Tip of the Week: Get fake Stacks in the Dock

09Aug07

So anyone who’s drooling over the new Stacks feature in Leopard, look no further. You have always been able to do the same kind of thing in OS X, it’s just Stacks are making it into pretty eye-candy as well as making it easier to use. If you want to emulate the Downloads folder that SJ showed off at WWDC this year then just follow these simple instructions:
1. Create a new folder in your Home (or indeed anywhere if you don’t want it cluttering up your Home folder) and call it Downloads.
2. (Optional, Advanced) You can add a custom icon if you want to make it more obvious that it is the Downloads folder.
3. Drag the Downloads folder onto the right-hand side of the Dock (right of the dividing line), next to the trash and drop it in there.
4. Now go to Safari (or your browser of choice) and change the default download location, which for Safari is the Desktop. In Safari you can do this by going into Preferences (Safari > Preferences) and changing the ‘Save downloaded files to:’ preference (which is found under the General tab).
5. Now when you download files from your browser, they will download directly to your Downloads folder. To get quick access to these files you can Control-Click (or Right-Click or hold down the Left-click) on the folder icon in the Dock and a menu will appear out of the folder showing you it’s contents.

Like I said, it’s not as visually appealling as Stacks, but it does the job. I suppose we only have to wait until October.

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