Set Leopard's Menu Bar Back To White

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Written by Rebecca Peck · 1 minute read

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There’s been a good bit of debate about Leopard’s new translucent menu bar. For me, it doesn’t cause many issues. However, some of my coworkers despise it and, to be fair, I can see the arguments that many of the people who dislike it have: it doesn’t add anything to the OS and actually makes it more difficult to read the text.

Well, here’s a litle tweak that will set the menu bar back to a white background. In the terminal, you can use the following command to change the default appearance of the bar:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.appledowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1

Restart your Mac, and voila! White menu bar! Changed your mind? Set it back:

sudo defaults delete /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE'

Restart your Mac and your menu bar is back to being translucent.

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About the Author

Hi, I'm Rebecca Peck (she/her/hers.) I'm a blogger and software developer. I'm into bike riding, photography, writing, making wine, listening to history podcasts, 3D printing, home automation, being a complete and hopeless Apple fangirl, and anything involving airplanes, trains and model trains. I am based in Huntsville, Alabama.

PHP/MySQL in Huntsville/North Alabama
Benchmarking Vista and XP: Apples and Oranges?

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