OSX menu bar icons

Osborne_Cox

I appreciate that PIA updated the menu bar icons so the connection status was no longer ambiguous at a glance, but the new icons simply do not fit stylistically, and I am a Mac user after all! :P

The menu bar standard seems to be black with transparency, or light grey with transparency for disabled state. Can the menu bar icons please be updated with this in mind?

(If I had the time I would make some new icons; not promising anything though!)

Goldstein

I will pass this suggestion onto our Development team,

Thanks for your feedback!

tomeworm

I complained about this myself, months ago, but it appears to have gone ignored. The black-gray-transparent theme is awful because it doesn't stand out. It's not obvious when you've dropped your connection. It needs to be obvious, as in RED obvious.

I created my own icons and replaced the standard ones.



If anyone wants them they can be downloaded here. Replace the current icons with these (you might want to save your current icons by renaming them, rather than overwriting them).

They're installed via the following path:
.pia_manager
pia_tray
(Control-Click, "Show Package Contents")
Contents
Resources

tray-mac-connected.png
tray-mac-connecting.png
tray-mac-disconnected.png

Prior to installing them quit the PIA app.

.pia_manager is an "invisible" file.  In the Finder use the "Go" menu and select "Go to Folder" and enter "~/.pia_manager" and hit "Go" which will take you to the correct directory.

TinyTRex

Hi @tomeworm

Thank you for that post!

This suggestion has been passed a long by more then one user, and it has not been ignored, it is on the wishlist and is something that with enough requests will hopefully be added into a release in the future.

However in the meantime I enjoyed that post on replacing the current icons with custom ones. 

Keep up the good work tomeworm !

Sincerely, 

Jason M

UltraHumanite

I made my own icons as well. I use them with the dark menu bar.



Here they are if anyone wants to use them: link

UltraHumanite

@Goldstein Redesigning the settings section would also be nice. Maybe, something along these lines:

Goldstein

Thanks for the suggestion, that certainly does look nice, and I will pass it along to our development team.

tomeworm

@UltraHumanite, nice design, and very OS X like.

broderik

I wanted to voice my opinion on this - I support new icons as well, ones that also look good with a dark mode menu bar.

I'd also love to see an option for a notification banner that shows notification status (edit: only when a connection is disconnected, and connecting). Tunnelblick does something like this which is great, but I think it would be great if PIA used OS X's built in notification banner for this sort of thing.

amoeba

tomeworm said:

I complained about this myself, months ago, but it appears to have gone ignored. The black-gray-transparent theme is awful because it doesn't stand out. It's not obvious when you've dropped your connection. It needs to be obvious, as in RED obvious.

I created my own icons and replaced the standard ones.



If anyone wants them they can be downloaded here. Replace the current icons with these (you might want to save your current icons by renaming them, rather than overwriting them).

They're installed via the following path:
.pia_manager
pia_tray
Contents (Control-Click, "Show Package Contents")
Resources

tray-mac-connected.png
tray-mac-connecting.png
tray-mac-disconnected.png

Hi

Thanks for this. They look really good.

Not being completely tech-savy with some of this.. How do I get to .pia_manager?

UltraHumanite

amoeba said:

tomeworm said:

I complained about this myself, months ago, but it appears to have gone ignored. The black-gray-transparent theme is awful because it doesn't stand out. It's not obvious when you've dropped your connection. It needs to be obvious, as in RED obvious.

I created my own icons and replaced the standard ones.



If anyone wants them they can be downloaded here. Replace the current icons with these (you might want to save your current icons by renaming them, rather than overwriting them).

They're installed via the following path:
.pia_manager
pia_tray
Contents (Control-Click, "Show Package Contents")
Resources

tray-mac-connected.png
tray-mac-connecting.png
tray-mac-disconnected.png

Hi

Thanks for this. They look really good.

Not being completely tech-savy with some of this.. How do I get to .pia_manager?

Start ‘Finder’ and press Shift+Command+G type the following into the ’Go to the folder:’ window “~/.pia_manager/“ this is a hidden directory.

You’re now in the ‘~/.pia_manager/‘ directory, locate the ‘pia_tray’ file right click on it and choose ‘Show Package Contents’ from the dropdown menu.

You’re now inside ‘pia_tray’ navigate to Contents>Resources notice the tray-mac-xxx.png files these are the PIA status bar icons, if you want to modify the look of the PIA status bar icons those are the files you need to edit/replace.

tomeworm

@amoeba, sorry for not having explained how to find an "invisible" file, but UltraHumanite covered it well. Something else I failed to mention is that you should quit the PIA app before messing around with it like this. I've corrected that in my original comment, as well as adding how to find the hidden file.

Let me know if the icons look okay for you and what kind of Mac you have. They look great and really stand out well on my 15 inch MBP, but it would be nice to know how they look on other Macs too with different screen sizes.

amoeba

UltraHumanite said:

amoeba said:

tomeworm said:

I complained about this myself, months ago, but it appears to have gone ignored. The black-gray-transparent theme is awful because it doesn't stand out. It's not obvious when you've dropped your connection. It needs to be obvious, as in RED obvious.

I created my own icons and replaced the standard ones.



If anyone wants them they can be downloaded here. Replace the current icons with these (you might want to save your current icons by renaming them, rather than overwriting them).

They're installed via the following path:
.pia_manager
pia_tray
Contents (Control-Click, "Show Package Contents")
Resources

tray-mac-connected.png
tray-mac-connecting.png
tray-mac-disconnected.png

Hi

Thanks for this. They look really good.

Not being completely tech-savy with some of this.. How do I get to .pia_manager?

Start ‘Finder’ and press Shift+Command+G type the following into the ’Go to the folder:’ window “~/.pia_manager/“ this is a hidden directory.

You’re now in the ‘~/.pia_manager/‘ directory, locate the ‘pia_tray’ file right click on it and choose ‘Show Package Contents’ from the dropdown menu.

You’re now inside ‘pia_tray’ navigate to Contents>Resources notice the tray-mac-xxx.png files these are the PIA status bar icons, if you want to modify the look of the PIA status bar icons those are the files you need to edit/replace.

Thank you very much for your help.

amoeba

tomeworm said:

@amoeba, sorry for not having explained how to find an "invisible" file, but UltraHumanite covered it well. Something else I failed to mention is that you should quit the PIA app before messing around with it like this. I've corrected that in my original comment, as well as adding how to find the hidden file.

Let me know if the icons look okay for you and what kind of Mac you have. They look great and really stand out well on my 15 inch MBP, but it would be nice to know how they look on other Macs too with different screen sizes.

I am running a 13 inch MBP and they look pretty good. The green connected icon looks a little dark but that is due to my desktop settings, not your icon.

bezhermoso

Another OS X user chiming in. Would really love to see an improvement to the menu bar icons. They look hazy on Retina displays and the states are barely distinguishable when in Dark Mode.