TinkerTool is a freeware application for macOS that allows the user to customise the system by exposing hidden preferences to a graphical user interface (GUI). It is developed by German developer Marcel Bresink Software-Systeme. Its latest release is version 7.4.2, which is optimised for macOS Catalina and many features that came with it.
- Tinkertool System 6 85 Equals Many
- Tinkertool System 6 85 Equals Inches
- Tinkertool System 6
- Tinkertool System 6 85 Equals Ounces
- Tinkertool System 5
Over my many years of running Mac OS X Hints, a huge number of defaults write hints were published.
- TinkerToolSystem6.85HCiS O.zip (22.55 MB) Choose free or premium download SLOW DOWNLOAD. FAST INSTANT DOWNLOAD.
- The latest version of TinkerTool System is 6.89 on Mac Informer. It is a perfect match for System Optimization in the System Tools category. The app is developed by Marcel Bresink Software-Systeme and its user rating is 4.3 out of 5.
For those who aren't aware, defaults write is a Terminal command that can be used to modify applications' settings. While you can use these commands to modify settings that are present in an app's Preferences panel, the more-common use of this command is to set non-visible (hidden) prefs that you won't find in the GUI.
Here are three of my favorites—three that not only perceptually but actually increase the speed of your interactions with your Mac. I still, to this day, execute these commands on any new Mac I set up.
Don't worry if you'd prefer to stay away from Terminal: I'll also show how to use the long-livedTinkerTool to set each of these options using a (relatively easy if crowded) GUI interface.
Sheets are the attached windows that roll down from (and up into) the title bar of windows, such as the Save dialog in most macOS applications. The animation of these sheets, while visually appealing, does take some time.
Using this tip, you can basically eliminate the animation, greatly speeding the appearance and disappearance of sheets. Given how pervasive sheets are, this tip can save a lot of time each day. While the other tips offer actual speed improvements, they're nothing like the change you get by changing the sheet animation speed.
As a test, I opened and closed a Save sheet in TextEdit five times, both before and after applying this tip:
If you're scoring at home, that's a 47% reduction in the time required for just five cycles of a Save sheet.
To get snappier sheets on your own Mac, open Terminal, paste the following line, and press Return:
If you find this sheet speed too fast, you can experiment with values other than .001…and if you're the cruel sort and have access to a good friend's Mac, try setting it to 10 or 20.
If you're using TinkerTool, go to the General tab, and click the 'Accelerate animation when rolling out sheets' option; you can't set the actual speed, just on or off:
This change will take effect in any app you launch after you make the change; quit and relaunch already-open apps and they'll gain the speedy sheets.
To reverse this change in Terminal, paste this and press Return:
Again, you'll have to quit/relaunch each app to have it revert to the slow sheet speed.
Over the last few years, Apple has gotten better about useless Finder animations. It used to be that opening a new Finder window would zoom it into existence, for instance. Now, thankfully, these windows basically appear.
But there are still areas where little animations pop-up, such as when opening a Get Info window, and expanding and collapsing sections within the Get Info window:
Notice how the window grows into existence, and the General section slides down and up when revealed and hidden. This second tip will squash both those animations—the time savings aren't tremendous, but removing these animations helps with the perception of speed, too.
Here's a before-and-after example showing the Get Info window opening, the General section expanding and collapsing, and then the Get Info window closing.
This is a very quick video (watch it a few times to catch the differences), and there's not a lot of time savings in the 'after' method. But I personally like the snappiness of the window after the modification; it perceptually feels faster.
To speed your Get Info windows, paste the following two lines in Terminal, pressing Return after each:
In TinkerTool, go to the Finder tab, and uncheck both of the entries in the Animation Effects section, then click the Relaunch Finder button:
To reverse this change in Terminal, paste these two lines, pressing Return after each:
Tinkertool System 6 85 Equals Many
Note that this hint may affect other Finder animations, though I'm not sure what those may be.
Like the second tip, this one isn't as much an actual timesaver as it is a perceptual timesaver…and many of you may not like it, but I do, having gotten used to its behavior years ago.
If you keep your Dock hidden, there are two things that slow down access to the Dock. The first is a brief delay when you move your mouse to the bottom (or edge) of the screen where the Dock is located.
This delay prevents accidental Dock activations, especially when working with nearly-screen-filling windows. But it can be annoying when you know you need the Dock and have to wait just that half-tick for it to start appearing.
And that's the second Dock animation that slows things down: The Dock animates out of (and back into) its hiding location. I assume this is to remind you where you've hidden your Dock, but really, have you ever forgotten where you put the Dock?
With two Terminal (or TinkerTool) commands, you can get rid of the delay and the animation, making the Dock incredibly snappy. As an example, I ran a test sequence with the Dock before and after applying these hints.
The test is pretty simple: Show the Dock (Command-Option-D), wait one second, hide the Dock until it's completely hidden, mouse down into the Dock area until the Dock is fully showing, wait one second, then mouse out of the Dock until it vanishes.
As you'll see, the post-tip results are both actually faster, and perceptually very much faster.
You don't need to implement both the 'no Dock delay' and 'no Dock animation' tips—if you're on a laptop, you may prefer to keep the Dock delay, as you're more likely to be working in a window near the bottom of the screen.
If you'd like to try it, here are the Terminal commands. Paste each one at a time, pressing Return after each. The first one eliminates the delay when dragging into the Dock, the second gets rid of the show/hide Dock animation. The last command restarts the Dock, so that the commands
TinkerTool users will find these two options on the Dock tab; check both, or whichever combination of the two you prefer, then click the Relanch Dock button.
To reverse these changes in Terminal, paste these three lines, pressing Return after each (assuming you implemented both of them):
The last word…
While none of these changes will make a slow Mac feel like a brand-new machine, they can help the actual and apparent speed of your interaction with the OS…and that can make working on any Mac—old or new—more enjoyable and productive.
Related Posts:
Over my many years of running Mac OS X Hints, a huge number of defaults write hints were published.
For those who aren't aware, defaults write is a Terminal command that can be used to modify applications' settings. While you can use these commands to modify settings that are present in an app's Preferences panel, the more-common use of this command is to set non-visible (hidden) prefs that you won't find in the GUI.
Here are three of my favorites—three that not only perceptually but actually increase the speed of your interactions with your Mac. I still, to this day, execute these commands on any new Mac I set up.
Don't worry if you'd prefer to stay away from Terminal: I'll also show how to use the long-livedTinkerTool to set each of these options using a (relatively easy if crowded) GUI interface.
Sheets are the attached windows that roll down from (and up into) the title bar of windows, such as the Save dialog in most macOS applications. The animation of these sheets, while visually appealing, does take some time.
Using this tip, you can basically eliminate the animation, greatly speeding the appearance and disappearance of sheets. Given how pervasive sheets are, this tip can save a lot of time each day. While the other tips offer actual speed improvements, they're nothing like the change you get by changing the sheet animation speed.
As a test, I opened and closed a Save sheet in TextEdit five times, both before and after applying this tip:
If you're scoring at home, that's a 47% reduction in the time required for just five cycles of a Save sheet.
To get snappier sheets on your own Mac, open Terminal, paste the following line, and press Return:
If you find this sheet speed too fast, you can experiment with values other than .001…and if you're the cruel sort and have access to a good friend's Mac, try setting it to 10 or 20.
If you're using TinkerTool, go to the General tab, and click the 'Accelerate animation when rolling out sheets' option; you can't set the actual speed, just on or off:
This change will take effect in any app you launch after you make the change; quit and relaunch already-open apps and they'll gain the speedy sheets.
To reverse this change in Terminal, paste this and press Return:
Again, you'll have to quit/relaunch each app to have it revert to the slow sheet speed.
Over the last few years, Apple has gotten better about useless Finder animations. It used to be that opening a new Finder window would zoom it into existence, for instance. Now, thankfully, these windows basically appear.
But there are still areas where little animations pop-up, such as when opening a Get Info window, and expanding and collapsing sections within the Get Info window:
Notice how the window grows into existence, and the General section slides down and up when revealed and hidden. This second tip will squash both those animations—the time savings aren't tremendous, but removing these animations helps with the perception of speed, too.
Here's a before-and-after example showing the Get Info window opening, the General section expanding and collapsing, and then the Get Info window closing.
This is a very quick video (watch it a few times to catch the differences), and there's not a lot of time savings in the 'after' method. But I personally like the snappiness of the window after the modification; it perceptually feels faster.
To speed your Get Info windows, paste the following two lines in Terminal, pressing Return after each:
In TinkerTool, go to the Finder tab, and uncheck both of the entries in the Animation Effects section, then click the Relaunch Finder button:
To reverse this change in Terminal, paste these two lines, pressing Return after each:
Note that this hint may affect other Finder animations, though I'm not sure what those may be.
Tinkertool System 6 85 Equals Inches
Like the second tip, this one isn't as much an actual timesaver as it is a perceptual timesaver…and many of you may not like it, but I do, having gotten used to its behavior years ago.
If you keep your Dock hidden, there are two things that slow down access to the Dock. The first is a brief delay when you move your mouse to the bottom (or edge) of the screen where the Dock is located.
This delay prevents accidental Dock activations, especially when working with nearly-screen-filling windows. But it can be annoying when you know you need the Dock and have to wait just that half-tick for it to start appearing.
And that's the second Dock animation that slows things down: The Dock animates out of (and back into) its hiding location. I assume this is to remind you where you've hidden your Dock, but really, have you ever forgotten where you put the Dock?
Tinkertool System 6
With two Terminal (or TinkerTool) commands, you can get rid of the delay and the animation, making the Dock incredibly snappy. As an example, I ran a test sequence with the Dock before and after applying these hints.
The test is pretty simple: Show the Dock (Command-Option-D), wait one second, hide the Dock until it's completely hidden, mouse down into the Dock area until the Dock is fully showing, wait one second, then mouse out of the Dock until it vanishes.
As you'll see, the post-tip results are both actually faster, and perceptually very much faster.
You don't need to implement both the 'no Dock delay' and 'no Dock animation' tips—if you're on a laptop, you may prefer to keep the Dock delay, as you're more likely to be working in a window near the bottom of the screen.
Tinkertool System 6 85 Equals Ounces
If you'd like to try it, here are the Terminal commands. Paste each one at a time, pressing Return after each. The first one eliminates the delay when dragging into the Dock, the second gets rid of the show/hide Dock animation. The last command restarts the Dock, so that the commands
TinkerTool users will find these two options on the Dock tab; check both, or whichever combination of the two you prefer, then click the Relanch Dock button.
Tinkertool System 5
To reverse these changes in Terminal, paste these three lines, pressing Return after each (assuming you implemented both of them):
The last word…
While none of these changes will make a slow Mac feel like a brand-new machine, they can help the actual and apparent speed of your interaction with the OS…and that can make working on any Mac—old or new—more enjoyable and productive.