Finder Sidebar Ugly Grey Icons

[sibcc]

Has anyone found a way to get colored icons back in the finder sidebar. Color obviously helps differentiate at a glace which icon is which. All the way back to the NextStep roots, there were beautiful colored icons and they're been removed because of Ive's idea of some quasi-Bauhaus design mantra. One could make the whole damn thing grey and it'd be completely non-functional as a UI.

BTW, I know the colored icons were gone before EC, but at least one could get them back with a utility.

 

[Evren Carven]

There is no way to change the color of sidebar... You can use Tags with different colors.

 

[sibcc]

There is no way to change the color of sidebar... You can use Tags with different colors.

Well, I found a way back to the wonderful world of color. I installed Xtrafinder and it appears to be working so far. On Yosemite, I ran Totalfinder, but that still has problems with EC. For anyone that manages a large number of files, I strongly suggest Pathfinder. It can replace a whole gaggle of other utility programs for syncing and viewing files/images and is running well on EC.

 

[darrenoia]

Well, I found a way back to the wonderful world of color. I installed Xtrafinder and it appears to be working so far. On Yosemite, I ran Totalfinder, but that still has problems with EC. For anyone that manages a large number of files, I strongly suggest Pathfinder. It can replace a whole gaggle of other utility programs for syncing and viewing files/images and is running well on EC.

Did you have to disable SIP to get XtraFinder to work? I've been using it for years, but it doesn't work for me in El Cap. And sadly (perhaps because I'm using a "roll your own" Fusion Drive), I can't even enter Recovery Mode to disable SIP. Sigh.

 

[KALLT]

Did you have to disable SIP to get XtraFinder to work? I've been using it for years, but it doesn't work for me in El Cap. And sadly (perhaps because I'm using a "roll your own" Fusion Drive), I can't even enter Recovery Mode to disable SIP. Sigh.

You can put the El Capitan installer on a bootable thumb drive and access Recovery from there.

 

[AlteMac]

AFAIK, you need to keep SIP disabled to run Xtrafinder, and TotalFinder appears to be a complete mess in EC. I have become resigned to looking at the dull gray icons, as SIP must be there for a good reason. There are some programs (like cDock) that can be installed with SIP off and will then run with SIP back on, but my experience is that is not true for Xtrafinder. I am happy to be told I am wrong, as I hate the gray icons.

 

[KALLT]

as SIP must be there for a good reason.

It has a good reason for sure, but in an individual situation it can also be the equivalent of wearing inflatable armbands although you can swim. Disabling SIP largely means that you remain responsible for root access to your system. If that is ever compromised, there is nothing that protects your system from malware anymore. In practice, as long as you don't carelessly grant root access to programs, you have nothing to worry about, in the current state of OS X at least (with no serious malware on the loose).

 

[sibcc]

Did you have to disable SIP to get XtraFinder to work? I've been using it for years, but it doesn't work for me in El Cap. And sadly (perhaps because I'm using a "roll your own" Fusion Drive), I can't even enter Recovery Mode to disable SIP. Sigh.

Yes, I did disable SIP.

 

[sibcc]

It has a good reason for sure, but in an individual situation it can also be the equivalent of wearing inflatable armbands although you can swim. Disabling SIP largely means that you remain responsible for root access to your system. If that is ever compromised, there is nothing that protects your system from malware anymore. In practice, as long as you don't carelessly grant root access to programs, you have nothing to worry about, in the current state of OS X at least (with no serious malware on the loose).

An excellent analogy.

 

[w0lf]

You can use XtraFinder with SIP enabled.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OSXTweaks/...s_there_actual_demand_for_more_native/cvuxvtq

 

[MacSec]

It has a good reason for sure, but in an individual situation it can also be the equivalent of wearing inflatable armbands although you can swim. Disabling SIP largely means that you remain responsible for root access to your system. If that is ever compromised, there is nothing that protects your system from malware anymore. In practice, as long as you don't carelessly grant root access to programs, you have nothing to worry about, in the current state of OS X at least (with no serious malware on the loose).

There have been several exploits that allow privilege escalation on Mac, and malware that uses these exploits. SIP also protects against other attacks. So even where a user has not knowingly given root access, malware could still escalate to root without a password or prompt to the user. This is particularly problematic as most users run as Administrators, which is just one step from root.

Mac still lags Windows in many security features, and this feature is something that no user should turn off without good reason.

The fix immediately above this also introduces risks, since you are now trusting a third party application with escalated privileges. This risk is much smaller though, as in practice it would require the kind of targetted attack that would be difficult to defend against in any case.