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Grayscale Display [AppleScript]

Inside Apple ▸ System Preferences under Universal Access, you can set your display to grayscale mode. But you cannot find any keystrokes to trigger grayscale display.

In my opinion, grayscale display is more important than good for nothing white-on-black display. You will need to make your display grayscale to your needs, such as printing files or designing web that can also be used by color-blind society.

I wrote a simple AppleScript Application and will share it with you. Here is what it looks like:

Download Display Grayscale Application [AppleScript]

So with a single-click, you can have your Mac automatically open System Preferences, go to Universal Access, move to Use grayscale checkbox and toggle it for you. Though the processes are not instantly done like when you use keystrokes, but at least you don't need to open System Preferences by yourself.

Categories: Leopard, Utilities
Tags: AppleScript, Grayscale

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11 Comments

Tommy 

Everything opens up correctly, but nothing happends...it's "Mac OS X 10.5.3" here. any idea?

Wendy 

Hi Tommy, the script above is run under certain condition: 


    

  1. You have your Full Keyboard Access turned on and currently the focus is only set to Text boxes and lists only which can be done under Keyboard Shortcuts (5th section under Keyboard & Mouse).
    2. 

  2. All F1, F2, etc are used as standard function keys which the behavior can be changed inside Keyboard (1st section under Keyboard & Mouse)
    3.

mau mau 

An alternative is to hold [fn] key while running the script. 
That way you can have your F1, F2, etc keys active for volume changing and other functions.

Nice script anyway .)

fidel 

Hi,

in best case you should add a check routine into your script to check if the needed settings are configured already or not. Otherwise some users might be confused if nothing happens.

This isnt that much more code - but offers lot of help for users.


Best regards
fidel

JJQM 

i leave you here the shortcut
comand+option+control+8

Jason 

For Snow Leopard 10.6, I had to add one more tab command for it to work. I also removed the control+F7 ( key code 98 using {control down} ) lines because I already had all controls enabled, and it seemed to not work.

@JJQM, this is to remove all color from the display, not to invert it. There is no keyboard shortcut to switch to grayscale.

This is what I have:

tell application "System Preferences"
	activate
	reveal first anchor of pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
	delay 1
	tell application "System Events"
		tell process "System Preferences"
			keystroke tab
			keystroke tab
			keystroke tab
			keystroke tab
			keystroke tab
			keystroke tab
			keystroke tab
			keystroke space
		end tell
	end tell
	quit
end tell

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Televizoare 3d ieftine 

Yes, you are right.. grayscale display is more important than good for nothing white-on-black display.
Best regards

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For Snow Leopard 10.6, I had to add one more tab command for it to work. I also removed the geodeta kraków  control+F7 ( key code 98 using {control down} ) lines because I already had all controls enabled, and it seemed to not work.

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