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tompaulman

macrumors member
Original poster
May 16, 2021
35
53
I’ve been trying to make Mojave look like Snow Leopard, but one thing I couldn’t find was a theme for System Preferences. So I made my own. It’s my first theming project and I decided to share it, even though I don’t think anyone will care about it, since Mojave has been out of support for a year.

Here is a comparison of original System Preferences in Mojave, and the Snow Leopard theme.
SnowLeopardTheme.png

And, for a reference, the original OS X Snow Leopard System Preferences.
Screen shot 2021-12-04 at 22.17.59.png

I had to overcome few obstacles to create the theme. Mostly the fact that the Snow Leopard icons are 32x32, but Mojave icons are 40x40. In most cases, I found a larger version of the Snow Leopard icon that I could resize to 40x40, but some of them look a bit different.
I also realized that some preference panes did not exist in Snow Leopard, such as Notifications, Internet Accounts and Extensions. I kept Extensions the way it was, and used icons from Lion and Mountain Lion for the other two.

To change the icons:
  1. Download the icon pack and unzip the file.
  2. (If you run Mojave via dosdude1’s patcher, skip this step). Disable SIP and restart.
  3. Go to Startup Disk > System > Library > PreferencePanes
  4. Back-up the folder contents. Make a copy of the whole folder and save it somewhere else on your disk. You will need it if you decide to restore the original icons.
  5. Replace the PreferencePanes folder with the downloaded one.
  6. (If you run Mojave via dosdude1’s patcher, skip this step). Re-enable SIP and restart.
  7. Open System Preferences. You’ll be greeted by Snow Leopard icons.
Notes:
  • The above will only change the icons, not your actual settings.
  • Tested only on two non-Retina Macs. If anyone tries it on Retina, let me know if all looks good.
 
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Reactions: Heindijs and Idgit
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