Documentation

JankyBorders is a lightweight tool designed to add colored 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.

git clone https://github.com/FelixKratz/JankyBorders
cd JankyBorders
make 

brew tap FelixKratz/formulae
brew install borders

This will automatically make the command borders {args} usable in the terminal.

To use borders, you can use the command borders {args} to initialize the program.

Another method that you can use is through the brew services method, with the following syntax

brew services start borders
brew services restart borders

Upon startup, if borders is not started with any arguments (or launched as a service by brew), it will search for a file at launch located at ~/.config/borders/bordersrc and will execute it on launch if found.

The binary can be started via borders and can take any of the listed arguments in the borders {args} format.

1. active_color=<color>
2. inactive_color=<color>
3. width=<float>
4. style=<round/square>
5. hidpi=<off/on>

For certain shells you may need to nest the arguments in quotations.

If a borders process is already running, invoking a new borders instance with any combination of the above arguments will update the properties of the already running instance (just like in yabai and sketchybar).

If the primary borders process is started without any arguments (or launched as a service by brew), it will search for a file at ~/.config/borders/bordersrc and execute it on launch if found.

An example configuration file could look like this: ~/.config/borders/bordersrc

#!/bin/bash

options=(
	style=round
	width=6.0
	hidpi=off
	active_color=0xffe2e2e3
	inactive_color=0xff414550
)

borders "${options[@]}"

These configurations are an extension of the default ones, and are available on the MASTER branch. This list will update as more features are added.

The color argument can take special values for gradients:

• gradient(top_left=0xAARRGGBB,bottom_right=0xAARRGGBB)
• gradient(top_right=0xAARRGGBB,bottom_left=0xAARRGGBB)

The color argument can take special values for glow:

• glow(0xAARRGGBB) to the <color> argument

The following functionality is added to blacklist certain applications:

• borders blacklist="app1, app2"
• This will make it that the following apps are excluded from being bordered

Local documentation is available as man borders.