Revert Interface changes to Snow Leopard, Part 1: Lion and Mountain Lion

For many of us, the graphical and user interface changes made between Lion and Snow Leopard, although few and mostly subtle, were unwelcome. Some of us (*cough*) were so utterly disappointed by the minor annoyances that a full reversion to Snow Leopard was necessary.

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.

1. Finder sidebar
2. Scrolling
3. Window animations 

The Finder

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.

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.

Fix this by going into the System Preferences -> General and changing "Sidebar Icon Size" to "Small".

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.

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.


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






Read Full Post

Showing hidden files in the Finder

By default, OS X does not show its hidden directories, such as /etc, /var, and /usr, in the Finder, although they are still accessible using Go from the menu.

To enable them, use the command defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true as root.


Read Full Post

Disable the Screen Sharing menu icon

Whether your boss has requested you keep an eye on a coworker or you just want to spy on your little brother, the menu icon that alerts users of your watchful presence can be an annoyance and a dead giveaway.

There are two ways to disable it. If you are using Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) to control Screen Sharing, you may simply hide it:
sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -activate -clientopts -setmenuextra -menuextra no

If you are not using ARD, this will not work and you will have to remove the icon manually. The configuration is located in /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/RemoteDesktop.menu. You can either rename it, remove it completely or change its permissions to 000.

This will also work with any of the items in the Menu Extras directory, such as the volume, clock, or Fast User Switching menu.
Read Full Post

Customizing the OS X login screen

Changing the Background
The background image can be changed by simply replacing the file. In Leopard, the default background is located in /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg. In Tiger, the file is /Library/Desktop Pictures/Aqua Blue.jpg. Rename the default to a different name and copy your file of choice over the original file.
















Customizing Users
There are many tweaks one can make to the user list. Say you want to create an invisible user only accessible via SSH. Or to hide all users with certain UIDs, or hide the Other user once the root account has been enabled.

First, if you mess up something too badly, it is always possible to remove your edits by using
defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow and
defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList to delete users you may have hidden. Any value using TRUE may also be reversed by substituting FALSE and vice-versa.

To hide a user from the login window, use:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add 'jason'
You can use the user's UID instead as well. The user will also no longer appear in the Fast User Switching menu once someone has logged in.

To hide all users with UIDs under 500 -- e.g. root and the built-in Guest account:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow Hide500Users -bool TRUE

To hide the Other user:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SHOWOTHERUSERS_MANAGED -bool FALSE

Do not try and hide all your users as this will cause the login window to be unfunctional. The login screen with the three examples shown above:


Read Full Post

Editing Mac OS X menus and Preference Panes

There is always that one smart mystery student in the lab who manages to bypass the Parental Controls and mess with the machine settings, or keeps shutting them down at inconvenient times just to annoy. While settings such as showing the Shut Down option in the login screen exist, removing it from the menu once the user has logged in do not. If they have managed to access the System Preferences, this option can be unchecked anyway.

Editing the Main Menu OS X's user interface is entirely composed of .plist and .xib files, both of which are text. Although generally difficult to find, in theory it is possible to change the appearance of nearly anything. Always make a copy of the entire .nib directory in case something goes wrong, since displacing a single line could render your Finder unusable. The interface file for the Main Menu is located in /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/English.lproj/StandardMenus.nib/  If you are using a different language, change the English.lproj appropriately.

The file to be edited is objects.xib. Any command-line, text-based or XML editor will work; I am using vi. Locate the section of the file containing the object to be removed; you will notice that there are two different sections for Restart and Shut Down. Remove both.

UPDATE: For 10.7 users (Lion), you will also need to remove the "Reference" line at the bottom of the file, corresponding to the ID # of the object you are removing. In the above example, the object ID is "284". The ID numbers will vary depending on the version of OS X.

You will need to log out and back in before any changes will take effect. You can in fact remove everything in the menu, including Log Out and Force Quit.

Editing the Preference Panes

A Preference Pane is the individual icon related to a particular configuration within System Preferences. What if you have a paranoid coworker who insists on disabling SSH and VNC, making your job as sysadmin much more difficult when his machine crashes? Or someone who keeps changing the Energy Saver settings, having it shut down before the company-wide backups are made at midnight?

There are two possible ways to modify a Preference Pane -- removing it altogether, or simply changing components within it. You want the coworker to be able to control his Printer Sharing, but not his Remote Access.

These particular instructions will work only with Leopard or later.

The configuration for the default Preference Panes is located in /System/Library/PreferencePanes, while those for custom applications will be in /Library/PreferencePanes. The file for the Remote Login service in particular is located in /System/Library/PreferencePanes/SharingPref.prefPane/Contents/Resources/servicelist.xml.

Locate the enclosed service to disable in the xml file and remove it. You will see that the service no longer appears in the Sharing list:

By removing the SharingPref.prefPane directory, or changing its permissions to 000, it will disappear from the System Preferences entirely.

Read Full Post