JankyBorders

This small project adds colored borders to all user windows on macOS Sonoma and later. It can be used to better identify the currently focused window. It does not use the accessibility API and should thus be faster than comparable tools.

Usage

Compile the source code to a binary using make in the cloned repository or install the binary via brew:

brew tap FelixKratz/formulae
brew install borders

The binary can be started via borders and takes any of the arguments (in arbitrary order and count):

• active_color=<color_hex>
• inactive_color=<color_hex>
• width=<float>
• style=<style>

Those determine the color of the currently focused window, the inactive window and the width and style of the border respectively. The color hex shall be given in the format: 0xAARRGGBB, where A is the alpha channel, R the red channel, G the green channel and B the blue channel. The style argument is optional and can take the values round and square.

If a borders process is already running, invoking a new borders instance with any combination of the above arguments will update the properties of the already running instance (just like in yabai and sketchybar).

Bootstrap with yabai

For example, if you are using yabai, you could add:

borders active_color=0xffe1e3e4 inactive_color=0xff494d64 width=5.0 2>/dev/null 1>&2 &

to the very end of your yabairc.

Bootstrap with brew

If you want to run this as a separate service, you could also use:

brew services start borders

Documentation

Local documentation is available as man borders.