Turn tabbed preference panes into individual panes
Apr 15, '04 11:30:00AM
Contributed by: _Gekko_
Various system preference panes in Panther contain tabs. For example, the International panel consists of three tabs: Language, Formats, Input Menu. If you'd find it more convenient to access these panels separately, you can do so, as seen here:
To split these prefs panels, open the Finder and navigate to /System -> Library -> PreferencePanes. Control-click on the Localization panel and select Show Package Contents, and then navigate to Contents -> Resources. You'll see three panes in that folder:- IntlFormats.prefPane
- IntlKeyboard.prefPane
- IntlLanguages.prefPane
Drag any of these to a PreferencePane's folder -- you can move them up into the System level folder where you started, or into your user's Library -> PreferencePanes folder. If you copy them into the system-level folder, you'll need your admin password to OK the copy, and they'll be available for everyone. If you copy them into your user's folder, then you'll be the only one to have access, and you can easily remove them in the System Preferences app with a control-click.
You can do this same magic on the DateAndTime and DesktopScreenEffects prefPanes as well.
[robg adds: Due to the permissions on the source folder, you'll be copying these sub-panes, not moving them, so the originals are untouched -- a good thing, as you can't damage them with this little trick. As seen in the screenshot, they show up in the Other category. I'm not sure if there's a way to re-categorize them or not; there's nothing obvious in the Info.plist or InfoPlist.strings files...]
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Mac OS X Hints
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