[New and Improved] Aqua Window Controls for MacOS (High) Sierra & OS X El Capitan

[Jonathan Leclerc]

I personally think that 10.4 was the best version of Aqua overall (although 10.2 was the best of the original design). I do find that 10.5 brought a few welcome improvements, most notably uniformity and the 3D dock, but I still prefer the 10.4 look overall. I could live with 10.6-10.9 era sort-of-Aqua, but the flat monstrosity of this currentera is unbearable to me.

I’m happy to say that I now use the excellent Aqua Window Controls for MacOS High Sierra v4. I further use XtraFinder to get back the classic labels in the Finder (how could I ever survive without them!) and the colour icons in the sidebar (when has Apple become so grey and dull?). I use AquaBlend Smooth Blue icons with LiteIcon to bring back the perspective folder icons (the ‘modern’ hideously flat version gives me gloom!). I also keep the old icon of iTunes around as I find the current one to be too brash and bold (I also prefer the ‘old’ Finder icon, but I find that its colour pallet clashes too much with the current stuff to use it). I use cDock to bring back a 10.6-ish look to my dock (can’t quite achieve the 10.5 look). And, although not an essential item, I use Displaperture to bring back the round corners on the menu bar. And thank goodness my Mac still has its startup chime! (how could they ever trash that ubiquitous part of the Mac experience?).

All in all, these simple modifications makes my beloved Mac much more palatable on the eyes. But I still twitch every time I see the non-glossy and dull blue buttons, and I turn melancholic when I see a progress bar show up without the gorgeous blue barbershop Aqua look… Ah, well.

What do you guys use? What are your pet peeves?

 

[NordicBoots]

Please, share a screenshot!
I will do so today with a list of what I am using.

 

[NordicBoots]

As promised!
I'm using: GeekTool, XtraFinder, Itsycal, CandyBar, cDock, LiteIcon, Dark Boot, ThemeEngine, Menu Bar Tint and MardWatch.
With a 'Little' Help from My Friends like: alan.nyholm, Princess Cake, cc333, StellarVixen, redheeler, bschnmidt43, jimmyco2008, Kornelis, organicCPU and many many others.

 

[Dayo]

As promised!

Cool, but unfortunately, the overall effect seems a bit too far away from a clean Mac design interface.
Looks more like something one would expect to find on a Hackintosh.

Kudos for the effort though!

 

[NordicBoots]

Fair enough, but I like to keep it dark because of an eye-problem.

 

[Jonathan Leclerc]

Hey, thanks for sharing your desktop, it looks cool!

Sorry it took me some time, but here is a screenshot of my own desktop. As you can see, my tastes are kind of different as I like a clean Aqua-esque look — but hey, to each their own and what makes everyone happy!

One further modification that I’m considering is bringing back the blue Apple logo. Otherwise, I’m dreaming of finding a Spotlight implementation à la 10.4-10.5 style (in particular the menu bar attached spotlight interface which I much preferred to the current implementation. And probably above all, finding a way to bring back the traditional Aqua UI elements and in particular the barbershop Aqua progress bar and glass-like buttons (maybe @redheeler will make this dream happen? I hope!).

Otherwise, I’m happy to give further info if people are curious about one thing or another in the screenshots (even though they are quite simple, I guess).

Take care

 

[asdfnose123]

I just patched a 2011 MacBook Pro into MacOS Catalina.

 

[Jonathan Leclerc]

I just patched a 2011 MacBook Pro into MacOS Catalina.

That's cool. How's the stability so far? Care to share your method: did you just edit the plist files on the install or did you follow a more exhaustive approach?

P.S. As for myself, my dGPU fried itself in the infamous way they tend to do some time ago and I had to disable it with the undocumented NVRAM boot parameter and driver bodging; updating macOS is now out of the question for my own 2011 MBP as I wouldn't want to risk it. Though on the plus side, I guess High Sierra makes it easier to customize the interface (so, yay?). But do share your own experience.

 

[asdfnose123]

That's cool. How's the stability so far? Care to share your method: did you just edit the plist files on the install or did you follow a more exhaustive approach?

P.S. As for myself, my dGPU fried itself in the infamous way they tend to do some time ago and I had to disable it with the undocumented NVRAM boot parameter and driver bodging; updating macOS is now out of the question for my own 2011 MBP as I wouldn't want to risk it. Though on the plus side, I guess High Sierra makes it easier to customize the interface (so, yay?). But do share your own experience.

BTW, my Mac doesn't run on macOS Utilities. I can't disable SIP until... I use Clover Configurator.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Looks more like something one would expect to find on a Hackintosh.

Just fwiw, Hackintosh computers look identical to Mac computers (interface-wise), because they are literally running the same OS. You're probably thinking of those Mac skins for Windows/Linux, which I agree sadly never look quite right.

 

[Jamie Does Stuff]

So, is this project dead? All of the buttons look gorgeous and i'm soon gonna update to Catalina.

 

[mbert]

So, is this project dead? All of the buttons look gorgeous and i'm soon gonna update to Catalina.

As far as only the traffic lights are concerned, this is a bit of manual work but not complicated. All you need is ThemeEngine (download link here: https://github.com/alexzielenski/ThemeEngine/issues/50#issuecomment-610226160) and existing .car files that already have the images you want (e.g. the stuff Allan made: https://www.deviantart.com/allannyholm). I usually open up both, the new .car from Catalina and the old .car file with the graphics I want, in separate ThemeEngine windows and drag/drop them to where I need them (it's important to keep an eye on their respective classifications and size as displayed under each element in ThemeEngine).

That's how I "roll my own" .car files for new MacOS releases. I can send you an email with a download link to the files I created for Catalina. The only change they contain is the traffic lights, but the shiny, not the milky version, and I left all the rest as it was (I'm not really deep in theming, and that was the minimum I felt I needed).

 

[brainkilla]

So, is this project dead? All of the buttons look gorgeous and i'm soon gonna update to Catalina.

I've been wondering about that for quite a while now . It would also be a great fit for the Big Sur's neumorphic design language.

 

[StellarVixen]

Hey, thanks for sharing your desktop, it looks cool!

Sorry it took me some time, but here is a screenshot of my own desktop. As you can see, my tastes are kind of different as I like a clean Aqua-esque look — but hey, to each their own and what makes everyone happy!

One further modification that I’m considering is bringing back the blue Apple logo. Otherwise, I’m dreaming of finding a Spotlight implementation à la 10.4-10.5 style (in particular the menu bar attached spotlight interface which I much preferred to the current implementation. And probably above all, finding a way to bring back the traditional Aqua UI elements and in particular the barbershop Aqua progress bar and glass-like buttons (maybe @redheeler will make this dream happen? I hope!).

Otherwise, I’m happy to give further info if people are curious about one thing or another in the screenshots (even though they are quite simple, I guess).

Take care

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View attachment 907274

It will be one eternity until Cdock dev gets his reflections right.

 

[mbert]

Now as Big Sur will be out this week I wonder whether it still leaves a door open for theming (i.e. replacing some .car files)? Reading about "Signed System Volume" kind of alarms me. Would replacing system files not invalidate such a signature?

 

[Lemon101]

Hey, thanks for sharing your desktop, it looks cool!

Sorry it took me some time, but here is a screenshot of my own desktop. As you can see, my tastes are kind of different as I like a clean Aqua-esque look — but hey, to each their own and what makes everyone happy!

One further modification that I’m considering is bringing back the blue Apple logo. Otherwise, I’m dreaming of finding a Spotlight implementation à la 10.4-10.5 style (in particular the menu bar attached spotlight interface which I much preferred to the current implementation. And probably above all, finding a way to bring back the traditional Aqua UI elements and in particular the barbershop Aqua progress bar and glass-like buttons (maybe @redheeler will make this dream happen? I hope!).

Otherwise, I’m happy to give further info if people are curious about one thing or another in the screenshots (even though they are quite simple, I guess).

Take care

View attachment 907273
View attachment 907274

Hey how do you change the Side bar images? in pic 2.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Hey how do you change the Side bar images? in pic 2.

I'm not OP, but that looks like https://github.com/w0lfschild/colorfulSidebar

 

[Jonathan Leclerc]

Hey how do you change the Side bar images? in pic 2.

Hi, sorry it took me so long to see your post. For the color icons in the sidebar, I use a combination of xtrafinder ($4.99, link below) to enable the color, and icons from an Aqua style icons pack (I can't remember the name sadly, but it's similar to 10.4 era icons). In particular, I can't stand the flat look for folders, and I'll have 3D aqua folders forever!

Xtrafinder has many other features too, but the only other one I truly use is "old style" color labels instead of the modern useless tags. The link is: https://www.trankynam.com/xtrafinder/

Hope that helps.

 

[Jonathan Leclerc]

Hey how do you change the Side bar images? in pic 2.

Me again, I just realized that I had written in a previous post all the information needed (including the name of the icons pack). Just look for post #101 above on this thread. Cheers.

 

[NordicBoots]

Additionally, you can modify the sidebar icons with the help of this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/3t7dg1 Cheers!

 

[Jonathan Leclerc]

I recently had to change my trusted MacBook Pro (as it finally went beyond repair), which meant I had to go from macOS 10.13 to 10.15 Catalina. I used to love my Aqua window controls under 10.13 with the help of redheeler’s “Aqua Window Controls for MacOS High Sierra v4.” However, I can’t seem to find a working version of ThemeEngine to bring them with me on Catalina.

Anyone can point me in the right direction? Many thanks!

P.S.: For those curious, I will hold off of Big Sur for as long as Apple pursues their new Mac destroying interface—Centre-justified vertical dialogue boxes? No thank you.

 

[Jaws123DRevenge]

I recently had to change my trusted MacBook Pro (as it finally went beyond repair), which meant I had to go from macOS 10.13 to 10.15 Catalina. I used to love my Aqua window controls under 10.13 with the help of redheeler’s “Aqua Window Controls for MacOS High Sierra v4.” However, I can’t seem to find a working version of ThemeEngine to bring them with me on Catalina.

Anyone can point me in the right direction? Many thanks!

P.S.: For those curious, I will hold off of Big Sur for as long as Apple pursues their new Mac destroying interface—Centre-justified vertical dialogue boxes? No thank you.

https://github.com/jslegendre/ThemeEngine This worked for me. Whenever you get the Aqua interface working with Catalina can you send it to me. I'm also trying to get the old UI back on Catalina, I have no clue how to use Them Engine tho.

 

[Jonathan Leclerc]

https://github.com/jslegendre/ThemeEngine This worked for me. Whenever you get the Aqua interface working with Catalina can you send it to me. I'm also trying to get the old UI back on Catalina, I have no clue how to use Them Engine tho.

Hey, thanks for the link, it worked! And sorry it took me a while to answer, I was only able to take time to look into it today. And as requested, here’s a link to my SystemAppearance.car file with the Aqua window controls included. It is specifically from macOS Catalina 10.15.7. You can download it here: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=00919401430768763117

I trust you probably know how to change this file on your system, but as a friendly reminder:

1) First disable SIP by booting in Recovery Mode, opening Terminal and entering the command "csrutil disable" (you can re-enable it after completing the process with "csrutil enable").

2) Make a backup of your original SystemAppearance.car file located in /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/.

3) In Terminal, navigate to the above folder and remove the original file with "sudo rm SystemAppearance.car".

4) Copy the new file with "sudo cp — v /PathOfTheNewFile/SystemAppearance.car /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources". I find it helps to temporarily place the new file in your home directory so that the path is a simple one (e.g. /Users/John/SystemAppearance.car).

5) Set the proper ownership for the newly copied file with "sudo chown -R root SystemAppearance.car", and that’s it.

This should set you up with a nice collection of soul calming Aqua window controls — that is, until your eyes rest again on the other elements of the interface and inevitably trigger a bout of nostalgia for the Golden Days of Aqua…

Also, do note that this specific file will not change the window controls in Dark Mode (which is determined by DarkAppearance.car). I don’t use Dark Mode so I didn’t edit my file, but if you really want it, let me know and I’ll prepare a version for you.

Hope this helps. And thanks again!

 

[MrSLML]

Hi... This thread is al little confusing... I've set up an new (old) MacMini with Mojave. And I would like to replace the traffic light window buttons to those from Mavericks. I'm a little familiar with that topic but not up to date. I already did it on Sierra on my MBP a few years ago. But I don't know where I can get the .car files for Mojave including Dark Mode versions?

Or can I edit the car files by myself? I already installed ThemeEngine and I think I would figure out again how it works. But which file(s) I have to edit? And where can I get the buttons for the dark mode?

Thanks for the help...!

 

[NordicBoots]

@redheeler:
Are you still working on these kind of mods?