notifications
I like Notification Center, but banners linger a bit too long before auto-dismissing.
I'm aware of the popular two-finger swipe trick to immediately dismiss a banner, but I'm looking for an automated approach. Growl, for example, let you customize how long notifications stayed on the screen, but I don't see a similar option in the Notifications preference pane.
Is it possible to adjust this, like perhaps through a hidden preference?
I have just disabled checking for updates automatically from System Preferences:
I install updates manually from App Store or with sudo softwareupdate -ia.
I tried adding this command to the root's crontab (and not restarting after updates):
0 14 * * * /usr/sbin/softwareupdate -ia
I didn't have any issues at first, but after the 10.8.3 update, Safari started crashing on launch until I restarted. After that I changed -ia to -da so the command just downloads updates. softwareupdate does not include updates for App Store applications though.
3rd party widget development is not currently supported by the standard iOS SDK (as of iOS 6). You can not find any other apps to show a widget similar in use to weather and stocks in the notification center.
You could jailbreak the device to run custom widgets, however. The jailbreak community has created many widgets.
Best Answer
Although I never usually have any luck finding them, I used MacWorld's guide, "How to find hidden preference settings", and I was able to find the hidden preference:
Type the above into Terminal, replacing
<seconds>with the number of seconds you want the banner to last for, and press return. Then, log out and log back in to reload Notification Center.