appear, open your System Library CoreServices Menu Extras folder as described above, and double-click the Eject.menu icon. Thats it! The menulet appears. Youll discover that its wording changes: Open Combo Drive, Close DVD- ROM Drive, Eject [Name of Disc], or whatever, to reflect your particular drive type and whats in it at the moment. • Fax reveals the current status of a fax youre sending or receiving, so youre not kept in suspense. To find the Show checkbox: Open System Preferences Print & Fax, and then click Faxing. • HomeSync is useful only if some friendly neighborhood network administrator has set up Mac OS X Server at your office.Thanks to a feature called portable Home folders, you can take your laptop on the roadand do work—and then, on your return, have the changes synced automatically to yourmain machine at work over the network. Or not automatically; this menulets Sync HomeNow command performs this synchronization on demand. • iChat is a quick way to let the world know, via iChat and the Internet (Section 7.5.1.8), that youre away from your keyboard, or available and ready to chat. Via the Buddy List command, its also a quick way to open iChat itself. To find the Show checkbox: Open iChat; its in your Applications folder. Choose iChat Preferences, click the General button, and turn on Show status in menu bar. • Inkturns the Write Anywhere feature on and off as you use your graphics tablet. (That may not mean much to you until youve read about the Ink feature, described on Section 15.6.6.) To find the Show checkbox: Open the Ink panel of System Preferences. Even so, the menulet doesnt appear unless a graphics tablet is attached.• IrDAis useful only to ancient PowerBooks that have infrared transmitters—if indeed any of them can even run Leopard. This menulet is known for flakiness; youre best off not installing this.• Keychain. This ...