When I’m writing, I like to listen to music in the background. When writing, I also like to have everything minimized so I can quickly grab a screenshot of the desktop where needed. This means that when I run into a track that doesn’t work with whatever I’m writing that I would need to unminimize iTunes, click the next button and then re-minimize iTunes. Awhile back I found a better way but can’t remember where for attribution. So, part of my default user template and imaging framework now includes setting the iTunes Dock icon to show the track that I’m playing so I can easily go to the next song,…
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Adding Objects To The Dock
Using Mac OS X, one of the most trivial things (provided you have permission) is to add an object to the dock. Applications go on the left side of the dock and folders/documents/stacks go on the right. From the command line it isn’t quite as trivial but not that complicated either. To do so from the command line, you can write directly into the com.apple.dock.plist for a user. To do so, we’re going to use the defaults command and we’re going to look at adding an application first: defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘<dict><key>tile-data</key><dict><key>file-data</key><dict><key>_CFURLString</key><string>/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Microsoft Word</string><key>_CFURLStringType</key><integer>0</integer></dict></dict></dict>’ You can also add a custom title for the object that you are adding…
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Dock Highlighting
You click on an icon in the dock that brings up a grid of the items in the list and then you click on one of the items in that list. But I like the way the rest of the dock operates, where I know what I’m moused over (is moused the verb of mousy?). And I sometimes click on the wrong one, which is why it’s nice to highlight one. To do so, run this command: defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilite-stack -boolean yes And then: killall Dock To go back to the way things were before: defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilite-stack -boolean no And then: killall Dock
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Get A Dock in Windows
In addition to getting a theme for Windows that makes it look more like a Mac you can also now install a Dock in Windows! rocketdock.com
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Stop the Bouncing!
In Mac OS X, when an application is opening it will bounce in the dock. To tell it to stop doing so, you can edit the no-bouncing key of the com.apple.dock.plist file. To do so: defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -boolean-neg
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Pinning Down Your Dock
The Dock is, by default, anchored to the middle of the screen. However, in some environments you may want to have it skewed to one side of the screen. In order to do this Apple provides the ability to use pinning. Pinning will pin the dock to the start, end or middle; by default it’s pinned to the middle. If you pin the dock to the start and it’s either on the right or left side of the screen then it will appear to be skewed towards the top. If you pin it to the start and it’s on the bottom then it will skew to the left of the…
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Disabling Dashboard
The other day I saw someone remove the Dashboard icon from the Dock as a way of disabling it entirely. Probably not the best route. It’s pretty easy though. The command to disable: defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean yes And of course if you’ve disabled, you might want to turn it back on using this handy-dandy double-negative: defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean no
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Customizing the color and icons in the Dock
So I had a request that involved something I had never actually thought or bothered to do: customize the finder icon in the dock… I figured it would just be an image and therefore that it couldn’t actually be that difficult. And I was correct. Remarkably, the icon is actually called finder.png (you may have noticed that smaller iPhone and OS X images are almost always png files these days): /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/finder.png So I renamed it to finder.old using this command: sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/finder.png /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/finder.OLD Then grabbed a new png icon and threw it in the same place with the same name (in this case the logo was called UGA.png before and…
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Mac OS X: Change Spaces Behavior in Dock using MCX
Using Open Directory you can push out a key to stop the automatic Spaces switch when a different application in a different Space steals focus. To do so, first open Workgroup Manager and click on the group in question. Then click on Preferences and then the Details tab. Next, click on the + sign and browse to /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app. Next click on Dock and click on the pencil. Here drop down the Often disclosure triangle and click on the New Key button. From here, name the key workspaces-auto-swoosh and set the Type to Boolean and the Value to True.
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Click on App, Hide Others
When you open an application you can have all the other applications minimize. To do so you’ll add the single-app key into com.apple.default.plist by using the following command: defaults write com.apple.dock single-app -bool TRUE Then you’ll need to restart the Dock: killall Dock