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JustinG87

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 18, 2007
71
0
Seattle, WA
So I used to have a permanent menu bar tint in Leopard, and trying to figure out how I did it (it was 2 years ago and since it worked I didn't document very well.) Now I have to keep the program Menu Bar Tint open constantly, which leaves the tint still there whenever I run a full screen program. Does anyone have any ideas? Up until I upgraded, I never had to open any programs at login, the tint was just there on the menu bar and didn't stick around while in full screen programs. Does anyone have any ideas? (Attached is what my menu bar looks like right now with Menu Bar Tint open, which is how it used to look in Leopard with no programs open.)
 

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I'm not quite sure what you're asking. If I remember, prior to 10.5.4 (I think), there were some hacks and apps used to remove the tint from the menu bar. After 10.5.4 (again, I think that was the rev), Apple turned off the tint by default, but left an option to turn it on.

Go to System Prefs > Desktop & Screen Saver. At the bottom, there is an option for "Translucent menu bar" (tinted). I think this is what you're after.
 
I'm not quite sure what you're asking. If I remember, prior to 10.5.4 (I think), there were some hacks and apps used to remove the tint from the menu bar. After 10.5.4 (again, I think that was the rev), Apple turned off the tint by default, but left an option to turn it on.

Go to System Prefs > Desktop & Screen Saver. At the bottom, there is an option for "Translucent menu bar" (tinted). I think this is what you're after.

No no, check the attached picture to see what I'm after. An opaque menu bar with a gray tint & gradient rather than the bland white menu bar you get when you use Apple's feature to turn off the translucent menu bar.
 
No no, check the attached picture to see what I'm after. An opaque menu bar with a gray tint & gradient rather than the bland white menu bar you get when you use Apple's feature to turn off the translucent menu bar.

Mine's not white. It's gray (10.6). The gradient is less dramatic than in earlier versions of OS-X, but it's there. Anyway, I guess I don't have a good answer for you. Sorry about that...
 

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Mine's not white. It's gray (10.6). The gradient is less dramatic than in earlier versions of OS-X, but it's there. Anyway, I guess I don't have a good answer for you. Sorry about that...

Maybe it's just the graphic designer in me, I'm attached to that gradient. Well, I'll keep looking. Thanks for your help!
 
Is this what you are talking about?

http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/terminal-commands-for-hidden-settings-in-leopard.html

Menubar
Changing the menubar will require an administrator password and you will need to restart the Mac for changes to take effect.

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1
Remove translucency in menubar, turns it white.

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0
Removes translucency in menubar, turns it grey.

sudo defaults delete /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables'
Reverts back to default translucent menubar.

You can also set other things here such as a gradient, I believe as well.
 
Mine's not white. It's gray (10.6). The gradient is less dramatic than in earlier versions of OS-X, but it's there. Anyway, I guess I don't have a good answer for you. Sorry about that...
If you use a black background (like you do) the tint of the translucent menubar will be grey instead of white. If you use one of the built-in backgrounds like the Japanese house the tint will be white. In other words: it depends on whatever you set as the desktop background. Some people used to edit their wallpapers by putting a black area on top of it.
 
If you use a black background (like you do) the tint of the translucent menubar will be grey instead of white. If you use one of the built-in backgrounds like the Japanese house the tint will be white. In other words: it depends on whatever you set as the desktop background. Some people used to edit their wallpapers by putting a black area on top of it.

That would require making the menu bar translucent, which is the opposite of what I want to do.
 
I wasn't replying to you, merely explaining why the person I'm replying to has a grey translucent menubar instead of a white one (you can have both depending on the background used). Some people use that fact and edit their wallpapers to get the grey translucent menubar. In this case it won't be exactly how your menubar looks like. The opaque menubar is grey without the gradient you've got. The translucent version seems to add a bit of a gradient but it is hardly noticeable. The main reason why people edited their wallpapers was simply because they didn't like the translucency and wanted the old opaque menubar back. It took some Leopard updates but Apple finally gave people the option to disable the translucency so editing the wallpaper is not necessary any more (hence "used to").
 
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