A mini-HOWTO on how to create a custom view for a dmg bundle on Mac OS

As you may know, a folder view on Mac OS X can be customized to have a particular background (blank, color, or image), specific finder window size, text and icons with custom properties (size, font...), and other custom attributes.

All this information is stored in a .DS_Store file, which is located in a folder you are trying to view. More about these files you can find on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store .

If a dmg bundle contains this file, Finder will use this information to display the mounted dmg volume. It looks pretty cool/professional when a mounted dmg package looks "themed" and customized. There are various tools available that let you create custom dmg bundles, but you can easily do it yourself, and here we describe how.

1) Create a writable disk image using Apple's Disk Utility application:

  • Open Disk Utility.
  • Click New Image .
  • Give this image exactly the same name that the new package is going to have; note, that the disk image name should be the same.
  • Make sure the size is large enough to store all files included with the distribution; Encryption should be set no none and the Format must be set to read/write disk image , other settings can be left with their defaults.
  • Click on Create .
  • Navigate to the mounted image folder (the newly created disk image should have been mounted automatically) and copy all files there that you are planning to include with your distribution.

2) Create custom folder settings for your new bundle:

  • Create a .background folder in the new image folder and copy your background image there - you will have to use command line for this task since Finder may not let you create a system file (.* - a file that starts with a period).
  • Now open the image folder's view preferences (choose Show View Options ) and set specific settings you want for the distribution bundle folder, but first make sure This window only is checked and not All windows . You can set the font and icon size, set icons color labels, and, most important, the folder's background. You may not be able to see the .background folder, so hit Apple+Shift+G on your keyboard or choose Go to folder from the Go menu, enter the path to the image folder (i.e., /Volumes/PrefCount/.background ) and choose your background image. You can also close the navigation pane (the one on the left), resize the window, and position the icons the way you want them.

3) Configure Maven to use the new settings:

  • After you complete customizing your new bundle folder, unmount the disk image (OS X writes these changes to the .DS_Store file on a volume unmount event). Test that the changes you've made were indeed written to the .DS_Store file by mounting this disk image again and opening it.
  • Now you can copy the .DS_Store file to your resources and configure the assembly plugin to copy this file into the very top level of your distribution bundle. You are done.

4) Please be aware that:

  • If you do not rename this custom .DS_Store file and accidentally open the folder where it is stored in Finder, the custom configuration will get rewritten, so you can either:
    • set this file to be read-only (chmod 444 filename in command line); or
    • rename this file and make sure it will get again renamed back to .DS_Store during assembly's copy resources action.
  • If you change the name for the dmg volume (i.e. application moves to the next version), you will have to create a new .DS_Store file.