So I figured I would document this somewhere, since it took a while to figure out:
SIMBL is a open-source program that lets you add plugins to other apps, to change how they work. You can get colorful sidebar icons back in Finder, add a clear all button to the notification center, and more!
A couple different versions of SIMBL have been released over the years, by different developers. When Mavericks was current, most people were using norio-nomura's EasySIMBL.
Unfortunately, one of the last updates that Apple ever released for Mavericks—a security patch that didn't even increment the version number—broke EasySIMBL. So, you can't use that!
Version 0.9.9 of the original version SIMBL kind of works in Mavericks, but it leads to lots of strange glitches. It also usually doesn't work with sandboxed apps, or with certain system apps such as Finder, unless you do weird Applescript incantations. Meanwhile, W0lfchild's successor mySIMBL is only compatible with OS X 10.10 Yosemite and above.
And so for a while I was stuck, until I discovered a little trick! mySIMBL is really two pieces of software combined into one: there's SIMBL itself, which does the actual work of injecting plugins, and there's an app which sets up SIMBL and provides in interface for managing plugins. Of these, it's really only the app that doesn't work on Mavericks; if you open up the mySIMBL app bundle, find the right files, and copy them to the right locations on your hard drive, you can get SIMBL working if you copy all the files to the right place.
Hopefully this is all useful to someone!
SIMBL is a open-source program that lets you add plugins to other apps, to change how they work. You can get colorful sidebar icons back in Finder, add a clear all button to the notification center, and more!
A couple different versions of SIMBL have been released over the years, by different developers. When Mavericks was current, most people were using norio-nomura's EasySIMBL.
Unfortunately, one of the last updates that Apple ever released for Mavericks—a security patch that didn't even increment the version number—broke EasySIMBL. So, you can't use that!
Version 0.9.9 of the original version SIMBL kind of works in Mavericks, but it leads to lots of strange glitches. It also usually doesn't work with sandboxed apps, or with certain system apps such as Finder, unless you do weird Applescript incantations. Meanwhile, W0lfchild's successor mySIMBL is only compatible with OS X 10.10 Yosemite and above.
And so for a while I was stuck, until I discovered a little trick! mySIMBL is really two pieces of software combined into one: there's SIMBL itself, which does the actual work of injecting plugins, and there's an app which sets up SIMBL and provides in interface for managing plugins. Of these, it's really only the app that doesn't work on Mavericks; if you open up the mySIMBL app bundle, find the right files, and copy them to the right locations on your hard drive, you can get SIMBL working if you copy all the files to the right place.
SIMBL.osaxgoes in/System/Library/ScriptingAdditionsnet.culater.SIMBL.Agent.plistgoes in/Library/LaunchAgentsSIMBLAgent.appgoes in/Library/Application Support/SIMBLmySIMBLFixes.bundlegoes in/Libary/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins
Hopefully this is all useful to someone!
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