Several people have been asking for a slightly modified version of AutoStacks since we released the little utility this month, so I figured I'd revisit the tool today.

In its original incarnation, AutoStacks moved selected files to a new folder and created a new Leopard "Stack" by adding the folder to the right-hand side of the dock. This is the way I expected Apple's Stacks functionality to work out-of-the-box, but apparently, others have their own ideas as to how Stacks should act: In particular, many people seem to want their Stacks to contain aliases to existing files, rather than the files themselves.

Not to begrudge these people, I've made some changes to AutoStacks that should appease both camps: Starting with version 0.2, AutoStacks will now prompt the user upon first use as to which way they would like to have it behave from then on (move the files, or create aliases to them).

After the first use, it will assume you always want it to behave the same way, and it will refrain from asking again until you decide it's time for a change; On the off chance you change your mind, you can always double-click the AutoStacks application icon (i.e., launch it without dragging files to it), and it will be happy to ask you again.

Oh! And I almost forgot… Thanks to the the original creator of a nice set of overlay icons and information provided by these fine folks, I've also added an extra icon to each new AutoStack to help restore some order to your AutoStacked dock. Hope you enjoy the extra touch!

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Thanks to the great feedback I've received here, I released AutoStacks 0.2 on Nov. 21, 2007. The source code below is still that of version 0.1, but all download links in this article have been updated to the new version. The original 0.1 version can still be downloaded here.

Remember how cool you once thought OS X Leopard's new Stacks feature was going to be? And remember how disappointed you were when you discovered it didn't actually do what you thought it would: i.e., create a new stack any time you dragged a collection of unrelated files onto the dock?

For some reason, I was heartbroken when I discovered a Stack was nothing more than a spiffed-down image of an existing folder, and I was even more irritated when I discovered you couldn't just drag a bunch of files to make a new one. I couldn't do much about the look, but I could at least make something that acted as I wanted it to: A convenient dock icon that sits patiently waiting for a collection of files, and then magically turns them into a new stack.

It's a simple AppleScript application, and it seems to work. Unzip the application file, place it in your dock, then select a few files in your finder and drag them to the icon. It will ask you for a label (a default label is generated according to the current date and time), and then it will magically add the new Stack and (perhaps annoyingly) reload the Dock.

Tada!

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