Power users like to tweak their Mac OS X Desktops just so, with that menu color, this background, and those applications in the Dock. Non-computer types just can’t understand the importance of the proper arrangement of your virtual workplace: When things are familiar and customized to your needs, you’re more productive, and things get done faster. In fact, if you’ve set up multiple users on your computer under Mac OS X, the Big X automatically keeps track of each user’s Desktop and restores it when that person logs in. (For example, when you use the Mac, you get that background photo of Farrah Fawcett from the ’70s while your daughter gets Avril Lavigne.) You can produce a Desktop that’s uniquely your own.
You may be wondering whether you really need a custom background. That depends completely on your personal tastes, but most computer owners do change their background when presented with the opportunity. Favorite backgrounds usually include
I'm trying to colorize my bash prompt on Mac OS X with the git branch (where available). What I've Tried. With my limited bash knowledge, I pieced together the following code from Google searches and other questions.
If you do decide to spruce up your background, you have three choices: You can select one of the default Mac OS X background images, choose a solid color, or specify your own image. All three backgrounds are chosen from the Desktop & Screen Saver panel, located within System Preferences (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: To select a background, go to System Preferences.
You can also hold down Control, click the Desktop, and choose Change Desktop Background from the pop-up contextual menu (or right-click, if you’re using a mouse with multiple buttons).
To choose a background from one of the collections provided by Apple, click one of these groups from the list at the left:
If you see something you like, click the thumbnail, and Mac OS X displays it in the well and automatically refreshes your background so that you can see what it looks like. (By the way, in the Apple universe, a well is a sunken square area that displays an image — in this case, the background image that you’ve selected.)
Notice your iPhoto albums in the list? That’s no accident — Tiger automatically offers your iPhoto Photo Library so that you can choose images from your iPhoto collection.
Mac OS X automatically manipulates how the background appears on your Desktop. If an image conforms to your screen resolution, fine — otherwise, click the drop-down list box next to the well and you can choose to
Note that this drop-down list appears only if the Desktop picture that you select is not one of the standard Apple images. All the pictures in the Apple Background Images, Nature, Abstract, and Solid Colors categories are automatically scaled to the size of your screen.
To change your Desktop background automatically on a regular basis, enable the Change Picture check box and then choose the delay period from the corresponding drop-down list box. To display the images in random order, also enable the Random Order check box; otherwise, Mac OS X displays them in the order that they appear in the folder.
If you want your favorite color without the distraction of an image as a background, you can choose from a selection of solid colors. You can choose from these colors the same way that you’d pick a default Mac OS X background image.
You can drag your own image into the well from a Finder window to add your own work of art. To view thumbnails of an entire folder, click the Pictures Folder (to display the contents of your personal Pictures folder) or click Choose Folder to specify any folder on your system. Click the desired thumbnail to embellish your Desktop.