How do I decrease the window shadow in Mac OS X?

I've found the default 40px Mac OS X window shadow too big:

mac os x shadow

Is it possible to decrease it to, say, 4px?

Update: I can disable shadows entirely with defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true, but I don't want to. I do want decrease them.

NVI

Posted 2010-04-01T10:38:39.580

Reputation: 708

1com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow applies to just single-window screenshots, like screencapture -o. Related to osx - Disable drop shadows around windows or the menu bar on OS X - Super User. – Lri – 2011-08-08T09:25:33.090

I had a big shadow like this in my application, and just had to drop it down to around 4px. It was an obvious issue for me, hopefully Apple fixes this in the future. – Devin G Rhode – 2012-05-05T05:35:48.573

Answers

Only the frontmost window has this huge shadow, it's smaller for background windows. So you can try screenshotting non-focused windows (easy if you activate e.g. Mail and close all its windows, so no window has focus). However you would have to live with the deactivated, washed out look or manually merge both deactivated and active window screenshots.

Daniel Beck

Posted 2010-04-01T10:38:39.580

Reputation: 98 421

On dual screens this shadow is annoying.

http://www.blacktree.com/projects/nocturne.html has a Night/Day modus, the night modus removes the shadow. If you disable the rest of the night modus settings it has the effect I wanted.

Would like a little Apple preference setting somewhere though.

Wessel

Posted 2010-04-01T10:38:39.580

Reputation: 21

The link is broken now. – Spidey – 2019-09-19T12:22:51.917

I don't have a way to reduce the shadows but if removing them entirely is an acceptable solution then the program I use to do this on OS X 10.8.4 is ShadowSweeper.

http://download.cnet.com/ShadowSweeper/3000-2072_4-75966596.html

This one looks like it might also work but I haven't tried it myself.

https://github.com/puffnfresh/toggle-osx-shadows

None of the other posted methods for removing shadows entirely worked for me.

Praxeolitic

Posted 2010-04-01T10:38:39.580

Reputation: 240

toggle-osx-shadows works on Mavericks BTW – Neil McGill – 2014-11-03T19:13:38.303

toggle-osx-shadows seems not to work on El Capitan (it runs, but does not have the intended effect) — see https://github.com/puffnfresh/toggle-osx-shadows/issues/17

– chbrown – 2017-07-04T16:52:12.493

According to this post on AppleInsider, WindowShade X has the ability to manipulate window shadows. However I don't see it mentioned in WindowShade X's documentation anywhere...

Ever tried WindowShade X?

The Shadows tab (er, button) gives you very fine-grained contol over window shadow appearance.

EDIT: There's also Shadow Killer X (still working on OSX 10.7 Lion)

Josh

Posted 2010-04-01T10:38:39.580

Reputation: 7 540

Shadow Killer X is old, and won't work on Leopard, which means it won't work on Snow Leopard either. Second, the OP first ask about changing shadows on the screen, then brought up killing screen capture shadows. Which is it, that you want? – None – 2010-07-25T21:10:58.943