Editing Appearance Manager (section)

==Shareware products==
Shareware products exist that provided some features of the Appearance Manager before they were offered directly in the Appearance Control Panel. Church Windows and Décor provide desktop picture functionality. [[WindowShade]], which had been purchased by Apple and bundled with System 7.5,<ref>{{Cite web|last=Gruber|first=John|date=January 21, 2009|title=Three things OS X could learn from the Classic Mac OS|url=https://www.macworld.com/article/194590/macat25_classicmacos.html|url-status=live|access-date=2021-11-08|website=Macworld|language=en-US|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210418070951/https://www.macworld.com/article/194590/macat25_classicmacos.html |archive-date=April 18, 2021 }}</ref> provides collapse functionality. When windows collapse, they "roll up", leaving only the title bar.

===Kaleidoscope===
{{Main|Kaleidoscope (software)}}
[[File:Napster-MacOS9-2001.png|right|thumb|350px|Kaleidoscope theme utility using Albie Wong's ElectricMonk scheme, running on [[Mac OS 9]] in 2001]]
Kaleidoscope, written by Arlo Rose and Greg Landweber, applied "schemes" to the GUI before Apple released an update to the Appearance Control Panel with Mac OS 8.5 which provides similar functionality using "themes". Whereas only a handful of themes were ever developed, thousands of Kaleidoscope schemes were developed.

When theme support in the Appearance Control Panel was first announced, the team responsible for it demonstrated an automatic tool specifically designed to convert the tens of thousands of existing Kaleidoscope scheme files into Appearance Manager-compatible theme files. This tool was not released to the public;<ref>[http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/kaleidoscope/schemetotheme/ Aqua, schemes and themes - Apple demonstrates Kaleidoscope-scheme-to-8.5-theme converter]</ref> however, a similar tool has been developed.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Boldt|first=Ben|title=Scheme to Theme Converter|url=http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/projects/scheme2theme/|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180217090417/http://www.d.umn.edu/~bold0070/projects/scheme2theme/|archive-date=February 17, 2018|website=www.d.umn.edu}}</ref>

Kaleidoscope remained the primary theming platform, even after the Appearance Control Panel offered theming capabilities in Mac OS 8.5. [[Steve Jobs]] returned to Apple just before the release of Mac OS 8.5, and he decided to officially drop support for themes because he wanted to preserve a consistent user interface. Because of this, Apple released little documentation for the theme format, withheld their own beta-released themes, and even issued a [[cease and desist]] notice to the authors of a third-party theme editor on grounds that it was intended to allow users to create themes that imitate the [[Aqua interface]] in [[Mac OS X]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Fidéle|first=Dominique|date=April 17, 2001|title=Apple lawyers target Mac Themes Project|url=http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/apple-lawyers-target-mac-themes-project-2773/|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140531235120/http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/apple-lawyers-target-mac-themes-project-2773/|archive-date=May 31, 2014|website=[[Macworld UK]]}}</ref> At the same time, the format of Kaleidoscope schemes continued to evolve. As a result, Kaleidoscope schemes proliferated while Appearance themes never really took off. Kaleidoscope was only rendered obsolete with the transition to Mac OS X, with which Kaleidoscope is not compatible.