Before Mac OS X Leopard got released, if you'd told me Stacks—a convenient way to access Finder locations on the Dock—would be one of my favorite, most-used features, I would've said you were trapped in the reality distortion field. Turns out Stacks is super-useful, and highly configurable to boot. Let's take a look at some power tweaks and uses for Stacks.
Add drawer overlay icons. True Apple product devotees know that looks are everything. With a few good-looking icons cleverly dated, you can add drawer icons to your Stacks that make it easy to visually identify them. Here's how to add drawer overlays to your Stacks.
Add Recent Items With a little Terminal-fu, you can add a custom Stack of the most recent documents and applications you used. Here's the command you need to set it up original post):
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }' $ killall Dock
Show all the hard drives connected to your Mac. Add a stack of "Volumes"—that is, all the hard drives connected to your Mac, from FireWire drives to USB sticks to digital camera cards—by dragging and dropping the hidden /Volumes/ folder to your Dock. Tech tip site Cybernet describes how.
Open multiple folders with the Option key. If your extended Stack contains more than one folder, you can open them without retracting the Stack—just hold down the Option key to open each one in Finder. [via UsingMac]
Slow it down. Go all Steve Jobs and show off your Stacks action in slo-mo. Just hold down the Shift key and click on your Stack to see it open and close slowed down.
Customize your Stacks even further—just click and hold. The 10.5.2 Software Update brought with it an expanded menu of Stacks options. Click and hold your Stack to set whether to display it as a stack or a folder, and in what style.
For more fun with Leopard, see also our top 10 things you forgot your Mac can do, and more Leopard power tweaks.
