Jan 09
11
Make your own custom theme for Os X Leopard
Ever felt a bit tired of the same old Leopard desktop? Yesterday I started to fool around to see what possibilities Apple has left “open” to the users to change with out too much hastle. The result of this research is that it is not much, but a few tweeks to the dock and menubar made my desktop brand new and now with a “Gears Of War” theme. This is a summary of what I did.
Before we really start changing stuff, there are a few thing I’ve changed which determines which files to modify later on. So first start the System Preferences, and go to appearance, set the “Appearance” drop down to “Graphite”. This has to do with which files to modify for the menubar. (You can leave it at “Blue”, but then the files mentioned in this guide won’t apply to you.) I also changed the highlight color to a bright red. Then go to “Desktop/ScreenSaver” and remove the “Transluctent Menu Bar” option.
Remember that before you change anything mentioned here take backup of every single file as you move on! I don’t take any responsibility for messing up your Os X installation.
Changing the Dock
The Os X dock is probably the easiest thing to change. The Dock files are located in:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources
In finder you will have to right click on the Dock and choose “Show Packages Contents” to gain access to the Contents and Resources folders. Here you’ll find a lot of files, but there are just 5-10 files we are interested in. The reason I say 5-10 is that you don’t have modify all of them. It depends on the size you prefer for your dock. Here is a picture of my dock after the modifications were made.
As you can see by the picture I have made it a bit darker with a red line at the front, changed the finder icon and the indicators for running programs. The files I have modified are:
- indicator_large.png
- indicator_medium.png
(There are 3 more indicator icons one can change)
- scurve-l.png
- scurve-m.png
- scurve-sm.png
- scurve-xl.png
- finder.png
- frontline.png
The scurve-files are the main Dock files. I used preview and adjusted them to a darker color. I got the indicator icons from a GearsOfWar iPhone theme I found on Cydia. I allready had it on my phone, so I just copied it from there. The only thing that had to be changed was the size, so I used Preview for that on the indicators. I also used preview to change the frontline to a solid red color.
The finder icon was a bit more tricky. I used Seashore to modify the original, but that was not the tricky part. The tricky part was that even though I killed the Dock, logged out and in again, and even rebooted my Mac the icon didn’t change. I have lost my source for this tip, but it appears that Os X caches the icons on the dock, and you have to manualy delete this cachefile for the finder icon to change. Mine was located here private/var/folders/GZ/GZxuN05kGPmn41RJQMmyIE+++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.dock.iconcache, but this probably don’t apply to your installation. The easiest way to find it is to search for com.apple.dock.iconcache in spotlight by including System Files in your search. Delete this file and restart the Dock and your new finder icon will appear.
To restart the Dock and view your changes write this in the terminal:
killall Dock
The Menubar part 1
The files for the Dock were all out in the open. With the menubar this is a completely different story. The menubar files are located within a binary package and has to be extracted. The file is called SArtFile.bin and is located in
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources
To open SArtFile.bin you need a tool I found on the macthemes2.net forums, and can be downloaded from here.
The wiki at macthemes2.net also provide a list describing what each file in the SArtFile.bin are. This list can be found here.
Remember to backup SArtFile.bin before you move on.
Download and extract the artTools.zip from the link above. Copy your SArtFile.bin to your new artTools directory. Now open the terminal a change to the artTools directory where your SArtFile.bin is located together with artDecoder.jar and artEncoder.jar. This is vital, so double check it. To extract the file now write this in the terminal:
java -jar artDecoder.jar SArtFile.bin artfiles/
The artfiles directory now contains all the files needed to modify your menubar. I have changed the following: (If you left the “Appearance” to “Blue” change 89.png and 100.png instead of 90.png and 101.png.)
- 61.png – Apple Menu Icon
- 62.png – Apple Menu Icon Selected
- 90.png – Menubar Selected Graphite
- 101.png – Menu Highlight Graphite
- 102.png – Menubar Background
When you are done editing you have to make a new SArtfile.bin. Write this in the terminal (still located in your artTools directory!!)
java -jar artEncoder.jar artfiles/ SArtFile.bin SArtFilenew.bin
Now rename SArtFilenew.bin to SArtFile.bin. (It’s a good idea to move it to a different directory first so that you don’t overwrite your original located in artTools. Makes it easier if you don’t get it exactly the way you want it the first time.) Now in Finder go to
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources
Delete the original SArtFile.bin (don’t do copy/replace), and then copy your modified one in place. Enter your password when prompted. Log out and in again, and your new menubar should appear.
The Menubar part 2 – font color
To change the color of the menubar font you need to modify the Extras2.rsrc (for Intel) or Extras.rsrc (for PPC) located in
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ HIToolbox.framework/Versions
I used ThemePark for this, download it from here.
Remember backup!!
Start ThemePark and open you Extras2.rsrc file. Select clr# and click on 384. You will see a lot of square colored boxes. Counting from left to right, starting at the top macthemes2.net wiki has yet again supplied us with a list of explanations. You can find the list here together with some more info on the Extras-files.
Here is my modifed Extras2.rsrc in open in ThemePark.
When you are done changing colors. Save the file. Delete the original (You have backup, right!), and copy your modified file in place. Enter your password when prompted. Log out and in again to view your changes.
Thats it! Happy themeing 
To complete my GOW theme I have modified the DarkChat messagestyle for Adium, and downloaded some icons from the SeeingRed icon package at interfacelift.com. I use the RedShift v3 theme for Firefox. To finish off I converted the finder.png icon I made for the Dock to an Apple Icon File (icns), and replaced the original Finder.icns in the Finder.app (/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/). This replaces the default icon in Finder, and e.g makes emptying the trash look like this:
Here is my complete GOW desktop:
