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The proper way to change the menubar transparency!


VL-Tone
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I can't believe you guys haven't found this already...

 

The transparent menubar in Leopard is simply a 20x22 PNG file with an alpha channel...

 

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Images/menubar2.png

 

So not only you can change its transparency, but also its look, just use a suitable image editor.

 

There's also a menubar.png file in the same directory, which seems darker than menubar2.png, but it doesn't seem to be used.

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Damnit, Diabolik, someone beat us to releasing it :)

 

The problem is, sometimes it doesn't work, and you have to edit the XML menubar files (which is a long and tedious task).

 

Right now, my "menubar2" is a basic deep black, however the menubar was not affected in any way.

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Damnit, Diabolik, someone beat us to releasing it :)

 

The problem is, sometimes it doesn't work, and you have to edit the XML menubar files (which is a long and tedious task).

 

Right now, my "menubar2" is a basic deep black, however the menubar was not affected in any way.

 

Even after a reboot?

 

Weird, I assumed it would work on all machines... I'm on a G4 Mac mini. Maybe it's different on intel macs? Have you tried changing menubar.png?

 

Other files that you might want to try to edit are in the /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/LeopardUI.bundle/Contents/Resources/ folder.

 

mbgradient.png

menuselectionaqua1.png

menubar3.png

mbselection2.png

mbrgradient.png

menubrgradient.png

menuselectionaqua.png

menubrtab.png

 

There's also a lot of very interesting high-res images that you can find in the same folder, like big shiny aqua spheres, enabling you to easily re-color Aqua buttons, or even texture them! The thing is, changing stuff in the LeopardUI.bundle folder seems to only affect the UI if you're in resolution-independent mode, that is with the scaling factor set to something else than 1x, otherwise, the UI seems to still mainly rely on the good old Extras.rsrc file.

 

Soundless: What you can do is duplicate the menubar2.png file somewhere else, modify it, then drag it back to the /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Images/ folder. The Finder will ask you to authenticate, so you can replace the file. (I recommend making a backup of menubar2.png though)

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Even after a reboot?

 

Weird, I assumed it would work on all machines... I'm on a G4 Mac mini. Maybe it's different on intel macs? Have you tried changing menubar.png?

 

Other files that you might want to try to edit are in the /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/LeopardUI.bundle/Contents/Resources/ folder.

 

mbgradient.png

menuselectionaqua1.png

menubar3.png

mbselection2.png

mbrgradient.png

menubrgradient.png

menuselectionaqua.png

menubrtab.png

 

There's also a lot of very interesting high-res images that you can find in the same folder, like big shiny aqua spheres, enabling you to easily re-color Aqua buttons, or even texture them! The thing is, changing stuff in the LeopardUI.bundle folder seems to only affect the UI if you're in resolution-independent mode, that is with the scaling factor set to something else than 1x, otherwise, the UI seems to still mainly rely on the good old Extras.rsrc file.

 

Soundless: What you can do is duplicate the menubar2.png file somewhere else, modify it, then drag it back to the /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Images/ folder. The Finder will ask you to authenticate, so you can replace the file. (I recommend making a backup of menubar2.png though)

 

I've known this trick for quite a while (where the menubar images are) but I have yet to get it to work correctly.

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Every time I try to open the PNG, it comes up as nothing. Not white space, but a pic of nothing (in Photoshop CS3). Is this normal? The preview looked like it was something other than nothingness.....

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safe sleep writes the RAM to the hard disk-preserving your shutdown state (like hibernation in Windoze).

 

 

an hour later: I changed menubar to menubar2, but there was no change, even after a full reboot. Perhaps this is not the correct file? Maybe there is another location, because I don't think anyone has gotten this to work.

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  • 2 months later...
Even after a reboot?

 

Weird, I assumed it would work on all machines... I'm on a G4 Mac mini. Maybe it's different on intel macs? Have you tried changing menubar.png?

 

Other files that you might want to try to edit are in the /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/LeopardUI.bundle/Contents/Resources/ folder.

 

mbgradient.png

menuselectionaqua1.png

menubar3.png

mbselection2.png

mbrgradient.png

menubrgradient.png

menuselectionaqua.png

menubrtab.png

 

There's also a lot of very interesting high-res images that you can find in the same folder, like big shiny aqua spheres, enabling you to easily re-color Aqua buttons, or even texture them! The thing is, changing stuff in the LeopardUI.bundle folder seems to only affect the UI if you're in resolution-independent mode, that is with the scaling factor set to something else than 1x, otherwise, the UI seems to still mainly rely on the good old Extras.rsrc file.

 

Soundless: What you can do is duplicate the menubar2.png file somewhere else, modify it, then drag it back to the /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Images/ folder. The Finder will ask you to authenticate, so you can replace the file. (I recommend making a backup of menubar2.png though)

 

 

does this trick work? will it work in 559

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