Override System Preference Pane?

Question

Is there a way to override / disable a system preference pane? I'm wanting to put an application together that would disable or override the Energy Saver preference pane, and would put it's own rules in place for putting a machine into standby, turning off the monitor, or other various energy saving activities.

Answer 1

There isn't any supported way to do this. You could replace the existing prefpane (/System/Library/PreferencePanes/EnergySaver.prefPane) with one that has similar functionality but that would be pretty hostile to the user. I'd recommend implementing a new pane with the functionality you want.

Answer 2

There's certainly no supported way to modify the built-in PrefPanes in Mac OS X.

If you want to mess with Power Management, do some research on the pmset command line utility (i.e. man pmset). You could write a wrapper around pmset using NSTask that would allow you to manipulate the PM settings in ways that the standard PrefPane doesn't allow. You could then use your own custom PrefPane to manipulate the PM settings using pmset.