Customizing the 3D Leopard Dock

Caleb Pike — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:52:43 +0000

The Apple dock is probably one of the most recognized, known and loved parts of Apples OS X. The dock has come a long way since its debut in the first version of OS X. Yet it comes across a little bland. The purpose of this guide is tohelp you take your dock and customize it for productivity and tailored appearance.

Get Docks

The first thing you need to do is go out and find some 3D docks you like. Get as many as you want. Make sure to keep them in some orderly fashion as this will be helpful latter on.

Here are some great places to find 3D docks:

Changing 3D Docks

There are several dock changers out there such as Panics CandyBar ($30 but shiny) Dock library (free and simple) But I am going to recommend you use Super Docker (Free and awesome) Especially since we will be using many of this applications features later. You can download SuperDocker here

Here is a quick screen cast on how to use Superdocker:

So there you have it! A customized dock, Be sure to check out the other dock post for more custom dock tips!

Add Spaces to the Dock

If your a dock junkie and have a lot of applications in your dock, things can get a little crazy. So instead of seeing your shrink once a week you can create dock spacers like the ones in the image above. Start by opening up terminal and pasting in the following command line:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘{tile-data={}; tile-type=”spacer-tile”;}’

Do this for as many spacers as you would like. Then open Activity Monitor and and quit the dock. Once the dock restarts you will see a spacer in your dock.

You can reposition/remove these spacers just like any other dock item. If you would like to put a spacer in the stacks use this command line:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{tile-data={}; tile-type=”spacer-tile”;}

Remember, to remove spacers all you need to do is drag them out of the dock.

Turning off the 3D Dock

There are many reasons to turn off the 3d dock, reasons I will leave up to you to decide. But here are two ways to turn off the 3D dock so that your dock is always 2D. The first is using the terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES killall Dock

And this command to restore it:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO killall Dock

The second way to disable the 3D dock is using Super Docker. In the Dock tab of SuperDocker just change the setting from a 3D dock to 2D (see image below) and your done.

Dock Position

You are probably familiar with the three current dock positions, left, right and bottom. But there are ways to customize your dock position further. Such as putting your dock at the top left of your screen or at the bottom all the way to the right using Super Docker.

Do this in the “Dock” tab and setting the Alignment and Position on screen to desired position.

So play around with it until you find a position that is best for your work/play flow. I like having the dock on the top left so its out of the way and gives me more room for windows. Where do you like to have you dock?

There you have it. Your new awesome Dock! Be sure to check out this post on how to have multiple docks