Date published
May 3, 2025
Tags
macOSutilitiesappletechnology muse
Introduction
I started experimenting with JankyBorders when I adopted AeroSpace (more on that in a separate post)
JankyBorders is a lightweight tool designed to add coloured borders to user windows on macOS 14.0+. It enhances the user experience by visually highlighting the currently focused window without relying on the accessibility API, thereby being faster than comparable tools.
It is possible to make the Border colour consistent with an undocumented argument:
order=above
This renders the JankyBorder over the top of any window shadow applied by macOS.
JankyBorders is a lightweight tool designed to add coloured borders to user windows on macOS 14.0+. It enhances the user experience by visually highlighting the currently focused window without relying on the accessibility API, thereby being faster than comparable tools.
It is possible to make the Border colour consistent with an undocumented argument:
order=above
This renders the JankyBorder over the top of any window shadow applied by macOS.
Setup
This is the way I did it…
Install JankyBorders using brew
brew tap FelixKratz/formulae
brew install borders
Create create a config file
mkdir ~/.config/borders
nano ~/.config/borders/bordersrc
paste this into the bordersrc file (default config):
#!/bin/bash
options=(
style=round
width=6.0
hidpi=off
active_color=0xffe2e2e3
inactive_color=0xff414550
)
borders "${options[@]}"
Exit with:
ctrl + x
Save changes
Now you have created a config file in a hidden dir inside your root directory
Bootstrap with brew
brew services start borders
Job done
Custom config
This is the custom config I use with the order argument added:
#!/bin/bash
options=(
style=round
width=4.0
hidpi=on
active_color=0xffffffff # pure bright white
inactive_color=0xff494d64 # keep muted dark gray
order=above
)
borders "${options[@]}"
