Appearance Control Panel
tell app "Appearance" to get picture file of monitor 1 (* returns "no picture" if the desktop has a color but not a picture *)
This command returns an integer representing a count of certain Appearance objects, such as:
count of monitors
or:
count of themes
You can also use the syntax count each theme or
count each monitor.
This indicates whether an object
exists and returns a boolean value, as in:
exists monitor 2
This command returns false if the machine is
hooked up to only one monitor.
This quits the Appearance application:
tell app "Appearance" to quit
This command sends a
run Apple event to Appearance, which opens the
application if it is not already open. Using this command is not
necessary as AppleScript sends an implicit run
command to the applications that are targeted in a
tell statement. Chapter 7
, describes the
tell statement.
Application
The Appearance Application class has two elements:
theme and monitor. There are in
reality about two dozen theme objects associated with each Appearance
application and one or more monitors (depending on how many monitors
are attached to your machine). The Application
class has the following properties (appearing here in their
Dictionary order), all of which are accessible by targeting the
Appearance app in a tell statement. The properties
are accompanied by their data type in parentheses:
name (string)This represents the application’s name, as in “Appearance.”
frontmost (boolean)This returns true if Appearance is the active
application on the desktop (i.e., its window is highlighted).
version (version type, like a string)Use this property, as in
tell app "Appearance" to get version
to find out the control panel’s version on the
machine. You’ll have to coerce the
version property to a string to
pass it to the display dialog osax:
version as string
current theme (reference) This is a reference to the selected
theme under the Theme tab of the control panel.
You can use this property to get information on the current theme:
name of current theme
appearance (string) This property corresponds to the Appearance pop-up menu under the control panel’s Appearance tab. This is the name for the overall look of icons, menus, and other desktop elements, as in “Apple platinum.”
appearance variant (string) This property corresponds to the Variation pop-up menu under the
control panel’s Appearance tab. It returns a
string such as
“Lavender,” representing another
variation on the desktop appearance (the dictionary entry of an
integer return value is wrong).
background pattern (international text) This property corresponds to the Patterns list box under the control panel’s Desktop tab. It returns the pattern name like “Azul Dark.”
highlight color (string) This property represents the Highlight Color pop-up menu under the
control panel’s Appearance tab. You can dynamically
change the computer’s highlight color for text with
code such as set highlight
color to "Azul".
highlight color (RGB color) You can also pass an RGB Color value to this
property to alter the color to a custom hue. RGB Color values are list types with three
numbers ranging from
to 65535; the integers represent the red, green, and blue components
for the custom color. For example, get highlight color
as RGB color would return
{39321,52428,65535}, which represents the color Azul. Chapter 3
, discusses
AppleScript’s value types like
list.
minimum font smoothing size (integer) This corresponds to the “Smooth all fonts on
screen” checkbox in the Fonts tab of the control
panel. It returns an integer representing the
minimum-sized font for which the computer will turn on anti-aliasing,
a graphics term for smoothing the jagged look of some fonts on the
computer screen.
system font (international text) This property returns the name of the font your system is using, such as “Charcoal.” It corresponds to the Large System Font pop-up menu choice in the control panel’s Fonts tab.
small system font (international text) This property returns the name of the font your system is using for displaying small text items. It corresponds to the Small System Font pop-up menu in the control panel’s Fonts tab.
views font (string) This property contains the name of the font the machine is using for
views, such as folder listings. An example views font value is “Geneva.”
It corresponds to the Views Font pop-up menu choice in the control
panel’s Fonts tab.
views font size (integer) This is the property for the size of the views font, which is an
integer (e.g., 10).
font smoothing (boolean) This is a true or false value
indicating whether font smoothing is on.
scroll box style (fixed/proportional) This property corresponds to the Smart Scrolling checkbox in the
Options tab. Unchecked enables fixed, and checked
is proportional. To find out what kind of scroll
box setting you have, use code such as:
get scroll box style
which returns either fixed or
proportional.
scroll bar arrow style (single/both at one end). Checking Smart Scrolling in the control panel’s Options tab gives your windows both up and down arrows at the bottom of each window scroll bar. Control this with AppleScript code such as the following:
set scroll bar arrow style to single
Single
This produces a single arrow at the top and bottom of the scroll bar.
If Smart Scrolling is checked then this value is both at one end.
collapsible via title bar (boolean) This property, a true or false
value, determines whether clicking on a window’s
title bar makes the window itself disappear or collapse, except for
the title bar. The property corresponds to the
“Double-click title bar to collapse
windows” checkbox in the Options tab.
sound track (no sound track/string) Checking this property returns either the constant no sound track or a string like
“Platinum Sounds.” This property
corresponds to the pop-up menu in the control
panel’s Sounds tab.
sound effects (list of constants: menu sounds/control sounds/window sounds/finder sounds) You can control which desktop elements (e.g., menus, windows) play
sounds when you manipulate them by setting the
sound
effects property to a
list of constants such as:
{menu sounds, control sounds}If sound track is set to no sound track, then setting the sound
effects property does not have a practical effect
(you still won’t have any sounds).
theme
This class encapsulates an individual theme in your Appearance
settings. The Appearance application’s
current theme property returns a
reference to an enabled theme
object. The theme class has zero elements and the
following nine properties. All of these properties are the same as
the Application properties, except that they are
read-only; you cannot change their values.
Monitor
This class represents the monitor(s) attached to the computer. It has zero elements and the following two properties:
picture file (no picture/alias) This either returns the value no picture (a
constant type, not a string) or
an alias to the picture (which can be coerced to a
string, as in “Macintosh
HD:pics:sunset.jpg”).
picture positioning (automatic/tiled/centered/scaled/filling) This is a constant value specifying how to display
the picture file on the desktop.
global theMessage
tell application "Appearance"
(* boolean variables *)
set MyCollapsible to false
set ScrollBoth to false
(* test 'collapsible via title bar' property *)
if collapsible via title bar then set MyCollapsible to true
(* check 'scroll bar arrow style' property: can be either 'single' or 'both at one end' *)
if scroll bar arrow style is both at one end then
set ScrollBoth to true
end if
set theMessage to¬
"You can double-click the title bar to collapse the windows: " &¬
MyCollapsible & return
set theMessage to theMessage &¬
"The scroll bars have the arrows at one end: " & ScrollBoth &¬
return & return
set theMessage to theMessage & "The current theme is: " &¬
(name of current theme)
set theMessage to theMessage & return & "The appearance prop is: " &¬
(appearance of current theme)
end tell
(* use display dialog osax to display the values of these Appearance properties *)
display dialog theMessage