Shadowless v1.0 PowerPC
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A simple command line utility to toggle window shadows on/off in Mac OS X. Disabling the shadows is a Quartz (Core Graphics) Debug option for OS X and can make a dramatic performance improvement on Macs which aren't capable of hardware accelerated window compositing via Quartz Extreme (e.g. Pismo, Clamshell iBook, etc).

To install;

'cp shadowless /usr/local/bin' (or /usr/bin if preferred)

(if '/usr/local/bin' doesn't exist: 'mkdir -p /usr/local/bin' )

Ensure '/usr/local/bin' is in your $PATH (e.g. 'echo $PATH'). If not, when using bash, edit '~/.bash_profile' and add 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin'. Then restart the bash shell.

You can then execute with just 'shadowless' at the command prompt.

Tested on:

Jaguar 10.2.8
Panther 10.3.9
Tiger 10.4.11
Leopard 10.5.8
Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (PowerPC binary seamlessly executes via Rosetta).

May also work on Puma and Cheetah (untested).

-AphoticD


The source code is gloriously simple, but I can't take credit for it;

shadowless.c:
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#include <stdio.h>
extern void CGSGetDebugOptions(int *shadows);
extern void CGSSetDebugOptions(int shadows);
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    int shadows;
    CGSGetDebugOptions(&shadows);
    shadows ^= 0x4000; //kCGSDebugOptionNoShadows
    CGSSetDebugOptions(shadows);
    return 0;
}
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(Built with gcc -framework Cocoa -o shadowless shadowless.c)

