Lion Finder sidebar color?

Been there, done that, saw the movie and got the T shirt.

Maybe enough have done this that Apple listened (you know how close mouthed they are) and fix it in Mountain Lion but I am not holding my breath.

To Apples credit, OS X 10.0 was real buggy and slow, a real change from OS 9. It has improved all the way to Lion where the cycle starts over.

The difference is, OS X 10.0 was new territory, Lion is not so new as radical. Given a choice I would stay with SL but there are downsides to that, all my mobile devices use the iCloud, my Mac cannot, this is Apple's fault 100%.

Want to keep the Mac base happy? Then don't force junk on us.

That is why I am very picky about what software I run, if it works well without useless updates and putting things where it has no business putting then I use it, if it isn't made for Mac then, sorry.

Adobe is one such as is Nuance (mostly).

I digress, Lion is not a step foreword, it is a leap down a cliff. I want an OS on my Mac, not iOS.

There are screenshots of the beta of ML all over google; they don't show that color has been reinstated in the Finder sidebar.

Still, I suppose they could always change that before final release, but I would be very suprised if so.

I have never used Automator or AppleScript. When I opened Automator, most of the menu selections were grayed out. I don't understand the scripts to kill the finder so my colors come back each time I launch my system, especially since most of them refer to TotalFinder and bootcoloricon. I'm using ColorfulSidebar. Can anyone help me? Because I see day after day after day of turning on my system and having to remember to killall Finder in the terminal.

What I wrote to Apple's feedback page:

Dear Apple: I realized what your new gray sidebar icons that overwrites our pretty custom icons reminds me of...

It's like working for an employer who sticks you into a gray cubicle to work 18 hours a day in, and tells you that you can't put anything fun on your desk, your monitor, your shelves, and on your walls - no photos, no tchotchke from your kids next to your computer or on your cubicle walls, no Magic 8 Ball, no alien figurines or Star Wars paraphernalia, no beads from Mardi Gras draped over one side of the computer. Nuthin'. The closest you get to something fun is your computer's wallpaper, and your employer is getting ready to replace that with a selection of three wallpapers of their own choosing - but they'll be really cool looking. Your employer promises.

That should do it. Did you mention some of us like the grey icons?

Good luck

Pete

Just run automator from apps folder.

Choose new application

Click on utilities in LHS and choose "Run Shell Script" and dragit over to the RHS.

add the line "killall Finder" then quit and save it as "ColourIcons.app" or whatever name you choose.

In system preferences under user accounts add this app to your login items.

Done

I've never used Automator and can't figure it out (no time to learn right now - in the middle of building several websites and learning PHP, CS6, and other aspects of Lion). I have no idea what LHS is. I've tried a couple of apps, including ColorSidebar, TotalFinder, and PathFinder. Had problems, including with a script that was added to login items, where things were freezing. I'm no Mac newbie (user since 1983), and I can't believe Apple, that was built on the backs of creatives, has sucked the colorful life out of its finder.

How about if Apple had a checkbox for "Show custom icons in sidebar" in Preferences->General, and if you like the gray icons, you don't check the box, and if you do like your color icons, you check the box? How about if it weren't such a production to customize our interface like we had it before without having to learn programming and hack our system? Shades of ResEdit, I'll tell ya. Same outcome, too.

yes I agree with you

sorry, "LHS" means left hand side, my bad

judging from what you are learning you are far more technical than I

I just meant if you simply open automator and choose a new app

on the very left hand side there are different sources/objects/items and there is one called utilities

if you click on utilities in the column just to the right (but not far right) are all the built in functions and one of them is run shell script

if you click and drag that over to the RHS (right hand side :-)) it already has "cat" in it

Just replace "cat" with killall Finder

this forces a restart of finder that makes it load up the colour icons from SIMBL plug in again

otherwise every time you boot you have to run a terminal window and type it yourself

Just like when iTunes suddenly had a white background in grid (after one update) view giving me an instand headache from eyestrain and the annoying have to uncheck the tick box every time you quit from lion both of those have been fixed. Seriously sometimes I think these people are on drugs, if they have so much spare time coding up annoyances imagine if this time was put to good use?

Similarly I hope enough people complaining might bring us back our coloured icons too!!

Windows 8 is just around the corner and it has lots of colour!

In the mean time and thanks to downloadable iphoto and itunes sidebar icons along with the SIMBL plug in I still stubbornly have coloured icons in my sidebars! If apple released drivers for my new macbook air for snow leopard I would switch back to that too. I grow tired of spinning coloured pinwheels of death everytime a network drive is involved. Say, when will apple make that a spinning grey wheel of death, play all videos through quicktime in monochrome the list goes on!

As I said, I tried something very similar to this, and stuff started freezing. Since Big Bertha, my Mac Pro, is my workhorse, I can't have her freezing up on me just so I can look at pretty icons (although I'm REALLY irritated that I can't). The instructions for the SIMBL plugin indicate it might not be entirely stable, and they make no guarantees.

I don't care about the iTunes or iPhoto interfaces because a) I don't use iTunes in a production setting, and b) I don't use iPhoto. I'm not comfortable with having my photos wrapped up in Apple's proprietary interface. I MUCH prefer a folder in my Documents folder for my photos, and that folder broken down to subfolders. I use Bridge to manage my photos anyway, and I use Photoshop CS6 to manipulate my photos (I recently upgraded from CS3), so I don't need what iPhoto has to offer. So when Apple makes changes to those interfaces, I'm pretty much "meh."

I hear Win8 has problems. I'm not a MS hater. I'm actually kind of fond of Win7 - still like Apple way better (although Win7's bright yellow folders are MUCH perkier than Apple's gray icons).

LOL! at a spinning grey wheel of death!!! Although we do have our dark gray spinning gear of death.

One day, I shall learn how to do Automator. But when I'm done with PHP, I'm off to JavaScript, jQuery, and the finer points of mySQL. Then HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL.

I can't build a website, brochure, or book on an iPad or even my MBP.

I think that as far as color goes Mac OS will no longer have any.

A real loss IMO and for Apple also, dumbing down all the apps to the point of unusability and everything gray means my days with Apple are over. Just like this discussion page, can't use the dictionary on it, doesn't work.

I have stopped at 10.6.8 and will go no further, next won't be Windows but it won't be 10.7 or above until Apple reinstates color and the user Library.

I have sent numerous bug reports and complaints, all fall on deaf ears. I am sure Steve would not like this turn of events but Apple is now all about the bottom line for iPhones and iPads, the rest of the line can suck eggs.

I know I am one very disappointed, long tine, loyal Mac user, I have been good for Apples bottom line for all the new users I sold Apples to.

Now not so much, I warn them about Lion and gray, I actually have said to look at Windows machines.

I know, turncoat, I did not do this, Apple did. Now, since they made this bed, sleep in it.

Not to mention denying iCloud to Snow Leopard users while any WIndows can use it, can you say M$ had something to do with that?

Overall Apple has, how to say, crapped the bed.

By, by Apple.

Really Pete? You like the gray? Color blind are you?

dpeam wrote:

Really Pete? You like the gray? Color blind are you?

Not at all. They are simply sidebar icons, and I can read, which helps. Inside the folders, every icon is colour by default, from Adobe to iTunes to, well, everything. I have my own Desktop folders with my own choice of colour icons or pics on them. My wallpaper can be changed, by default, to anything I wish.

So you cannot use a computer system because of a dozen grey icons in the sidebar with the folders name beside it? THAT my friend is called blindness.

You really should get a windows computer and wait on Windows 8 and hope they have nothing grey. Your leaving will have a dramatic influence on Apple's share prices, but at least we'll be free of this petty squabling over, as I said, about a dozen grey icons out of an entire system.

Good Luck

Yours in 99.9% colour

Pete

I can read, too - 750WPM. I'm also an artist, and I LOVE COLOR! Sarcastic much?

I build websites for a living. I try not to build websites that are all-gray, because then the end-user is bored and has substandard visual cues for moving around the site. #EPICFAIL of user interface standards.

And it's gray, generic icons in every finder sidebar, every drop-down file search/upload window I deal with (and the hacks don't even address the sidebar of the finder generated by the "Choose file" dialogue box - they're still generic and gray).

I use color and custom icons to shave fractions of seconds off of my interface navigation, because I can recognize them faster than I can read - and the colors make me happy. You can't begrudge me (the rest of us?) happy, can you? I also find all the gray to be very fatiguing to the eye.

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask Apple that people who want all-gray/generic icons should be able to have them, and people who want a more colorful, customized interface should be able to have it, with the check of a box in preferences, with neither side being denigrated for their wishes. The icons are there - they've just been replaced with gray/generic by some lines of code. I know because one day I opened a finder window, and Time Machine was probably running (a resource hog if there ever was one), and I saw my pretty icons there in the sidebar for about a half a second. So someone at Apple DELIBERATELY wrote code to overwrite those icons with their generic gray icons. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Sorry. I did not realize you were Privvy to the coding of SL versus the coding of Lion and what could and could not be written within the new system. I too rely on colour and have it everywhere I wish except in those dozen or so sidebar icons.

I'm happy with the new look. So you will need got tell Apple through their feedback page and hope they change it in ML for you.

Cheers

Pete