by , 7:30 AM EST, January 24th, 2007

There are some useful tools available for tracking what's happening on your Mac, but sometimes the old-school command line offers you exactly what you want to know in that special way that Unix pros just love. Enter GeekTool.

GeekTool is a cool Preference Pane that lets you display your console log, system log, or anything else that you can jump to the command line in Terminal for. But it goes one better by letting you display the information on your Desktop or as floating windows above other applications.

GeekTool displays log files and other info on your Desktop.

I'm monitoring my console and system logs in two different windows, each with their own color coding so it's easy for me to tell them apart. When I want to take a quick look at the logs, I use the Exposé F11 command to clear my Desktop.

System and console logs on my Desktop.

You can also use GeekTool show Unix command output, display images from your hard drive or from the Internet, and more. And like so many of the magically useful gems for the Mac, GeekTool is free. You can download it at the Tynsoe projects Web site.