Did you ever realize you can alter the System Prefs toolbar just like any other app's toolbar (e.g. the Finder's)? I'm not talking about rearranging by dragging the items, but rather adding separators and flexible spaces to the toolbar. Unfortunately, Apple forgot to implement the "Customize Toolbar" option in the System Prefs app itself (at least I never found it), but you can edit its preference file to achieve much the same result.
Read the rest of the article for the how-to...
The preferences file lives here:
[Editor's note: Make sure that the System Prefs app is not running when you edit the plist file. System Prefs re-writes the prefs when you quit the application, so if you edit the file while the app is running, you'll lose your changes when you quit and restart System Prefs!]
Read the rest of the article for the how-to...
The preferences file lives here:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plistYou need to open this file (make a backup first, just in case) with a text editor, either through the Terminal or in the Finder (just make sure it's a pure text editor so it won't insert Mac line breaks). The section you're looking for starts like this:
<key>NSToolbar Configuration com.apple.PrefsToolbar</key>The section that starts with TB Item Identifiers contains the items on the toolbar. To add a separator, locate the two items you wish to separate, and insert a new row between them:
<dict>
<key>TB Display Mode</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>TB Is Shown</key>
<key>TB Item Identifiers</key>
<array>
<string>com.apple.prefpane.showall</string>
<string>NSToolbarSeparatorItem</string>
<string>com.apple.preference.mouse</string>
...
<string>NSToolbarSeparatorItem</string>To insert a flexible space, use:
<string>NSToolbarFlexibleSpaceItem</string>Finally, if you'd like to see what the toolbar looks like with smaller icons, look for the TB Size Mode key a bit further down the file, and change the "1" in the following row to a "2". The icons don't look very good, but they are much smaller!
[Editor's note: Make sure that the System Prefs app is not running when you edit the plist file. System Prefs re-writes the prefs when you quit the application, so if you edit the file while the app is running, you'll lose your changes when you quit and restart System Prefs!]
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