Change the background images used in Mission Control, Dashboard and more

What You'll Need:

>> OS X 10.7 Lion
>> Lion Designer (http://bit.ly/liondesigner)
>> 30 Minutes

Difficulty: Medium

You can customize a lot of things on your Mac-- the desktop background and your user icon, to name two. But there is also plenty of visual design in Lion that Apple won’t let you change. 

You can’t for example, alter the grey background that appears behind Mission Control and on your login screen. Neither can the background of your folders in Launchpad be tinkered with, or the backdrop to Dashboard. However, with a free app called Lion Designer, you can change these things and more. You can even bring back the color to the icons in your Finder sidebar (though there is quite a big caveat to this, as we’ll explain on the opposite page).

When you first open Lion Designer, it looks a bit bewildering. There are so many buttons. That’s why we’re going to show you how to harness its power to make your Mac look just the way you want. The great thing about it is that if you later change your mind and want to go back to the original images, all you have to do is click a button in Lion Designer and it’ll return things to how they were when you first got your Mac or installed Lion.

There are a couple of things to point out before you begin. Firstly, the app is a bit rough and ready, and lacks the polish of many OS X apps. We also found an odd little glitch with it, where it wouldn’t reset one of the backgrounds to the Lion default any more. With this in mind, we suggest you make a full backup of your Mac before tinkering with the system. That way, if things do go amiss, you know you can return matters to how they were. Having said that, the app worked flawlessly most of the time, so don’t let this put you off using it. Once you’ve made the changes you want, you won’t need to touch Lion Designer until you want to tinker further.

Point your web browser at http://bit.ly/liondesigner and download the latest stable version. Once it’s downloaded, click the Downloads button in the top-right of your Safari window, then click the magnifying glass next to Lion Designer, which will show you its icon in your Downloads folder. Copy it to your Applications folder and then double-click it from there.

The Lion Designer Interface

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Customize OS X Lion with Lion Designer

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  What to Change?

  Let’s give Dashboard a more interesting background than its standard grey dots. Next to Dashboard Background: click Change. In the window, click OK. Either select a sample image, or browse to an image elsewhere on your Mac’s hard drive. Click Choose once you settle on one.

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  Swap Pictures

  You’ll see the image in the thumbnail to the right of Dashboard Background. To use it, click Apply to its left. Type in an administrator password if prompted – you may have to do this several times. Then open Dashboard to see your new image.

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  Make it Right

  If the image doesn’t show, it was the wrong size. So click Show Conversion Window in the lower right corner. In Finder, locate the image, duplicate it and drag its icon to the Conversion Window. Leave the top radio button selected, and click Convert below.

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  New Background

  Your image shows as a thumbnail next to each place it can be used. Click Apply next to Dashboard Background; type your password. Now open Dashboard and the image should appear. Lion Designer resizes for the main screen, so the image may be tiled on a larger one.

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  Change Other Things

  Altering other backgrounds or icons works in the same way – select your image and apply the change. You may need to restart your Mac or log out and then log back in for the alteration to take effect. If the image doesn’t display right, pop it through the converter.

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  Get Started

  Down near the bottom of the Lion Designer window, you’ll see a Finder Sidebar heading. Click the button marked Colorful. Click Download SIMBL in the top-right corner of the window. It will download to your Downloads folder; double-click its PKG icon.

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  Second Download

  When SIMBL is installed, return to the Lion Designer instructions window and click the 2.1 Download ColorfulSidebar button. This too appears in your Downloads folder. Drag its DMG file to the white box in the instructions window under "3.0". Then click 3.1 Install below.

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  After Every Restart

  Click on a Finder window and you’ll see the color has been restored to the sidebar icons, now they’re much easier to find. What’s irksome is that every time you restart your Mac, you’ll need to choose  > Force Quit…, select Finder and click Relaunch to get the color.

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  Quick Tip

  Want to set things back to the Lion defaults? Open up Lion Designer and use the button in the lower right corner to get things moving. Note that you may well have to type your administrator password in as Lion Designer reverts your settings.

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