[Mitch]

This is an easy tutorial to make your menubar black (as shown in the screenshot below)

Use at your own risk. I am not responsible if anything goes wrong, so make backups of all the files you replace in case something does go wrong, though I have not had any problems and I have tried this on many macs. I am unsure whether this works on PPC so there is a chance something may go wrong if you do this on a PowerPC, though it works fully on an Intel mac. Also I have not tried is on OSX86 Hackintosh so there is a change it may not work.

1. Download the the file named 'Blackmenubar Files' From here (or at the bottom of this tutorial) and extract them to your desktop.
2. Go to /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Resources/ and make a back up of SArtFile.bin
3. Once backed up delete the file from the resources.
4. Move the modded SArtFile.bin into the resources folder.
5. Go to /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ and backup Extras2.rsrc
6. Move the Extras2.rsrc into the resources
7. Reboot your mac
8. If your menubar is still white and is looking weird go into System Preferences>Desktop & Screensaver and toggle the Translucent menu bar option. Deselect the box and your menu bar will be black (it may say there is no transparency on, but the black menu bar is transparent).
9. Your icons in the top right corner will now not stand out whatsoever and will be black, we need to edit these to make them white.
10. Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras and this is the folder where all the menubar application resources are stored. Inside will be 26 or so files all ending with a .menu extension. To open these files you need to right click and select 'Show Package Contents' and then navigate to Contents>Resources when the new window pops up after selecting 'Show Package Contents'. Make sure you backup the whole Menu Extras folder.
11. Inside the resources folder will be a set of icons in .PDF format (So to edit them you will need to have a program such as Adobe Illustrator to simply invert the colors)
12. You can use my modded icons which I basically just inverted for the main ones such as battery, airport, bluetooth, etc. So to use my allready modded icons download the file 'Black Menubar Icon Resources' from here and extract the contents to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras (be sure to make backups of it!)
13. Now all your main icons in the menubar will be white and looking really good except the calendar, so we need to download and install iStat Menu and just use the custom clock they have, it looks the same and all you have to do is change the options to White text and make the date format how you want. You can find iStat menu here
14. Now their is only one icon left to replace and it is the spotlight icon. Simply navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices and right click on Spotlight and select 'Show Package Contents'. A new windows will pop up and navigate to Contents>Resources and replace 'MDSearchMenuIcon.pdf' with this one.
15. Reboot and you will have a nice black menubar which looks like mine. Also I cannot find a way to change the icon text such as battery remaining text in the menubar So I had to make it show no text whatsoever, and this is why we have iStat Menu for the custom clock.
16. Enjoy! Also thanks to the guys over at Neowin who helped me get the infomation on where files were stored and for the resources to make the menubar black.

Update 1: If you want it to be as black as mine you need to download a program from here and move the slider to the far right side. Program is called Opaque Menubar and you need to run it once and it is changed.

Update 2: Added link for spaces, time machine, and User modded white icons

Black Menubar Files
My modded Black Menubar Icons
White spotlight icon
Spaces, Time Machine, User, White icons

Attached File(s)

•  Picture_1.png (473.61K)
  Number of downloads: 287
•  0101.png (79.36K)
  Number of downloads: 102

[+Dark+]

Thanks for this. Much appreciated. Will implement after work.

[Ambig]

Thanks for this.

But how do I move the system clock next to the spotlight?

Right now, it's at the end of the icons (next to the time machine icon.

[Mitch]

Ambig, on Oct 4 2008, 07:47 PM, said:

Thanks for this.

But how do I move the system clock next to the spotlight?

Right now, it's at the end of the icons (next to the time machine icon.

Hold the command key and drag it, works for all the system icons except spotlight in the menu bar.

[Ambig]

Ahhh...

Thank you!

I didn't know that.

Thank you for the tutorial. It looks awesome! Should be something Apple should give an option to enable in snow leopard.

[Tadder]

this is safe?, I mean, zero spywares or something, hehe I'm very paranoic I know, but that's the life style nowadays

[Mitch]

Tadder, on Oct 14 2008, 04:56 PM, said:

this is safe?, I mean, zero spywares or something, hehe I'm very paranoic I know, but that's the life style nowadays

100% safe

[Narutometal]

Do you have the original Extras2.rsrc by any chance?

I forgot to back it up. >_<

Thanks.

Edit: Got it, nevermind.

[Mitch]

Just wondering if anyone has tried it and kept it, if so could you post a screenshot of what it looks like, just curious what other people's looks like. Also if anyone needs anymore icons in white just PM me and I'll edit them and add them to the main post.

[Ambig]

I actually ran into a problem, with I think the Extras2 file. There were 2 of them in the folder. It appears one of them is for the old PPC apps. When replaced (there was only 1 after replacing), PPC apps stopped working completely.

I had to re-install from an old image from Time Machine.

[Mitch]

Ambig, on Oct 26 2008, 01:50 PM, said:

I actually ran into a problem, with I think the Extras2 file. There were 2 of them in the folder. It appears one of them is for the old PPC apps. When replaced (there was only 1 after replacing), PPC apps stopped working completely.

I had to re-install from an old image from Time Machine.

You on a PowerPC? If so I'm on a intel macbook and I havn't tested it on PPC. But it's worked for many people on intel based Macs.

[johnthompson]

Use black instead of white. Then your menubar will be nicely grayed in the same style as other windows. It seems Leopard is able to detect the dark color in the desktop background and disable the transparency for parts which are too dark.

[Phil Gates]

For some reason my text is still black in my menu bar. Any tips?

[Mitch]

Phil Gates, on Nov 12 2008, 01:38 AM, said:

For some reason my text is still black in my menu bar. Any tips?

That's odd, did you follow the guide correctly?, also try turning transparency off/on, rebooting, etc. Should look like this:

Attached File(s)

•  Picture_1.png (539.59K)
  Number of downloads: 58

[Phil Gates]

I think I followed the directions correctly. Everything is fine but the text color. Here is a screenshot after i turned the transparency off and on and rebooted.

EDIT: I went through again and deleted the files and replaced them again and it's working. Sorry!

Attached File(s)

•  Picture_2.png (657.97K)
  Number of downloads: 30