TinkerTool is an additional control panel for the System Preferences application that allows users to access more operating system settings than are usually visible in the standard panels. Additionally, TinkerTool can change the startup and login panel language of the operating system without having to reinstall Mac OS X.
The following Mac OS X settings can be changed with TinkerTool:
Additionally, the following settings can be controlled in any version of Mac OS X 10.1. They are not available in Jaguar:
The following settings are available both in Mac OS X 10.1 and 10.2. However, TinkerTool does not allow to change them in Jaguar, because in 10.2 the settings can now be controlled officially by the respective applications and System Preferences. TinkerTool provides these preferences mainly for 10.1 users who want to use the same OS features:
With exception of the startup language setting, TinkerTool makes sure that preference changes can only affect the current user. You don't need administrative privileges to use the tool. With this design, it is no problem to use TinkerTool in professional networks where users have restricted permissions. The program will never change any component of the operating system, so the integrity of your system is not put at risk, and there will be no negative effect on system updates.
All preference settings changed by TinkerTool can be reset to Apple's defaults, or to the state that existed before using the tool. No dangerous background processes are used for TinkerTool's operation.
Please read the answer to the previous question. TinkerTool does nothing more than to change user preference settings that Apple has built into Mac OS X and its applications. TinkerTool itself has no features at all.
In most cases, the answer is no. TinkerTool does not provide any features, so it cannot add any. The features you are seeing are provided by Mac OS X and controlled by Apple. TinkerTool is only a helper application to activate them. Please read the answers to the previous two questions.
No, unfortunately these problems are caused by Jaguar itself. We have been testing the operating system very thoroughly and found several hundred serious defects. Note that we are not speaking of the hidden features activated by TinkerTool (those features were never advertized by Apple, so they cannot be called defective if they change or disappear between system versions). A few of the problems that users mistakenly think to be caused by TinkerTool are listed in the Jaguar Release Notes.
Many of our (non-TinkerTool related) customers cannot use Mac OS X 10.2 in its present form because the system is too unstable and missing too many features that worked correctly in 10.0 and 10.1. That's the reason why all our software development efforts - which include TinkerTool - are still focused on 10.1.5. TinkerTool will not support any Jaguar-specific operating system features until the operating system has become more usable. We informed Apple about the most serious problems and hope they will fix them in future versions of Mac OS X.
No, you just appear to have enabled the "show all files" option in TinkerTool. The .DS_Store files are created by the Finder during its normal course of operation. The Finder will automatically put a .DS_Store file into every folder you have opened. These files are used to save the placement of the icons, the size of the respective Finder window, the window's background, and many more view options. While many professional users consider the .DS_Store files to be a design flaw of the Mac OS X Finder, a mechanism like this is necessary when opening Finder windows for exchangeable disk media to give users of the classic Mac OS the same user experience they were used to have in their former operating system versions. If you don't like to see the .DS_Store files, disable the "show all files" option in TinkerTool, or replace the Finder by a better file management application.
Could it be that you are logged in as the "root" user? There are three bugs in the preferences subsystem of Mac OS X which in combination limit the way the root account can change the language settings while it is logged in. TinkerTool (as of version 2.2) protects "root" from creating unwanted side effects caused by those bugs. Login as administrator instead to change startup and login language. Note that is always a bad idea to login as root. Unless you need write access to a NetInfo server, the root account should remain disabled in Mac OS X.
Yes, because there is no difference between Mac OS X and the corresponding version of Mac OS X Server. The Server version only comes with additional administration and service software. So TinkerTool works the same on both system versions.
The Finder intentionally deletes all background scaling settings when a new image is selected. This does not appear to be user-friendly from TinkerTool's point of view but it is user-friendly from the Finder's point of view. Apple has designed the Finder to automatically select an appropriate background setting for each new image you select. If you want to fine-tune the image scaling manually, you'll have to repeat it each time the background is changed. (First select an image in the Desktop preference pane, then select the preferred scaling in TinkerTool and relaunch the Finder.) With the current version of the Finder, no other solution is practicable.
This is an "optical" problem of the scroll bar in the Classic preference pane. If you have selected the option "Place scroll arrows: Together at both ends" in TinkerTool, the startup volume scroll view does not have enough space to display all four arrow buttons. As a result, the scroll bar will partially fail, and you can only click on the first four partitions of your disk. To solve the problem, just select one of the other scroll arrow settings in TinkerTool and restart System Preferences. Now the Classic preference pane will be displayed correctly and you can select between all volumes. A similar effect might arise in other applications as well, if they use an unusually short scroll bar in a non-resizable window. If you use such an application, you should not enable the arrow option "together at both ends".
No. All newer versions of the Terminal application use different transparency factors for the window's contents and the window's title bar. This is a feature of Terminal to better differentiate between active and non-active windows. TinkerTool does not change the transparency of the title bars and also does not respect this in its Terminal preview window.
It appears to have become the latest fashion to publish system utilities in form of a Mac OS X preference pane. Unfortunately, many panes come with defective installers that corrupt the permission settings of the System Preferences environment. In this case, you can no longer update or remove third-party preference panes, including TinkerTool. Do the following to solve the problem:
sudo chmod g+w /Library
sudo chgrp admin /Library
sudo chmod g+w /Library/PreferencePanes
sudo chgrp admin /Library/PreferencePanes
Note that the system will ask for your password after you entered the first line.
The special architecture of TinkerTool guarantees that you can safely use the application with future versions of Mac OS X. TinkerTool only changes preferences values of the current user, it avoids changing parts of the operating system. The way TinkerTool works makes sure that
This can happen when you didn't install the new version to the same location as the old one. In this case, the installer is cautious and intentionally does not remove the old version. If you no longer need the old version, just remove it manually as described in the next paragraph.
NOTE: As of TinkerTool 2.2, the installer will now automatically find an old version of TinkerTool and automatically select its location as destination for the new release, hereby replacing the previous one. This will avoid the problem.
Use the Finder to select the icon "TinkerTool.prefPane" in the folder "PreferencesPanes" in the "Library" folder. Move this icon to the Trash. That's all! Depending on the type of installation, you have to look either into the Library folder in your private folder, or the one on your startup disk, or the one on your network file server.
You might consider resetting TinkerTool's preferences to the pre-installation state before removing the tool. (See also the next item.)
As mentioned above, TinkerTool unlocks settings in other applications. The applications will respect their settings no matter if TinkerTool is installed or not. If you want to reset your configuration, select the TinkerTool pane in System Preferences, select the item "Reset" and press the button "Defaults" below the message "Reset all TinkerTool settings to...". All settings accessible via TinkerTool will be reset to Apple's defaults. The only exception is the startup language which has to be reset manually using an administrator's password. Note that a full reset of TinkerTool's settings might also affect preference values that are partially shared between TinkerTool and the standard preferences panes, e.g. the style of the scrollbar arrows.
As of version 2.1, TinkerTool additionally allows you to reset it's preferences to the state they were before using TinkerTool 2.1. Note that this does not include settings changed before using the 2.1 release.
This is a known bug in System Preferences. We informed Apple about this problem
in October 2001 and hope they will fix it in future versions of Mac OS X.
In many cases, the problem can be solved by restarting the computer. If this doesn't
help, do the following:
Library/Caches/com.apple.preferencepanes.cacherm ~/Library/Caches/.ApplePrefPanesCacheSome controls of TinkerTool had to be taken out during certain updates. The controls have been removed because either Apple disabled the required functionality when updating Mac OS X, or they introduced an official interface to control the preference values affected. TinkerTool should not reimplement controls that are already built into the base system to guarantee a consistent user experience.