Crystal Black: A Dark Theme for Mac OS X

Think A Different Color!

Tired of gray and light blue? Crystal Black lets you add a little color to your windows — colors of your own choice.

Change the background color of outline views, and CB uses your choice to tint tabular information in a complementary color.

You can also change the background color used for various areas of text in your apps.

Any color you choose can incorporate transparency if you wish, whether a given app offers that option or not.

New in Crystal Black 1.5, you can choose among four text-color themes: White, and pale yellow, orange, and cyan.

Stylish Elegance

Crystal Black enhances the innate elegance of Mac OS X's Aqua interface with such features as:

Beautiful, sculpted components
Gradient sheets
HUD window style
Seamless, rounded windows
Etched text for all
Elegant rollover buttons
New in Crystal Black 1.5, a beautiful high-contrast style option for Safari, which turns backgrounds black, text white, and links a pleasing color of blue.

A Unified Interface

Crystal Black applies an elegant, minimalist interface across all your apps.

Keep it simple with Crystal Black's unified rendering of buttons, toolbars, tabs, boxes, scrollbars, and more.

Enjoy dozens of custom modifications the theme provides for third-party applications, Apple apps, and system frameworks.

Why should search boxes be the only text fields that get that smooth, rounded-corner look? With CB, they aren’t!

Quit hunting for the text tools you need, which each app provides—or don't provide—in different menus. The Crystal Black global menu gives you consistent, easy access to such items as Fonts, Colors, Lists, Tables, and other RTF editing tools.

More Tricks Up Our Sleeve . . .

Although Crystal Black is much simpler to use, with many fewer options, than CrystalClear Interface, it still has a few niceties under the hood that are worth pointing out:

Application icon in your menubar. Particularly if you're using a laptop with a crowded menubar, you can save a lot of space by replacing "System Preferences," for example, with .
It looks great, too!
Clear Crystal icons. This function provides easy access to the installer for the Clear Crystal icon set. From the CB menu, just select "Run icon installer," and you can incorporate these elegant icons into your interface.

Deco Bubbles desktop pics. Use a simple menu item function to switch among the 10 stunning Deco Bubbles desktop pictures, designed with Crystal Black users in mind.

Text tools. Always have ready access to the full power of the Cocoa text system, no matter what application you're working in. Stickies? Pop in a ruler, table, list, etc. A handy feature passed down from CCI, you can find these tools in Crystal Black's global menu or in a contextual menu that shows up wherever you're editing rich text.
HUD or metal style for the Authentication panel. Crystal Black now incorporates the recently released "Crystal NIBs for SecurityAgent" app, which lets you quickly switch out the default style for either HUD or metal.
Clear or opaque? With Crystal Black, you can choose between having semi-transparent windows and views, or making everything opaque—the default on Mac OS X.
New tricks for your apps. There are a few apps I've taught to behave a bit different than they're used to. Four of them—Mail, Fresh, iTunes and Safari—appear in the CB Preferences panel:

Mail now lets you split the message view vertically,
Fresh lets you double the number of items at your disposal,
iTunes and Safari both offer a high-contrast style that may appeal to those who love working in the dark.

Updatable graphics. If app updates overwrite Crystal Black's custom graphics, you can easily reinstall CB's graphics to keep the theme looking spick and span.
Customizable toolbars. By default, the toolbars of an application's Preferences window can't be customized. How come? With Crystal Black, you can make toolbar items display large or small, with text or without, just as you can with all other toolbars.

Dozens of subtle, custom graphic mods. To provide the most consistent interface possible, the theme installs numerous custom graphics. Here are some of the apps and menubar icons that get this special attention:

Applications	Menubar Icons
Apple Automator iCal iPhoto iTunes iWeb Keynote Mail Numbers Pages Preview Safari System Preferences Terminal Xcode Third-Party 1Password Autopilot Camino CoverSutra DEVONthink Espresso Leap LittleSnapper Path Finder Platypus PlistEdit Pro Querious TextExpander VectorDesigner Xtorrent	Apple: All standard extras Third-Party 1Password Alfred Autopilot Bowtie Chronosync Clusters CoverSutra DragThing DropBox DropCopy Evernote GeekTool Growl HardwareGrowler Hazel Hyperspaces iClip iKey MagicPrefs MenuPop My Living Desktop OpenMenu X Overflow Proxi ShoveBox Tags TextExpander TotalFinder Twitterific Voila

About Crystal Black and Lion (Mac OS X 10.7)

Update 09/12/12: Crystal Black themes the system graphics for Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" as thoroughly as it does on Snow Leopard. The latest release (version 1.6) supports the most recent Lion releases — 10.7.4 and 10.7.5, as well as Mac OS X 10.8 ("Mountain Lion") to version 10.8.5. It does not support earlier versions of Lion.

Note: Always read the system requirements for particular releases of Crystal Black, since they only support certain versions of Lion. Or, in the case of Version 1.0, don't support Lion at all.

Crystal Black Theme

You can download Crystal Black and use it freely for 15 days. If you'd like to continue using it beyond the trial period, you'll need to purchase a license for $10.00. Before starting your trial, take a look at the brief User's Guide, or refer to it during your trial if questions arise. Crystal Black can damage your system if not used properly. It is not compatible with OS X Mavericks.

Latest version:
1.6.6 (07.22.13)
68.1 MB

As of 4/12/15, Crystal Black is no longer available for download or purchase.

User's Guide

Note: This is an abbreviated version of the User's Guide. The complete version is available as a PDF file.

There are two ways you interact with Crystal Black (CB): The global menu, and the options panel.

Global Menu

Preferences: Opens the CB Options window. You can use the ⌘' keyboard shortcut to access this window.
Tips: New in CB 1.5: Opens a window of tips to optimize your experience with Crystal Black. The Tips are presented to users who've installed CB for the first time, and you can access them again here.
Manage Graphics: Lets you reinstall application graphics when needed — for example, when you install updates to iTunes or Safari.
Change Text Color: New in CB 1.5: Lets you switch among four themes — white, pale cyan, pale yellow, and pale orange — for text on the menubar, in menus, on buttons, and on most other user interface elements.
Set Desktop Picture: Gives you access to the included set of complementary Deco Bubbles desktop pictures.
Toggle Crystal Docs Icons: Lets you install or uninstall the Clear Crystal icon set, which was originally designed to complement the Crystal Black theme.
Toggle Crystal NIBs: New in CB 1.5: Launches a small app for switching the style of the Authentication window. Besides the system default style, you can choose between Heads-Up Display (HUD) or Metal styles.
Re-Theme Window: Forces CB to walk through your windows again in case it missed something the first time.
Reload Crystal Black Agent: Can be used to force applications to reload Crystal Black. This function is designed for use on Lion and Mountain Lion, where it can be useful at times if applications aren't loading Crystal Black.
Turn Crystal Black Off: Lets you disable CB for your entire system. This prevents CB from loading, but it does not restore the default system or application graphics. You can re-enable CB by selecting "Enable Crystal Black" in an application's main menu.
Text Tools: Provide quick access to commonly used panels and functions when working with text. (The same tools can be accessed from a contextual menu.)
Uninstall: Quickly removes all traces of CB and restores all system and application graphics.

Options Panel

Set custom colors.

The two color wells let you customize the background of some text areas and for tables and outline views.

Make toolbars customizable.

This setting provides a contextual menu that lets you customize virtually all application toolbars, whether they offer the option or not.

Show application's icon in menubar.

Replace long application names with their icons in the app's menubar.

Use window and view transparency.

This option lets you choose between having semi-transparent windows and views, or making everything opaque.

Application options.

CB offers options to customize four specific applications I use frequently. All of these are turned off by default:

Mail: By default, Mail splits the message viewer horizontally, with the preview area at the bottom. This option lets you override this.
Fresh: By default, Fresh shows two rows of "fresh" items. This option lets you see twice as many.
iTunes: This setting tells iTunes to make the background color of its playlists and track listings black instead of white/light blue.
Finder: The first option lets you use transparent colors and images in the background of Finder's icon view. The other lets you hide the titles of images in icon view.
Safari: New in CB 1.5: This setting applies a style sheet for Safari that turns backgrounds black, text white, and links a pleasing color of blue. It tries to ensure that pages are still readable and usable, but this is experimental, so send feedback for pages you find that don't work right.

Disabled Apps.

This tab lets you can maintain a list of applications that should not load Crystal Black. By disabling an app, Crystal Black still loads a minimal set of text-color instructions to maintain readable text contrast for buttons and other widgets.

Uninstalling Crystal Black

To uninstall Crystal Black, select "Uninstall Crystal Black" from the global menu. Do not attempt to uninstall Crystal Black manually. During installation, the CB installer makes various changes to your system defaults, including swapping out the default system graphics files. These defaults and files are restored by the uninstall program. Removing CB components manually will therefore not completely restore your system to its original state.

You must use the CB uninstaller program to ensure that all of CB's customizations are removed and your system restored to its original configuration. Be sure to use the uninstaller that came with the version of CB you are using.

You can also run the standalone application, CrystalBlackUninstaller.app, which is stored in the /Library/Application Support/MarsThemes/ CrystalBlack/Other Components/ folder.

Release and Tech Notes

System Requirements

Crystal Black requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 ("Snow Leopard"), Mac OS X 10.7 ("Lion" versions 10.7.4 or 10.7.5), or Mac OS X 10.8 ("Mountain Lion") through 10.8.5. (CB doesn't support OS X Mavericks.) It requires an Intel system with at least 4GB of RAM running at least two processors at a minimum speed of 2.4Ghz.

If you have the previous version of Crystal Black (v. 1.0), do not attempt to install it on Lion, as doing so will likely corrupt Lion's system graphics.

If you are a current user of CrystalClear Interface (CCI), you must uninstall CCI before trying out Crystal Black.

Crystal Black doesn't load into apps built with Apple's older Carbon frameworks. However, care has been taken to make these apps work as well as possible with the CB theme.

License Information

You can use Crystal Black freely for 15 days. To use it beyond the trial period, you'll need to purchase a license for $10.00.

Known Bugs

Please report any bugs that you find, with as much detail as possible: llscotts@gmail.com.

Carbon apps: Text stays black on some kinds of buttons.
Java apps that don't use native Mac OS X interface elements: Black images on buttons will be unreadable.
Specific app incompatibilities:: Springy crashes when closing a window in icon mode.; On Lion, iTunes crashes when terminated.; Photoshop CS5 can be buggy, and some popup buttons don't show white text.
Some Apple status-bar items: Any of the Apple menu extras (e.g., Clock, Battery, Airport) that display text are a problem, because it's not always possible to make this text white. More info in the FAQ section.
Text rulers: On Snow Leopard, Crystal Black's white tab widgets on the text editing ruler turn black when dragged. You must click on the page to retheme them, or you can use a contextual menu item on the ruler itself, "Re-Theme Me." This issue doesn't affect Lion.
Finder: On Lion, the Finder sidebar "smears" when it is resized. In addition, Finder's scrolling can be slow in list view when browsing very large folders. Slowness depends on which options you have selected for this view. For example, choosing "calculate all sizes" or "Kind" can slow the scrolling down.
"Sandboxed" applications (Lion only): TextEdit and Preview behave differently from other apps on Lion, because they are "sandboxed" to prevent changes to their app preferences, which, when CB is loaded includes the CB preferences. Among the problems are that they cannot handle any functions that require authentication or involve changing Crystal Black preferences, so those functions are disabled in those apps.

For More Information

For more details about Crystal Black, refer to the article on the developer's blog, which describes in detail the inner workings of the software. You can also contact the developer by email.

Version History

07.22.13: 1.6.6 Adds support for Mac OS X 10.8.5. Removes Safari from the list of excluded apps on Mountain Lion, as the latest version of Safari seems compatible with Crystal Black. Not compatible with OS X Mavericks.
05.31.13: 1.6.5 Adds support for Mac OS X 10.8.4.
12.15.12: 1.6.4 To reduce the size of Crystal Black with the introduction of iTunes 11, Crystal Black will no longer bundle the Crystal Black for iTunes application. Separate free utilities are available for theming iTunes 10 and iTunes 11. Addresses a bug that prevents users from moving the iTunes window. Updates Crystal Black for Mac OS X 10.8.3.
10.25.12: 1.6.3 This release fixes relevant bugs identified in CrystalClear Interface 2.8.
09.24.12: 1.6.2 This release fixes a bug in the uninstaller that affects users of Mountain Lion 10.8.2.
09.12.12: 1.6.1 This release adds bug fixes and updated system graphics files from CrystalClear Interface 2.7.8, and updates Crystal Black for Mac OS X 10.8.2.
08.24.12: 1.6 This release adds the Smooth Black button theme and compatibility with Mac OS X 10.8.1.
08.15.12: 1.5.2 This release primarily adds some enhancements and bug fixes from CCI 2.7.6.
06.26.12: 1.5.1 This update includes some bug fixes and minor enhancements. It adds support for Mac OS X 10.7.5, and tentative support for the developer preview of Mac OS X 10.8 ("Mountain Lion").
06.18.12: 1.5. This update includes several new features, as well as numerous enhancements and bug fixes. It drops support for Mac OS X 10.7.3.
New features:
Enhancements:
Bug fixes:
Other (architectural):
05.30.12: 1.4.
05.04.12: 1.3.1.
04.16.12: 1.3.

Version History (Continued)

02.14.12: 1.2.4.
01.30.12: 1.2.3.
11.07.11: 1.2.2.2. This update refines implementation of functions introduced in 1.2.2.
Bug fixes
11.02.11: 1.2.2.1.This update fixes a couple of bugs introduced in 1.2.2.
Bug fixes
10.31.11: 1.2.2. Adds support for Mac OS X 10.7.2, updates graphics for iTunes, fixes several bugs, and more.
Enhancements
Bug fixes
Other (architectural)
09.24.11: 1.2.1. This release fixes a couple of bugs and adds enhancements for Lion:
09.18.11: 1.2. This update contains enhancements, bug fixes, and improved compatibility with Mac OS X 10.7 ("Lion"). Primary changes:
09.02.11: 1.1.2. This is a maintenance release with two primary changes:
07.06.11: 1.1. This release contains a variety of enhancements, new features, and bug fixes.
New features
Enhancements
Bug fixes

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is Crystal Black compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 ("Lion")?

Crystal Black supports Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.8), Lion versions 10.7.4 or 10.7.5, and Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) to version 10.8.5. It does not support earlier versions of Lion.

Crystal Black seems to slow my system down, and launching apps is slower. What gives?

If your system seems sluggish when running Crystal Black, your Mac may not meet or exceed the minimum system requirements (see that section). When launching apps that spawn multiple windows, CB will definitely slow down the time it takes for the windows to finish rendering. If your system meets the system requirements, it will still take a second or two for each window to be themed. However, subsequent windows will be themed pretty much instantly.

I can't read the Apple statusbar clock text, because it's black. What can I do?

If you're using Snow Leopard, this is not a problem, but the solution doesn't work well on Lion. Any of the Apple menu extras (e.g., Clock, Battery, Airport) that display text are a problem, because it's not possible to make this text white. The solution is to use some alternative, free menubar apps that provide the same information. You can find these by searching on MacUpdate.com or other sources. Here are some suggestions:

There are free utilities that display the time in the menubar and which let you customize the text color. I use MenuCalendarClock iCal, which has both a free and paid version.
I don't have a laptop, so it's not possible for me to use the Battery indicator. However, one free replacement that has good reviews is SlimBatteryMonitor, which lets you change the text color.
The Airport problem is also a puzzle, because seeing the time connected isn't an option on my desktop Mac, so I can't test it out. :-(

I just installed Crystal Black. Why don't I see custom graphics for my applications, like Safari or iTunes?

Crystal Black uses a Spotlight search to find your applications. If you don't have Spotlight indexing your boot drive, CB won't find your apps. Also, if you have multiple copies of a given app on your Mac, CB will only find the first instance, and that's where the graphics will be applied.

Some of my menubar icons are black, and I can't read them against Crystal Black's menubar. Any suggestions?

Crystal Black cannot "automagically" convert the black menubar icons of all apps that people may use. In the current release, it provides white variants for 24 apps, and the upcoming release will boost that number to 30. But there are hundreds more that users may rely on. Here are a few things to try:

Run the global menu function Manage Graphics -> Reinstall for -> Menubar items. It may be that the white graphics for some items were not updated when you installed Crystal Black (see question below about custom graphics).
Check to see if the app provides options (other than black) for its menubar icon.
Check to see if you can use the app without relying on its menubar icon.
Write the developer and request a white variant, which can be added to the to-do list.

Crystal Black isn't loading into Google Chrome, but it used to. Why?

I don't know what Google did to Chrome, but you're right... Chrome no longer loads either of the Mars Themes. If you're using Chrome, you may also have problems with black text showing up on black buttons. If you do, you may be able to fix this by loading a custom style sheet. In general, I don't think Google does a good job in supporting Chrome for the Mac. Use Safari instead — after all, Chrome borrowed Apple's open-source browser engine, WebKit, to build the guts of Chrome.

Some applications, like GarageBand, don't seem to get themed by Crystal Black. Is this normal?

Yes, some apps have custom window frames that aren't affected by CB.

Why are so many functions in the Crystal Black menu disabled in TextEdit and Preview?

On Lion, Crystal Black disables all of its functions in TextEdit and Preview that modify CB options or require authentication (e.g., uninstalling CB or managing graphics). For some reason, the Lion versions of these applications can't handle any tasks like these. (Note: The problem doesn't affect users on Snow Leopard.)

After uninstalling Crystal Black, why do I still have the Clear Crystal icons installed on my Mac?

You must uninstall the Clear Crystal icons before uninstalling Crystal Black. If you didn't, you can either reinstall Crystal Black and uninstall them, or you can download and use the free Clear Crystal Icon Installer app from the MarsThemes website. Note: Starting with Crystal Black 1.5, the uninstaller offers to copy both the Clear Crystal Icons and the Crystal NIBs apps to your Applications folder, so you don't have to download them separately if this happens to you.

Tips for Using Crystal Black

	Avoid applications that are built with Java, Python, Apple's Carbon framework, or other non-native Mac OS X application frameworks. If you use a lot of apps of this type, Crystal Black probably isn't going to work well for you. Applications built with non-native Mac software frameworks do not load Crystal Black at all, or don't load it properly. Symptoms that your app is of this type are: Buttons appear with unreadable black text on them. Scrollbars are the aqua variety rather than black gloss. Using the open/save panel can be unreliable. The application menu becomes unusable if you have elected to use the app's icon — instead of its name — in the menubar. The application may crash frequently or may not launch at all — especially if it launches with a blank document or with an open/save panel. Examples include Moneydance, MoneyGuru, Firefox, Yummy FTP, Adobe Acrobat, and many others.
	Find alternative status bar items if the ones you're using don't render white (so you can see/read them). If you're using Apple's built-in statusbar items and can't read one of them, try searching MacUpdate.com for a free alternative. Many such apps exist and have more features to boot. For example, MenuCalendarClock iCal has a free version that lets you modify the text color of the clock display.
	Check the app's options to see if it provides any non-black, alternative menu icons. Many apps let you choose among several possible menubar icons. Examples are TextExpander, iStatMenus, YouControl Tunes, ClawMenu, Butler, and iKey.
	If you must use an app that doesn't run properly with Crystal Black loaded, try disabling Crystal Black for that app. You can disable individual apps by opening the CB Options panel and selecting the "Disabled" tab. For example, I must disable the application Xtorrent on Snow Leopard, because it doesn't render correctly when CB is loaded. When disabled (or on Lion), though, it works just fine.

To see if Crystal Black is causing any systemwide problems on your Mac, try turning it off before uninstalling Crystal Black.

To turn Crystal Black off, select the menu item "Turn Crystal Black Off" from the CB global menu. This action will relaunch the current app, but you'll need to log out and back in to unload Crystal Black from all the other applications you have running.

You can use this feature also to see if an individual app works with Crystal Black off — it's the same as adding the app to the "Disabled" list.

To turn Crystal Black back on, launch an application and select the "Enable Crystal Black" item in the app's main menu.

To restore the Crystal Black custom graphics for an application, such as Safari, that replaces them when upgraded, use the menu item Manage graphics -> Reinstall for... -> Applications.

This menu item can be used to reinstall or uninstall the various kinds of custom graphics CB uses.

If you use the built-in custom icons and NIB files...

You need to uninstall these before uninstalling Crystal Black; otherwise, they won't get uninstalled. Note that if this happens, you can use the free standalone utilities for this purpose, available on the MarsThemes website.

An Introduction To Crystal Black

Changing Text Color Themes

Using the Black Style in Safari

Using the Black Safari Style in Crystal Black