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Snow Leopard Theme For El Capitan (Ongoing Project)

Troy2000

Troy2000

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 21, 2009
201
77
Greetings.

Having lamented the design of Yosemite and El Capitan since their release, I have decided to take matters into my own hands and build a Snow Leopard theme for 10.11.

I am using ThemeEngine for this project and will periodically update this thread with my progress. I expect to have the theme completed within the next couple of weeks, however my lack of familiarity with ThemeEngine may introduce delays.

Current progress (image attached):
- Replaced traffic lights
- Located and tested window frame color changes (not accurate yet)
- Replaced dock background
- Located menu bar bitmaps
- Located and tested popup window frame color changes
- Located control highlight bitmaps

Screen Shot 2016-02-16 at 21.51.13.pngScreen Shot 2016-02-16 at 21.14.29.png
 
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Update:

- Window frame colors are now accurate
- Located and tested back/forward button bitmaps
- Located and tested popup window background color
- Replaced system icons
- Located Open dialog button and window frame bitmaps

Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 00.42.10.png

Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 00.45.42.png


Notes:

- VibrantLightAppearance.car appears to contain assets for the login screen and SystemAppearance.car will not be loaded in its absence. The default theme is instead loaded from an as yet unknown location.

- Toggling Increase contrast within the Accessibility preference pane loads another instance of the default theme with added contrast and no translucency. Modifying this elusive theme may be the key to selective dock transparency, which has been a problem thus far.
 
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I've thought about making a Snow Leopard theme in ThemeEngine, but the lack of Retina @2x assets in Snow Leopard put me off it, as well as the different scrollbar behavior in El Capitan (I've experimented with glossy Aqua-like scrollbars, and there is no special state for inactive window scrollbars anymore). I'm curious as to how you plan to solve these two problems.
 
redheeler said:
I've thought about making a Snow Leopard theme in ThemeEngine, but the lack of Retina @2x assets in Snow Leopard put me off it, as well as the different scrollbar behavior in El Capitan (I've experimented with glossy Aqua-like scrollbars, and there is no special state for inactive window scrollbars anymore). I'm curious as to how you plan to solve these two problems.
Click to expand...

I always run OS X with native UI scaling, so the lack of @2X assets hasn't been a concern for me. As for the scrollbar behaviour, that is a problem which I will have to deal with when I encounter it. I do not yet have a solution.

The most significant challenges thus far have been the Finder sidebar color and menu bar translucency. Neither of them appear to have corresponding assets in the SystemAppearance or Assets files.
 
Good stuff, I'm glad someone's putting in work for a complete, custom OS X theme.

You may recall Obsidian Menu Bar, which gave us a dark menu bar before Yosemite did.. Perhaps check it out to see just which files it modifies to get the menu bar to be dark. I took a look at said files a while ago, but I think I hit a dead-end... Maybe I just got too busy, I forget, but anyway check that out, maybe it'll solve the menu bar roadblock.
 
XtraFinder can do the Finder sidebar coloring and label coloring
cDock can theme the dock

I'm like 99.9% sure editing the scrollbars can't be done with images and would require code injection. Same goes for the menubar
 
w0lf said:
I'm like 99.9% sure editing the scrollbars can't be done with images and would require code injection.
Click to expand...
Well, it's a good thing you didn't say 100% ;)
Screen Shot 2016-02-20 at 11.03.04 PM.png
Custom traffic lights and scrollbars implemented using ThemeEngine. It gives El Capitan a bit more depth.
 
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Troy2000 said:
I was referring to the color of the actual sidebar panel, rather than the icons. In Snow Leopard, it is a light blue.
Click to expand...

Have you tried turning on “Reduce transparency”? The sidebar gets a blue tint if I am not mistaken.
 
KALLT said:
Have you tried turning on “Reduce transparency”? The sidebar gets a blue tint if I am not mistaken.
Click to expand...
My screenshots in the second post were captured with translucency disabled.
 
After updating to the most recent 10.11.4 beta, I found that SIP had been re-enabled and the original theme restored. It will likely be necessary to disable SIP and replace SystemAppearance.car following all OS X updates.
 
w0lf said:
XtraFinder can do the Finder sidebar coloring and label coloring
cDock can theme the dock

I'm like 99.9% sure editing the scrollbars can't be done with images and would require code injection. Same goes for the menubar
Click to expand...

If you could do for the menubar that you've done for the Dock then you'll be a even more popular man amongst us themers.

This has always been one of my issues when making themes; the look of the menubar. If we could inject a tileable or possibly whole width(preffered) image into the menubar then we would be golden.
[doublepost=1456466906][/doublepost]Also - good luck Troy2000. It's a journey making themes for El Capitan.
 
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allan.nyholm said:
If you could do for the menubar that you've done for the Dock then you'll be a even more popular man amongst us themers.

This has always been one of my issues when making themes; the look of the menubar. If we could inject a tileable or possibly whole width(preffered) image into the menubar then we would be golden.
[doublepost=1456466906][/doublepost]Also - good luck Troy2000. It's a journey making themes for El Capitan.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it's possible. Flavours does it. I just don't know what process draws the menubar background.

Also it is possible to run Flavours on El Capitan.
 
It really looks nice! But i've read that you cannot use Themeengine 2 to theme El Cap, atleast the creators of this program said this.

I just heard something about rootles - so is there a way to do it still? Would love to check yours out and maybe give it a try myself aswell.

Someone maybe give me some short hints how i'd be able to and how i should start?
 
helloworldmac123 said:
It really looks nice! But i've read that you cannot use Themeengine 2 to theme El Cap, atleast the creators of this program said this.

I just heard something about rootles - so is there a way to do it still? Would love to check yours out and maybe give it a try myself aswell.

Someone maybe give me some short hints how i'd be able to and how i should start?
Click to expand...
ThemeEngine does support El Capitan, however you will need to disable System Integrity Protection (formally Rootless). In order to do this, you will need to boot into your recovery partition (hold "CMD+R" at boot), open a terminal and execute the command "csrutil disable".
 
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This is so sad. "make OS X great again".

It's like they say. Remember those that were against dropping Diskette? CD drives? Now they are the same people theming the OS back to the bronze age, to "make it great again". Oh well. Enjoy.
 
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So where could one find this theme? Or is it still in development? Would love to give it a try.
 
Troy2000 said:
Greetings.

Having lamented the design of Yosemite and El Capitan since their release, I have decided to take matters into my own hands and build a Snow Leopard theme for 10.11.

I am using ThemeEngine for this project and will periodically update this thread with my progress. I expect to have the theme completed within the next couple of weeks, however my lack of familiarity with ThemeEngine may introduce delays.

Current progress (image attached):
- Replaced traffic lights
- Located and tested window frame color changes (not accurate yet)
- Replaced dock background
- Located menu bar bitmaps
- Located and tested popup window frame color changes
- Located control highlight bitmaps

View attachment 616796View attachment 616794
Click to expand...

Do you have any instructions anywhere telling how to do this? If I could get El Capitan to look decent I might be inclined to use it more often.
 
Troy2000 said:
My apologies for the lack of updates; I haven't had a great deal of spare time to continue work on it recently. I will post the work-in-progress files for people to play with later today.
Click to expand...

Looking forward to it!
 
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