However, drastic measures are not always the answer. With a number of minor tweaks, the most obvious changes to the design can be reverted to a more familiar Snow Leopard functionality.
- Finder sidebar
- Scrolling
- Window animations
The Finder
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The biggest and most obvious interface change was to the Finder windows. First, new windows open to a default "All My Files" section. For most of us, Finders in Snow Leopard opened to our home directory or to the Desktop. In addition, many of the subdirectories such as Downloads, Music and Pictures may be missing. |
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Begin by opening the Finder preferences to "Sidebar". Uncheck "All My Files" and "AirDrop", and check whichever other subdirectories you want to appear. In addition, check "Hard Disks" and the computer name under "Devices", and the username under "Favorites". In this case, the user is "admin", and the computer is named "Lisiriad". As in this picture, your "Hard Disks" may have a dash through it instead of a checkbox. Uncheck the box and re-check it to enable all hard disks to show up under "Devices". If you would like "Library" to show up in the sidebar, enter a Terminal and run the command chflags nohidden ~/Library. By default, the Library folder has become hidden post-Snow Leopard. This will enable you to drag it from your home folder view into the sidebar. |
Next, under the "General" tab, instead of "All My Files", choose "Desktop" or "admin" under the heading "New Finder windows show:".
Next, we restore the colored icons. Begin by installing the SideEffects package, obtainable here, or here (direct link). After installation, you may need to either killall Finder or log out and back in. Your Finder sidebar should now have the familiar Snow Leopard colored icons, although they will look a bit odd.
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Fix this by going into the System Preferences -> General and changing "Sidebar Icon Size" to "Small". |
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Lastly, grab and drag the "FAVORITES" and "DEVICES" headers to switch their places. After all of the above changes, your Finder should now look something like this. |
Scrolling
The other additions many found particularly annoying was the reversed scrolling direction, inertia, and the bounce when the scrollbar hits the bottom or the top of a container.
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Under Lion, the inertia setting is located in the System Preferences under "Universal Access", within & Trackpad" tab. In Mountain Lion, the setting is instead under "Accessibility". In either dialog, click the "Trackpad Options" near the bottom. Change "Scrolling" to "without inertia". |
To disable the reversed scrolling, enter the "Trackpad" pane in System Preferences. Go to the "Scroll & Zoom" tab and uncheck "Scroll direction: natural".
If you have a USB mouse, you will also need to uncheck this in the "Mouse" preference pane.
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Scroll Bounce
To disable the bouncing effect when scrolling near the top or bottom of a container, enter the following command in a Terminal: defaults write -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding -int 0
You may have to log out for this option to take effect. To re-enable the bounce, enter defaults write -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding -int 1.
Window Animation
Finally, many of us found that the window opening animation, which is rather subtle, nevertheless produced a noticeable lag on any activity. This animation happens when a new window of any application opens, and a "zoom" effect quickly takes the window from nothingness to its full size.
To disable this animation, enter the following command in a terminal:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool 0
To re-enable window animations, enter:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool 1
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