Hidden OSX Dock Enhancements
Apple is known for including easter eggs in OSX. Before downloading third party dock enhancements try out some of these “official” ones.
Dock Enhancements
Apple has added little hidden features through out OSX, some of my favorites are in the Dock App.
Before using any of these make sure you have updated your system to the latest version of OSX, Some of these easter eggs have been released in updates.
Instructions:
- Open Terminal: “Applications>Utilities>Terminal”;
- Copy and paste the commands under each Enhancement;
- To see your changes you will have to restart the Dock:
killall Dock
I have never encountered – or heard of – any problems with any of these features, so i would call them perfectly safe. These are enhancements right out of apple, no third party stuff.
Add a “Spacer” to the dock
This command will add an inert blank space to your dock. I use it to place a space between my static apps in my dock, and currently running apps that disappear when closed.
The Dock Spacer
How To
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}'
To remove it later: Drag it off your Dock.
The New List Style
Apple has added a hidden replacement to the list view. I think it looks way better.
Comparison of the new and old styles
How To
defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES
To go back to the old list style:
defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool NO
Recents and Favorites
Another hidden feature is the special Recents Stack. It works much like a regular stack with a few special features. unlike a regular stack it contains dynamic data from Finder, instead of showing you contents of a folder.
Example of the special Recents stack, and its special right-click options.
How To
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add
'{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'
To remove it later: Drag it off your Dock.
Restart Your Dock
This isn’t a hidden feature, but this is how you can force restart your dock from with in terminal. You will need to run this command to see your changes.
killall Dock
Note: “killall” sounds violent, but it means “kill all processes”, If you called this on some other application it would be the same as force quitting it. The Dock and Finder apps are not regular apps, they get automagically relaunched, so its like restarting them.
Hack Me Gently
All the enhancements above (as well as any other OSX preferences) write to a property list file in your Preferences folder. The defaults write commands from the above enhancements refer to a command to change these values via the terminal (If you speak Cocoa, think NSUserDefaults).
If you don’t know what im talking about skip the rest of this post.
Example of the dock p-list
The Dock File
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
Breaking the Divide
Normally Stacks and files will only show up on the right, and apps will only show up on the left. This is how you can break that divide.
As you are now directly modifying a dynamic system resource you should make a backup copy of this file before modifying it, just in case.
In the context of this property list “Persistant-apps” means the left side of the dock, “Persistent-others” means the right.
Both of those items are arrays containing dictionaries (associative arrays) starting with “item-0″ (left most item on the dock). In each item are the properties of each tile. The rest should be self explanatory.
In essence what you need to do is cut/copy the items you want to move from either “persistant-apps” or “persistant-others” and paste them into its opposite.
"persistant-apps">"Item-2" Copy and paste to "persistant-others" (Where it will become the last item in "persistant-others")
Of course you will need to save the plist and restart the dock to see the changes.
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