Customize your OS X Lion installation with these Terminal hacks

Lion has brought lots of small tweaks and changes to the Mac OS, and some people don’t like those changes. Here are a few ways you can change things using the Terminal in Mac OSX Lion to customize the OS to your liking.

Key Repeat
When holding a key down on your keyboard, Lion now offers a pop-up displaying the accent characters available by default, instead of simply repeating the character.

• Turn on key-repeat (turning off the accent character pop-up):
• cdefaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

Window Animations
Lion opens windows and dialog boxes with a new animation. On modern machines with plenty of RAM they’re pretty cool. But if you have an older machine or they simply annoy you, get rid of them easily.

• Turn off window animations globally:
• defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool NO

Don’t Save
I was unaware that previous OS versions had a keyboard shortcut for “Don’t Save,” and Lion changed it. You can restore ⌘D to activate the Don’t Save button.

• Restore ⌘D – Don’t Save:
• defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSSavePanelStandardDesktopShortcutOnly -bool YES

Safari Reading List
Lion adds a permanent Reading List icon to Safari’s Bookmarks bar. While it’s handy for most folks, many people prefer a service like ReadItLater.

• Hide the Reading List icon with this Terminal command:
• defaults write com.apple.Safari ProxiesInBookmarksBar '("Top Sites")'
• Once it’s removed from the Bookmarks bar, you can add it to the main Toolbar simply by going to View>Customize Toolbar and drag the icon into the main Toolbar.

Library Folder
By default, Lion hides your Users/Library folder. While it’s easy to access it by holding the Option key down in the Finder while in the Go menu (it will appear in the list), there’s an easy way to make it permanently visible.

• Make the Library folder visible permanently:
• chflags nohidden ~/Library

Most of these hacks are easily reversible simply by switching NO for YES in the command. If you’re unsure, many of these Terminal commands are also available in apps like Onyx.