One of the oddities of Leopards new look is the fact that some aspects of the old aqua look from previous versions of OS X have remained, the most obvious being the aqua style scroll bars in Finder windows, Safari etc.

Fortunately there is a way to complete the transformation and to make these GUI elements take on the more subtle blue-grey appearance as seen in iTunes. To do this you need to first download the following file http://www.abitbol.org/macosx/Extras.zip. Once you have this file downloaded and extracted you will find you have a folder called Extras with 3 files, a ReadMe file and two files called Extras.rsrc and Extras2.rsrc. The ReadMe file contains the instructions on installing the files although it does not explain the process fully.

It tells you to copy the file for your Mac type ( either Extras.rsrc for PowerPC Macs or Extras2.rsrc for Intel Macs ) to the following folder :-

/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/

What it doesn’t tell you is that the file needs to overwrite the existing file in this folder and by default you will not be able to. To copy the file first of all make a copy of the existing file in that folder ( drag it to your Desktop ) then delete the original version ( you will need to enter admin username and password to do this ). Once you have done this you should then be able to copy the new version into the folder.

For the change to take effect you then need to logout or restart. You should then see nice subtle scroll bars in replacement for the previous shiny aqua versions as below :-