Customising Apple drop down menus?

[Adam P McCready]

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone had ever managed to customise the drop down menus in Apple apps. For instance if I select the option to "Move" a document in Pages the option to choose which destination is at the bottom of a long list of other destinations rather than the top which would be much more useful (I think). Presumably the order is designated in the apps code at some level and I wondered if it was editable/customisable using Interface Builder or some other similar utility.

I would be interested to know if anyone has tried this as the potential for speeding up workflow is considerable or does someone have a better idea?

Best regards,

Adam.

[benwiggy]

Altering specifics of the user interface is usually not achievable without a fair bit of modification to the application itself, or by installing software that runs at a low level in the background, altering key components of OS X.

Modifying the app itself may cause trouble with Apple's code signing security system -- the app may no longer have the correct signature because of the modification. I'm not sure whether this will simply cause an alert every time you open it, or whether it won't run at all.
Updates to the app will probably remove the modification.

Running "hack" software to alter the User Interface is likely to cause stability problems, particularly after system updates.

However, there are always options. Many commands can be given keyboard shortcuts to simplify their execution. There are already a number of keyboard shortcuts for accessing various folders on your computer and iCloud in dialogs like the Move To and open/save dialogs. (See the Go menu in the Finder.)
Once you've clicked on the drop-down menu, you can simply start typing the name of the folder, and it will be selected. You should only need a couple of letters to distinguish it from other names. You can just press "o" for Other....

Actually, I never noticed that command in Pages before, and was quite surprised by it. I wouldn't expect to move a file in Pages any more than I would expect to write a letter in the Finder.