Can you change Aqua's "theme"?

[Titanium Man]

Hi all, just wanted to know if there's a way to change the way the windows and things look in OS X? The Unix world seems to be pretty themable, is OS X at all like that? I'd love to change the buttons and windows if possible. TIA!

[Craig R. Arko]

Do you mean as in this thread (http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1017)? :D

[Titanium Man]

DOH!!! Talk about a case of RTFM! Sorry :D I didn't see any themes where you could change the buttons and slider bars, but now that I know there are OS X themes out there, I'll start looking. Thanks!

[Craig R. Arko]

The other thing is that there is a new theme editor out called ThemePark, which has advanced considerably from where Sprocket d5 left off. Search for it over at VersionTracker.

[smeger]

And feel free to ask for tips or give feedback on ThemePark :D

[sao]

Timan,

Also check this thread:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1014


Cheers...

[Titanium Man]

Wow, there certainly is a lot out there! Thanks to all who posted above. Here's my dilema though. I've downloaded a few themes I'd like to try, but apparently you need some sort of program to "install" them (ie Duality). Now, I'm a little leery of something that says "this might screw up your machine and the only fix is to initialize the hard drive and reinstall" so considering the themes I was looking at trying have only 2 files, could anyone just tell me where the files go? I'd like to go in there myself in the terminal, backup the files that would be replaced, them move the theme files in by hand. That way if I DO have a problem, I can boot to single user mode, rm the new theme files, and I'm good to go. Right? Maybe I'm being naive here. Actually last night, I tried to do just that and DID have to boot to single user mode to fix the mess I'd made. But at least that's an option when I know which files were modified. So, anyone have any insight about which Extras.rsrc and Info.plist files are typically replaced by the theme files of the same name? Thanks.

TiMan

[Titanium Man]

Definitely a case of READ YOUR EMAIL BEFORE POSTING. I just saw that John Tewksbury, creator of such cool themes as Titanium and TitaniumTew had replied to the email I sent. If anyone else was wondering, the Extras.rsrc file from the theme goes here (after backing up the Extras.rsrc file already there of course):

/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Extras.rsrc

[smeger]

I'm in the same boat as you. I won't use programs like Duality because many of the themes patch stuff all over the operating system and I want to be able to uninstall the theme reliably. So, I always just replace Extras.rsrc and I don't worry about the other stuff.

[sao]

smeger,

Did you make any new themes ?


Cheers...

[smeger]

No, I've never made any for Mac OS X. Which is kinda lame of me:) But when I get free time, coding always seems to win out over theming.