---
title: Hiding Visor
teaser: How to hide Visor on Mac OS X.
tags: osx
author: Jon Yurek
published_on: 2007-01-12
---

An excellent little plugin, [Visor] is. You can have a Quake-style console that
pops up whenever you want, in any app. Only trouble is that I wanted to be able
to close Terminal.app and still have the Visor accessible. I found [these
directions][dirty-hack] linked off the Visor wiki to get rid of Terminal.app
from the process list, which is a step in the right direction, but not perfect.
There were some quirks that made the experience... iffy.

[Visor]: http://visor.binaryage.com/
[dirty-hack]: https://log-everything.blogspot.com/2006/06/visor-dirrrrty-hack.html

Here's how to get Visor as it's own, invisible, app, and still keep Terminal.app
around like it always has been:

1. Get [SIMBL]
1. Get [Visor]
1. Optionally, get [TerminalColors], because the default blue in Terminal.app is
   horrible
1. Install each.
1. Make a copy of Terminal.app (I called mine VisorTerminal.app)
1. Right click on it and Show Package Contents
1. Open `Contents/Info.plist` with the Property List Editor
1. Change `CFBundleIdentifier` from "com.apple.Terminal" to
   "com.apple.VisorTerminal"
1. Add the key `LSUIElement` with a value of 0
1. Save
1. Find the Visor and TerminalColors plugins (they should be in
   `/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins`)
1. Open Visor's `Info.plist` (Right-click > Show Package Contents > Contents >
   `Info.plist`)
1. Change the `SIMBLTargetApplications/0/BundleIdentifier` value to
   "com.apple.VisorTerminal" and Save
1. Open the `Info.plist` for TerminalColors (same as above)
1. Select `SIMBLTargetApplications` and click New Child, change the type to
   "Dictionary"
1. Add new children so that the keys and values mimic the existing one
1. Make sure that one `BundleIdentifier` is "com.apple.Terminal" and the other
   is "com.apple.VisorTerminal", and Save
1. Get VisorStarter, unzip it and put it wherever you'd like (I
   have mine in `/Applications/Utilities`).
1. Open Script Editor
1. Open the VisorStarter app in the Script Editor
1. Change Terminal to VisorTerminal
1. Save
1. Add VisorStarter to your startup items

[SIMBL]: http://www.culater.net/software/SIMBL/SIMBL.php
[Visor]: http://visor.binaryage.com/
[TerminalColors]: http://www.culater.net/software/TerminalColors/TerminalColors.php

Ok! That takes care of that. It's a bit more involved than the other
instructions, but will completely separate Terminal and the Visor. Trouble is,
they're completely separate. You'll have to set up the fonts and colors all over
again, but it shouldn't be that big a problem. If you have trouble getting the
window settings to appear, open the Visor preferences from the Visor menu and
the Window Settings should come right along. And the best part is that if
everything worked correctly (you may need to log out and back in or reboot) the
<abbr title="American National Standards Institute">ANSI</abbr> Colors option
should still be in both Terminal's and Visor's settings.