Terminal Transparency

ericmurphy

Registered
I've always thought that the only way to get a partially transparent terminal window was to go to the command line: you know, "defaults write com.apple.terminal TerminalOpaqueness 0.85," or whatever it is. Then I discovered in OS X 10.1, that when you change the color of terminal windows, you reset the opagueness to 1.0 again. I got tired of having to reset the terminal opaqueness from the command line, so I did a little exploring. I reasoned that there should be a way to edit the Terminal preferences file using the Property List editor (hey, it was an inspired guess).

Sure enough, it works. Here's how: go to ~/Library/Preferences, and find the file "com.apple.Terminal.plist" Double-click on the file, which will open it in Property List Editor. Click on the disclosure triangle where it says "root." Scroll down until you find the line that says "TerminalOpaqueness." If the terminal is not transparent, the value will be 1.00000 (I think you get five decimal places precision). Double-click the value, enter what you want it to be (I find a value around 0.75 to be good, although a lot of people recommend 0.85), and then save the file. Voila - your next open terminal window will be partially transparent!
 
I've heard good things about TinkerTool (do you have a URL where I can get it?), but in all honesty, I can't imagine it would be too much easier than just editing the property list.
 
Originally posted by ericmurphy
I've heard good things about TinkerTool (do you have a URL where I can get it?), but in all honesty, I can't imagine it would be too much easier than just editing the property list.

Yeah, but everyone can easily get their hands on TinkerTool. PropertyListEditor is part of the Developer Tools, if I'm not mistaken, so for most people TinkerTool would be easier. New Macs don't come with Dev Tools, and you pretty much need Broadband to d/l them. ;)
 
I have a strange problem this morning. I had installed TinkerTool yesterday and made a few changes, but I was supposed to restart the machine to make the changes appear. I turn off the machine and went to sleep.
This morning the computer started fine, but when I tried to start applications like Explorer, Entourage, Word, ICQ, MSM Messenger, etc, they never started. The mouse pointer became in a multicolor spinning wheel and the applications never started. I couldn't quit the application with ESC+COMAND+OPTION neither!!!
Finally, after 4 restarts, I decided to delete TinkerTool, restarted the machine and everything went on fine. :confused:
 
Strange...

What changes did you make with Tinker Tool ?

Which version did you installed 1.5.2 or 2.0.2?

Cheers...


(Saludos chango, desde Singapore)
 
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