UNO – Seamless OSX plastic interface
This post was published 3 years 4 months 21 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.
To this day, I have yet to understand the reason for Apple’s decision to create an inconsistent interface across the board for its iApps and system wide Finder. Toss in a little pinstriping (unfocused windows), a little brushed (Safari, iTunes, & Finder), and last but not least, lets throw in a little subtle gradient action (sunken or plastic) for iWorks apps. Completely inconsistent. Until Shapeshifter goes Universal Binary, I assumed I would have to put up with the interface as-is. Fortunately, I came across a handy little application that aims at unifying the pinstriped, brushed, and plastic windows into a consistent iWorks-like interface.
The secret to arriving at a consistent Tiger interface? A somewhat beefy utility known simply as UNO [The Sunken Unified GUI] (UB).
The 15.6MB compressed download expands to a beefy 106.4MB which, when run, offers users an intuitive interface for tweaking the appearance of their Tiger operating system. Take the time to read through the included readme taking note of the risks of mucking about with system GUI elements. Rest assured that UNO creates an updated backup of files which can be found within Library/Application Support/interacto.net/UNO/guifix/.
Once uncompressed, drag the UNO utility to your Applications or Applications/Utilities folder and double-click to run. Most noticeable are the two utility options: ‘install’ & ‘uninstall’. From this window, users can decide on whether they wish to continue installing the GUI modifier, or to uninstall any previously installed changes. System wide options include:
- Aqua apps
- Metal apps
- Dashboard dock
- iTunes
UI choices include UNO (lighter sunken UI), UNO shade (darker version of the sunken UI), or the default Aqua appearance. In order to complete the conversion, restart your machine to enjoy the smoothness.
Personally, i don’t like UNO. Not every window looks better with it, some really look awfull, also, in the finder windows the bottom is not rounded, making it look like Windows, but the worst came when it modifies the Apple and Spotlight icons making them super-tiny…
(Note: You actually don’t need to restart to see changes, just log-out from your user account and log in again)
Great! I will download this, but I have to backup my system first.
Actually, it really doesn’t hack up much – but backing up is always a smart idea!
Actually another is to go to http://www.maxthemes.com and download the Smooth Stripes 5.1.2 package. It’s great. It removes the all brushed metal windows and replaces it with the same look and feel as the current iTunes. It also removes all the pinstripes from the pulldown menus. In my opinion it looks great.
The themes from Maxthemes require that Shapeshifter be used correct? I’m waiting for the update on that.
Derek, there are two download options for Smooth Stripes on Maxthemes. If you use the 7MB Smooth Stripes 5.1.2 package, you don’t need ShapeShifter. It’s an installer package that will replace all the resources for Aqua User Interface. Cool thing is, if you decide you want to revert back to default aqua you can, just run the installer again. One thing I noticed is that during the installation, you should uncheck the option for iTunes. For some reason it screws up iTunes if you are using version 6.0.5.
Nice to know Joshua. That’s something I’m definitely going to have to look into.
I tried it. It was alright…i guess…
Tried it on a mac mini intel w/ 10.4.8 and it’s lovely. Recommended!
I tried it on my iMac intel with 10.4.10 and it says I need 10.4.4+… darn
i decided it didnt really do anything for me, after ive uninstalled it is it okay to trash the app?