Borders Menu

A small macOS menu bar app for changing JankyBorders settings without editing its config file.

Pick a border color, width and corner style from the menu bar. Each change shows on your windows right away and is saved to ~/.config/borders/bordersrc.

  

Features

• Borders On/Off: starts or stops the JankyBorders service.
• Color: nine presets, or Custom… to pick any color with the macOS color picker.
• Width: 2, 3, 5, 8 or 12 points.
• Corners: round or square.
• Other Windows: no border, a faint white border or a dim gray border on windows that aren't focused.
• Restart Borders: brings borders back when they disappear (see Known issues).
• Open Config File: opens bordersrc in TextEdit.
• Open Menu at Login: starts Borders Menu when you log in.
• Hide Menu Bar Icon: removes the icon while the borders keep working. Open Borders Menu again from Applications, Spotlight or Launchpad to bring it back. A hidden icon stays hidden when the app starts at login.

Borders Menu writes the config file and passes the settings to the running borders process, which draws the borders. Opening Borders Menu starts the JankyBorders service, and Quit stops it, so the borders go away with the menu. With Open Menu at Login on, the borders come back each time you log in.

Requirements

• macOS 13 or later, on Apple Silicon. The build script installs to /Applications and calls Homebrew under /opt/homebrew.

• Homebrew and JankyBorders, run as a Homebrew service:

  brew install FelixKratz/formulae/borders
  brew services start borders

• Xcode or the Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install) to build.

Install

git clone https://github.com/adamly218/BordersMenu.git
cd BordersMenu
./build.sh

build.sh compiles main.swift, signs the app ad hoc, copies it to /Applications/BordersMenu.app and opens it. A dashed square icon appears in the menu bar.

If the icon is hidden behind the notch, hold ⌘ and drag it left in the menu bar.

Config file

Borders Menu reads and writes the options list in ~/.config/borders/bordersrc, the file JankyBorders runs on launch. Options it has no menu for, such as blacklist, are kept as they are. Comments in the file are not kept.

#!/bin/bash
options=(
	style=round
	width=5.0
	hidpi=on
	active_color=0xff8a7cff
	inactive_color=0x00000000
)
borders "${options[@]}"

Colors are 0xAARRGGBB, where AA is the opacity (ff solid, 00 invisible).

Known issues

On macOS 27, borders can disappear after a window leaves full screen (FelixKratz/JankyBorders#201). Choose Restart Borders to bring them back.

Screenshots

./screenshots.sh retakes the images in docs/. It runs the installed app with --demo menu, --demo colors and --demo window, which show the menu or a sample window on a plain backdrop for a few seconds. The terminal running it needs Screen Recording permission.

License

MIT