How To Revert iCal Theme Back to it’s Appearance in Snow Leopard

Are you among the many people out there who are just not a fan of the new appearance of iCal and/or Address Book in Mac OS X Lion? Wish you could revert back to how they looked in Snow Leopard? Well my friend… you are in luck!

Thanks to some very generous Mac users, you can download themes that will return the appearance of iCal and Address Book to previous versions of Mac OS X.

A great resource to follow and download the themes you’ll need can be found at MacNix: http://macnix.blogspot.com/2011/07/change-mac-os-x-107-lion-ical-skin-to.html

MacNix has posted an installer method that actually doesn’t require any steps. It will do all of the work for you. If you prefer to do things manually, you can follow the step-by-step instructions as well. As with anything you do with your Mac, or any other computer for that matter, you should make a back up of your system before you proceed with the installation or steps provided below.

Again, we greatly thank MacNix for providing such a great and easy fix:

Installation Instructions

Both of these skins are installed in the same way and using them will not affect your user data (eg. appointments, addresses etc), only the look of the application:

1 – Make a copy of iCal.app / Address Book.app ** THIS IS IMPORTANT **

If you don’t make a backup you will need to reinstall to revert back to the original look.

2 – Download the relevant file above and unzip it someplace.

3 – Go to your Applications folder and Control-Click on iCal / Address Book and select ‘Show Package Contents’.

4 – Browse to Contents > Resources.

5 – Drag the files from the zip to the Resources folder (You may need admin rights).

6 – Quit and Reopen iCal / Address Book.

Reverting back

If you decide you want to go back to the original Lion versions and you made a backup before you started, do the following:

1 – Delete iCal.app or Address Book.app – This can be done in Finder by dragging the application from the Application folder to the trash can.  If that doesn’t work, go to Utilities > Terminal.app and enter the following command: -

sudo rm -rf /Applications/iCal.app
or
sudo rm -rf /Applications/Address\ Book.app

2 – Copy back the backup of iCal / Address Book you made earlier in to the Applications folder.

And there you have it! If you’re not a fan of the new rustic look of iCal and Address Book, you’re not alone. So if you’ve tried these steps and your day has been made, why don’t you slide on over to MacNix and give them a big thank you.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and as always, feel free to leave any comments or post any questions you might have. They’re always welcome!