I use Apple Remote Desktop or a KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switcher to administer several OS X servers and machines. When you’re working on machines in this way you can sometimes get confused on which machine you’re currently controlling. If you’re lucky you won’t do anything stupid, but there have been times when I’ve shutdown/restarted a server that I didn’t mean too!

I use Apple Remote Desktop or a KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switcher to administer several OS X servers and machines. When you’re working on machines in this way you can sometimes get confused on which machine you’re currently controlling. If you’re lucky you won’t do anything stupid, but there have been times when I’ve shutdown/restarted a server that I didn’t mean too!

Over Christmas break I wrote a little OS X widget call Show Name. All it does is show the name of the current machine. To start using it you just install the widget onto your Dashboard. Once there, it will show you the hostname of the machine you are currently using on the Dashboard.

Where things get interesting is when you drag it off of the Dashboard and put it on your Desktop. This way you can alway see what machine you’re on. To drag widgets off of the Dashboard, you need to turn on widget developer mode. On the Show Name widget, you can click the little “i” in the bottom right and check the box to turn it on. As soon as you click Done it will restart the Dock, so the Dashboard and the Dock will disappear for a second. To drag the Show Name widget (or any widget for that matter) out of the Dashboard and onto the Desktop, click on the widget and start dragging. Don’t let go of the button and close the Dashboard. The widget you are dragging will stay with your mouse pointer, and you can drop it anywhere on your Desktop. To put the widget back in the Dashboard, start dragging it, open the Dashboard, and stop dragging it. It will now re-attach itself to the Dashboard.