Filed under: Design, Macintosh
Magnifique: Free OS X theme customizer
by Jay Hathaway Mar 29th 2009 at 10:00AM
There are quite a few apps out there for OS customization junkies, but Magnifique for OS X stands out from the crowd for a few reasons.First and foremost, it's free. Second, it doesn't require a full restart once you apply a theme, just a restart of the Finder and the dock. Third, there seems to be a pretty good community of theme designers and users around it, which means help with designing and using themes is readily available in the forums.
Although Magnifique seems to use its own file format for themes (you can't easily snatch themes from other Mac theming apps) there are nearly 30 themes available on the Magnifique website. Even better, you can also download them from within the app itself.
If you look around other Mac themes forums, you'll find some additional Magnifique themes. I haven't run into any problems or glitches so far, but you may want to turn off the "apply custom mods" option if you're running the latest iTunes or Safari 4, because the app-specific elements of some themes aren't as up-to-date as the system-wide elements.
[Via Lifehacker]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
James said 12:33PM on 3-29-2009
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there seems to be a pretty good community of theme designers and users around it, which means help with designing and using themes is readily available in the forums.
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I'm curious as to what the author considers a "pretty good community of designers & users." I certainly hope you're not referring to the MacThemes Web site - which is little more than 20 or so "elitists" who spend their time accusing people of ripping off some other artist, and the remainder of their time patting each other on the back for their mediocre at best work.
Currently, there are about 20 themes available for OSX using Magnifique - I'm not sure where the writer came up with 40+. That's it. And by the way, they're all the same. They're not even themes, they're just variations of Aqua - some minor color adjustments, and a few button changes.
Shapeshifter is dead, development stopped on it years ago, so don't even mention the few themes that were available up until Leopard was released - most of which were also either ugly, or simple variations of Aqua as well.
Themes on OSX were dead before the first one came out. Theming OSX is just too hard and time consuming - so the few themes that are available simply don't inspire enough people to do it as well. The tools available to theme OSX are few & far between, and the knowledge you need in order to use these tools are nowhere to be found. Asking how to get started at MacThemes forums generally results in "go to the JoeThemer's site for an excellent tutorial" answer. Well I went to JoeThemer's site and read the tutorials. They suck. They explain nothing. The fact is, theming OSX is 100% impossible for all but the most experienced user who has a LOT of time on their hands.
Sad situation, really. Magnifique is a nice app - it works as advertised. Unfortunately it will suffer the same fate as Shapeshifter - which is a complete lack of talent on the theming end who are willing to put in the time to properly theme the entire OS, and an OS that makes it impossible to be creative with the user interface.
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Jay Hathaway said 2:59PM on 3-29-2009
It really does seem to be closer to 30, so I changed that. The rest of your points are really interesting. I just noted a lot of activity on the forums over there, I didn't realize the community was so unhelpful to people just getting started with themes.
RepoMonkey said 12:11AM on 3-30-2009
Woah - not that you're bitter or anything! Care to stick the boot in a bit more? How many themes have you released lately?
I come from the Windows customisation scene and while it's a lot busier than the Mac scene (for obvious reasons) it's very similar. The majority of themes are ugly and unusable whatever platform you're talking about, but there are some great ones too. I'm not quite sure what you expect of a program like Magnifique which is basically a window skinner - and what sort of themes you want to see? Candy canes and Xmas tree scrollbars or Halloween pumpkin head buttons like you get on XP? Trendy monotone themes where the buttons are identical lines of varying width?
If you look at the downloads of themes on sites like Wincustomise, you'll find that the very popular themes are always permutations of the familiar basic themes that come with the OS. Leopard's no different. I thought there were some great themes in Magnifique and I'm equally sure that over time that theme list will grow. No thanks, of course, to whingers like yourself who expect a) everything to be handed to them on a plate and b) who contribute nothing but bile and hate.
Kenn.keeper said 8:05PM on 3-29-2009
Some MacHeads are elitist and are not fond of anyone who is a PC user or makes their computer look like theirs using Themes and graphics. As a PC user I have learned to turn off all the fancy bling that are resource hogs including themes. Themes are nice but they don't make your computer run any better..Mac or PC.
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Gilbert Palau said 3:47PM on 4-04-2009
I tried Magnifique, and its pretty cool, but like other readers have posted, there are no interesting themes found, its basically changing of colors here and there.
I have found though a couple of other options I would like to see reviewed like for example
Crystal Clear, which is a full revamp of the OSX interface in crystal clear, you can see more here: http://crystalclear.musingsfrommars.org
And the people behind Architect: http://www.slightlypretentious.com/ and their "Facade" app which has been undergoing a lot of updates though its still not released... Maybe they are waiting for Snow Leopard to come out to release their product...
It would be good to write a follow up on mac themes, and a round up of all products available free or shareware. Another cool thing I can suggest is a nice round up of all past present and future mac theming apps.
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Zee said 8:12PM on 4-11-2009
So far I really like Magnifique. Crystalclear.. man that really was bad for me. Half the time it would pop up vanish change color (basically changing of colors) on its own lol..
Great review thanks
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