Customize OS X with Cocktail

There are several tweaks that you may want to make to OS X that are not available in System Preferences. Windows XP users may remember called TweakUI, a downloadable utility for changing different system attributes. There are a few freeware and shareware Applications that perform the same kind of actions in OS X.

Cocktail is perhaps the best Application I have found that will tweak certain aspects of OS X. This program is shareware. The Cocktail website explains the user agreement, “When unregistered, Cocktail (Leopard Edition) and Cocktail (Tiger Edition) runs in demo mode and will expire after the tenth launch. Cocktail (Panther Edition) is distributed as freeware and does not require a license.” I usually only use this Application once after installing OS X. But the $14.95 single user, $29.99 family license price tag isn’t bad, considering all the things you can manipulate with it. Without such an application, these tweaks require an extensive knowledge of Unix.

So what can Cocktail do?

• Toggle indexing and Spotlight searching for mounted drives
• Lock the Dock
• Expand the throughput of network connections
• Run periodic system maintenance
• Customize look and features of Finder, Mail, etc
• and much more…

I wouldn’t say Cocktail is essential, but it is a user friendly App for those who wish to tweak the look, feel, functionality, and behind the scenes operations of OS X. If all you are looking for are the maintenance functions of the program (repairing Permissions, cleaning the System Caches, and rebuilding indexes, then another free solution would be the application Maintenance.