Mac OS X El Capitan – How to get SIMBL working after upgrade

Following method requires disabling SIP for the duration of installation only. After installation it's safe to enable it again. It's necessary to disable SIP during installation. Otherwise it won't work.

Steps of installing SIMBL-0.9.9 on OS X El Capitan (version 10.11)

1. Disable SIP: enter Recovery OS, run csrutil disable and reboot OS X El Capitan.

2. Download SIMBL, at least version 0.9.9.

3. Open command prompt aka Terminal Window

4. Run following commands on terminal to install SIMBL-0.9.9 at /System/Library/ScriptingAdditions/

sudo installer -verbose -pkg Downloads/SIMBL-0.9.9/SIMBL-0.9.9.pkg -target /
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/ScriptingAdditions/SIMBL.osax
sudo mv /Library/ScriptingAdditions/SIMBL.osax /System/Library/ScriptingAdditions/
sudo cp -p /System/Library/ScriptingAdditions/SIMBL.osax/Contents/Resources/SIMBL\ Agent.app/Contents/Resources/net.culater.SIMBL.Agent.plist /System/Library/LaunchAgents/
sudo sed -e "s/Library/System\/Library/" -i "" /System/Library/LaunchAgents/net.culater.SIMBL.Agent.plist

5. (Optional) Enable SIP again: enter Recovery OS, run csrutil enable and reboot.

After executing above steps, Plugins placed at /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins or /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins will be loaded by SIMBL.

Original SIMBL Agent.app does not support injecting into process that launched before SIMBL Agent.app. Verify SIMBL Agent.app is running before launching target app.

If plugins does not work, check opened files of target app process using Activity Monitor.app. If plugin is listed in the opened files, plugin will need updating to support OS X 10.11. (Yes, SafariStand needed.)

SIMBL.osax does not require code signature.

plugins do not require to be code signature

plugins do not require ownership by root.

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/net.culater.SIMBL.Agent.plist requires ownership by root.

If you've migrated your system from Mac OS X Yosemite and you've been using Easy SIMBL before you may need to do additional steps to make sure everything is running. If you've done the steps above and things still are not working chances are you've been using Easy SIMBL and you're using old plugins that are not supported by Mac OS X El Capitan. Also even if you install SIMBL you can still use Easy SIMBL to easily manage your plugins, but EasySIMBL alone won't work anymore without SIMBL.

Make sure Use SIMBL is unchecked, and that plugins here are either removed or up to date. This comes useful when you put new plugins into SIMBL main directory, and you still have old versions here. Plugins will get in conflict and won't work unless they are same or higher versions.