Do you love OS Xis Fast User Switching, but hate the amount of room it takes up in your menubar? Wincent Colaiuta, maker of the popular iTunes control app Synergy, has a solution with his WinSwitch 2.0 software. WinSwitch is a free piece of software that will change the long name in your menubar to a short name, just your first name, your initials, your user image, or a generic icon. You can also add the root user to the list, as well as run scripts or launch applications when switching to another user. From Wincent Colaiuta:
Version 2.0 is a major upgrade to the popular replacement for Appleis Fast User Switching menu, bringing several new "power user" features, such as the ability to auto-launch applications, scripts or documents when switching to or from other user accounts, and two new options for menu bar display style: "first name only" and "initials only", as well as numerous other enhancements and bug fixes.
WinSwitch implements Fast User Switching in Panther the way it should have been done from the start: providing the user with a range of choices about how and what should be displayed in the menu bar. Not only can users choose to display a space-saving icon or their own user picture, they can also use their short or long username, include the "root" user in the menu, and rapidly access the Accounts preference pane with a single click.
This is Fast User Switching done in a way thatis more "Apple" than Appleis own implementation, adding much-needed features and eliminating limitations and flaws in the Apple Fast User Switching menu. Just like the Apple version of the menu, WinSwitch works seamlessly in lab and network contexts. Version 1.5 is a maintenance release which among other things updates the included localizations.
WinSwitch is a complete rewrite of the open source FUSe Menu Extra. In turn, WinSwitch 2.0 is also a BSD-licensed open source application, and is available for free. WinSwitch 2.0 requires OS X 10.3, and is a 337KB download.