JankyBorders for macOS

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.

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[@]}"