The single handiest modification I’ve made to my Mac UI lately: moving the Dock to the top of the screen. “Heretic!” I hear you exclaim. Ah, but give me but a moment to explain….
It’s not that I hate the Dock — it definitely has its uses. However, the way I’ve had it set up the past year or so is to:
- Position it on the Right.
- Pin the Trash Can end to the bottom-righthand corner.
- Hide it.
Since I use Quicksilver and Spotlight to do most of my launching of apps and documents — and use the Command-Tab shortcut to both see what’s running and switch between apps — I don’t really need the Dock that much except to occasionaly minimize document windows. (I’ll usually Command-H hide apps I’m not interacting with but want to leave running.)
While I don’t particularly want to kill the Dock outright, I wouldn’t mind disabling it. Especially if I have a document window opened to the edges of the screen (like a spreadsheet, for example) — that begins the nerve-wracking game of “Click on the Scrollbar or Resize Widget Without Activating the Dock!” Very frustrating.
Doing some research on Dock-disabling, I found you can’t really get rid of it altogether, due to its integration into the operations of the Desktop and Finder and Lord knows what-all. Not to mention the alternate Dashboard dimension, which I also don’t use. However, there’s a little-known, hidden fourth option for Dock positioning, one that I had always scoffed at without ever trying. On the top of the screen, so that it emerges from beneath the Menubar.
Sounds like it would always be in the way, doesn’t it? Ah, but if you turn Hiding on, it’s no where to be found. And it won’t activate just by moving the cursor to the top of the screen. In fact, it’s actually a challenge to get it to appear with the mouse, as you have to land precisely on the gray line demarcating the bottom of the Menubar. Bliss! Just use Command-Option-D to reveal and hide the Dock if you need it (which is just the shortcut for turning Hiding on and off.)
Moving the Dock to the top requires this Terminal command (assuming you don’t find a GUI utility to do it for you):
defaults write com.apple.dock orientation -string top
A couple-three additional tips:
- I changed the Minimize animation to use Scale as the Genie Effect looks a little peculiar.
- You might want to disable application animations in the Dock’s System Preferences
- With the Dock behaving itself, I actually expanded it so that it took up the entire width of the screen when it appeared. Looked gorgeous, with all the icons quite colorful, visible, and identifiable. However, the Dock’s usual behavior of pushing applications windows out of its way makes this large size more than a little unwieldy. Now I keep its size to a minimum and pinnned to the right; the latter is done like this:
defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end
Check out this macosxhints article for more: Making the Dock as unobtrusive as possible
Perhaps you should have incuded instructions how to undo it all?
:-)
Don't like living dangerously? ;D
There are various ways to change things back. Easiest way to return to default is to delete the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist. Then log out and log back in, or restart the Dock application.
To undo the Top orientation, you can just select any of the normally available options (Left/Bottom/Right) from the Dock menu or System Preferences.
To undo the pinning, you can also return to the Terminal and use this command:
defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string middle
then log out and back in, or restart the Dock app.
As a 12" iBook user I find that screen real-estate is all too valuable and I'm always trying to minimise my reliance on the Dock, and this is the best technique I've come across, thanks.
I use LaunchBar and LiteSwitchX from Proteron to eliminate mouse usage but occasionally due to old Windows habits find that I double-click the title bar to maximise the screen (as in Windows) only to find it's done the opposite. This is now the only time I go to the Dock to un-minimise that screen. Does anyone know a trick to control the action when double-clicking the title bar ?
Stan -- check out WindowShadeX at http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/wsx
Best tip ever. I've moved my Dock to the top and moved my virtual desktop app (The Desktop Manager) to the lower left corner. Thanks for the tip!
I tried copying and pasting these commands in the Terminal (several times, and even using sudo), but my dock stayed stubbornly posted right where it was. Same thing using Macosxhints as the source, but I did see a reference to some utilities that will do the job. I finally found a reference to the name of one and used it. It worked. Its name is TinkerTool and it's free. I got it from MacUpdate.
@Norman: Did you restart the dock after the defaults command? Try something like:
killall Dock
or
osascript -e 'tell app "Dock" to quit'
Is there any way to get windows opened not to position themselves under the bottom line of the dock?
By the way, ctrl-F3 is the default shortcut to move focus to dock. I find this more useful than cmd-opt-d since it allows you to scroll through your icons by hitting tab and then activate a program by hitting spacebar. For times when I feel like mousing, I've used Butler to map my top left corner click to activate this shortcut; this is nice because my pointer is right next to the beginning of the dock when I activate it.
Does anyone else now get the Dock icons visible at the top when playing Quicktime Pro in full screen mode ?
(Jeremy, thanks for the earlier tip)
I like the dock on the left (because I do use it to see things like what new mail/RSS updates I've got, or for the Activity Monitor dock icon graphs) but I'd love it if the Finder would align new icons on the left also, rather than the right. I've flicked through the com.apple.finder options, and can't see anything. Can it be done?
How would you get rid of the menu-bar:
[apple] ['application'][file][edit][etc...]
Or at least move it to the side?
I really love having the dock at the top- especially using ClearDock to get rid of the transparent background!