The End of the Gloomy Source List

I’ve been spending most of my time in Yosemite for a while now. My favorite on-the-surface change is the change to source lists.

The sad-and-blue source list we’ve had for years — first seen in iTunes, iLife, and Mail — has been replaced with a translucent source list. It’s more fun, and I think people are going to love it.

But me, I’m ultra-sensitive to on-screen clutter. (It’s a flaw.) I almost never have files on my desktop. There are relatively few icons in my Dock compared to other people (around 12). I hide apps that are not in active use — at most I’ll have Xcode, Terminal, and Vesper for Mac showing. My desktop background is always a solid color.

So I turn off source list translucency, via System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Reduce Transparency.

And it looks great. Source lists are a nice very light gray, rather than that wiped-out blue we’re used to.

When I have to go back to 10.9, and have to deal with the old-style source list (in Xcode, especially), I can’t wait to get back to Yosemite.

I’m surprised by how much of a difference this makes to me. It’s a big deal.

Update a few minutes later:

William Van Hecke posts on Twitter:

We’ve long called that sidebar color “corpse blue” around here. It’ll be sad to lose that bit o’ jargon.