Auto hide certain apps when not in use

Jan 08, '07 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: leenoble_uk

Having just discovered Vienna and immediately made it my RSS handler by default, I decided to have a bit of a play about with the interface. If you don't have Apple's Developer Tools installed, you will need to install them (free account required).

Using Interface Builder, navigate into the app of your choice and locate the .nib files in the program's Contents/Resources folder. Find the main window of the app and click on the main area of the window (around the title and traffic light buttons). If the information panel is not open, go to Tools -> Show Info to display it. Then in the Attributes section, click on the little tick box adjacent to Hide on deactivate, and do a File -> Save.

Now when you launch your application, you'll find that as soon as you click on the Desktop or switch to a different application, the window automatically closes.

Obviously only work on backups of apps, or on ones that you can easily re-install should something go awry. Also beware that doing this will make it difficult, if not impossible, to drag and drop between those altered applications, so use it sparingly to reduce window clutter.

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