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Kill Snow Leopard’s Blue Ring of Exposé

Posted: September 1st, 2009 | Author: Jerod | Filed under: OS X | Tags: , | View Comments

Looks like I’m not the only one who hates Snow Leopard’s blue ring around selected windows in Exposé.

Thankfully, we don’t have to live with such monstrosities. Here’s a quick fix to free yourself from the blue haze. Fire up Terminal.app, then:

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cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/
sudo mv expose-window-selection-big.png expose-window-selection-big.ugly
sudo mv expose-window-selection-small.png expose-window-selection-small.ugly
sudo killall Dock

This will disable the blue rings altogether, but you may want to replace these two images with some custom ones that look a little cooler instead.

Let me know via the comments or on Twitter if you find some replacement images!

***UPDATE***

My friend Doug provided some drop-in replacement images that are a huge improvement. Just drop them into the directory after renaming the default images. So after step #3 above, do:

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open .

This will open Finder in the current directory. Now drag the replacement images into this directory, provide your password, and kill the Dock.

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sudo killall Dock

Voilà!

DOWNLOAD HERE

View Comments on “Kill Snow Leopard’s Blue Ring of Exposé”

  1. 1 Robin Curry said at 9:51 pm on September 1st, 2009:

    Hadn't noticed those monstrosities until you pointed them out. Then I couldn't stop thinking about them (THANKS!). I replaced mine with images from here (via a MacThemes thread): http://www.npshare.de/files/e917bd35/ExposeBord...

  2. 2 sant0sk1 said at 6:19 am on September 2nd, 2009:

    Nice find on the replacement images. A definite improvement. Sorry for opening your eyes to the blue ugliness, but if I hadn't done it you would have noticed sooner or later! :)

  3. 3 lr4 said at 1:29 pm on September 8th, 2009:

    I added some white ones and the original colour.
    http://www.mediafire.com/file/jjmmminhijy/expos... – (white, black, blue).zip

  4. 4 lr4 said at 8:29 pm on September 8th, 2009:

    I added some white ones and the original colour.
    http://www.mediafire.com/file/jjmmminhijy/expos... – (white, black, blue).zip

  5. 5 Marthe said at 6:54 pm on May 23rd, 2010:

    I did the first 4 steps, but now I want to add some other color instead. How do I get the rings back but in a different color? Please help!

  6. 6 Jerod Santo said at 12:21 pm on May 24th, 2010:

    If you want to change the color you have to edit or create new image files for “expose-window-selection-big.png” and “expose-window-selection-small.png”. If you just want to restore the originals then do the “mv” commands in the opposite direction, which will put the originals back where they were.

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