About Afloat 2.4 for Lion and Snow Leopard.
Afloat 2.4 is a new version of Afloat that introduces compatibility with OS X Lion (10.7).
What's New
Afloat is now fully compatible with Lion, including:
- Support for both regular and sandboxed applications.
- The direction for the scroll-to-make-transparent and make-afloat gestures is now the same regardless of the kind of input device used (trackpad or mouse) and matches the one used in previous versions of Afloat.
- The included version of SIMBL is now 0.9.9.
Fixed a bug where moving or making transparent windows from certain applications (such as Google Chrome or TotalFinder) would affect only a part of the window.
Fixed a bug where certain applications would behave incorrectly or print messages to the Console if they used certain third-party libraries (BGHUDAppKit).
Afloat can now be disabled on a per-app basis through the Terminal. For more information, see Turning Afloat Off In Certain Apps.
Security Considerations
Lion introduces an important security update that allows certain apps to be 'sandboxed', preventing them access to anything they don't strictly need to perform their job. This includes some Apple apps such as Preview and TextEdit, and in the future will apply to all apps downloaded from the Mac App Store.
In order for Afloat to function with these apps, the sandbox must be 'extended' so that those applications can access the Afloat files outside the sandbox. This particular task is performed by an application that is installed automatically alongside Afloat, called the SIMBL Enabler for Sandboxed Apps.
The enabler is installed in several locations in your Library, not shown by the Installer. For information on removal, see below. Do not try to remove the Enabler manually unless you know how to handle launchd-managed agents.
Note that the enabler is also installed on Macs running Snow Leopard. The enabler will not do anything on these systems; however, it will immediately start working once these Macs are updated to Lion, allowing Afloat to function without interruption.
Removing the Sandboxed Apps Enabler
You might prefer that this additional sandbox permission not be granted to sandboxed applications, to enhance security. To do so, after installing Afloat, do the following:
- Reopen the Afloat Installer.
- From the menu, choose Afloat Installer > Remove Enabler….
Important: Removing the enabler will cause Afloat and all SIMBL plug-ins to stop working with apps that use the sandbox facility. You can reinstall the enabler at any time by reinstalling Afloat.
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