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Secrets is a Leopard Preference Pane that allows it's users to modify settings in Leopard that before were only accessible from Terminal.app. This allows the "less savvy" population of computer users to customize their Leopard installations as a pro might.
It all starts with downloading and installing the Preference Pane from http://secrets.textdriven.com/. Just unzip the downloaded file and double click on the "Secrets.prefPane" file. Leopard knows that this is a Preference Pane and will copy it to the correct location. OS X is just awesome that way. 
It will then open the Preference Pane which looks like this:
As you can see from the screenshot, there are quite a few "Secrets" to choose from. The light blue (iTunes like pane) on the left side of the window shows all the programs that have "Secrets" to choose from. There are also two special items. "Top Secrets" shows the most popular secrets and "All Secrets" which will show all the secrets that can be chosen.
When you find an item you which to change, clicking on it will reveal a bit more information about the secret:
You can then click on the User Interface control that changes the secret. In the above example, that would be the checkbox. Depending on what the secret changes, you might be prompted to quit the application that will be effected. This appears at the bottom of the Preference Pane next to the "Revert" button.
A really nice touch to this Preference Pane is the "Update Secrets" button. Clicking this button will tell Secrets to go out to the server that holds the database of all the secrets and see if there is a need to update the database stored on your computer. It also checks to see if the Preference Pane needs to be updated as well. The "?" (Question Mark) button takes you to the Google Code page where the Secrets Project is being maintained. The "Revert" button will restore the secret setting back to it's default value and the "More Info ->" button takes you to the database entry were the selected secret is stored on the server's database.
I personally am not all afraid of using Terminal.app to make these kinds of changes. This can be a problem since I don't always remember that I have made them and then don't know how to set them back to their default value. The Secrets Preference Pane makes this a no-brainer.
If you like the idea of personalizing your installation of Leopard, hope over to their website and give it a try. Best of all, it's free.
Update (5/8/08): It looks like development on the Secrets Preference Pane has either stopped or really slowed down. I talk about it here along with a really good replacement program and a possible reason for the lack of development here: MacPilot: New Version Kills Secrets Preference Pane Utility
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