Running 18 days
without a restart.

Changing iTunes Playlist Highlight Colors by Chris X

With the growing number of submissions of iTunes Skins, I'd like to offer this how-to for editing the iTunes highlight and background colors in the playlist/ browse lists.

These colors cannot be edited directly in ResEdit, because the color resources are "hidden" in the Data Fork, not the resource fork; so you'll need a hex editor. With the addition of the extension "Forker", ResEdit can read and edit data forks.

You'll also probably want some kind of color selector tool that will show RGB hex values so you can choose the replacement colors.

Make a duplicate copy of iTunes and open its Data Fork with the hex editor.

Using the hex editor's Search or Find function, locate the hex string for the part you want to change (Command-H in ResEdit).

Here are the RGB color values as they are valued in hex, each part of the RGB code is used twice together in hex:

Selected tune highlight: 3D3D 8080 DFDF (red=3D, green=80, blue=DF)
Selected tune divider lines: 3434 6D6D BEBE
Selected tune highlight "dropshadow": 7D7D AAAA EAEA

Background light blue rows: EDED F3F3 FEFE
Background grey divider lines: D9D9 D9D9 D9D9
There are actually 2 strings, one for the dividers on the blue rows, one for the white rows


Choose whatever RGB values you would like to use instead, using the color picker in your graphics app. Make sure to use each color value twice like shown above...

Replace the hex string with your replacement color's hex string. Take care not to delete anything that isn't part of that particular string!

Save the changes when you've finished and quit the hex editor.

Replace the original iTunes with your hacked copy (store the original somewhere safe!) and launch it to see your changes!

So, for example, if you want to change the Highlight color to Blood Red (R=FF, G=33, B=33), you would Find the string for the highlight: 3D3D 8080 DFDF and Replace it with the hex string: FFFF 3333 3333

(You'll probably want to change the divider line/dropshadow colors as well, since they'll still be shades of blue!)

Made absolutely sure that each value is used twice for R, G, & B (see above, for example), and don't inadvertantly delete any other code!

Also remember that the Highlight color needs to be medium to dark in hue, becuase the highlighted text is white!

I offer no guarantee that this hack will work on any given Mac/ OS/ version of iTunes, only that these hacks have worked for me.

Happy customizing!

Additional iTunes Edits:

Skinning iTunes
Skin the Scroll Bar in iTunes