Free alternative to ShapeShifter?

[mulletman13]

Hey all,

I was checking out another giant thread on OS X customization on MacNN, and I noticed a ton of people posted there... now I'm sure most were using SS, but I'm curious if there is anything else that will apply themes for free.

Looking into it a little bit, I found the following apps.

guiKitty 1.1 (which extracts a .guikit into rsc files)
guiKit2dlta (which changes this extracted file into a dlta theme that is usable)
ThemeChanger (hasn't been updated in years, but works fine)

All of these are freeware, however a while ago, guiKitty experienced a bug that would only allow it to extract the first variant from the guikit file. So this method still works if there is only one variant in the guikit file, but with limited usability.

Also, do all of these really slow down performance? As far as I can see you're just replacing image files, so repairing permissions and restarting should be all right.

Is there anything that's free and will apply guikit files? I'm curious how hard it would be to just implement that and release a program...

Thanks in advance

 

[Flying Llama]

Shapeshifter is just the best, nothing else compares.

 

[mcmillan]

Shapeshifter is just the best, nothing else compares.

x2...

I was wonderig the same I while ago, but I ended up buying ShapeShifter, and that's the best option IMO, you won't regret it and it costs like 20 bucks. I started using it in July and just a few minutes ago I was downloading some new themes. I use it all the time... if you really want to customize your Mac, ShapeShifter is the easiest way.