Customise your Dock

Use cDock to give your Dock a new theme and to add time-saving features

The Dock has been a mainstay of OS X since the start: it’s a place to stash regularly-used apps and documents and to easily see what’s running on your Mac.

From a visual standpoint, however, the Dock has seen big changes over the years. Initially, it was a semi-transparent white rectangle with subtle pinstripes, which were eradicated as of OS X 10.2 Jaguar, while in OS X 10.5 Leopard, the Dock turned into a 3D glass ‘shelf’ when at the bottom of the screen, which gradually got frosted as the operating system was upgraded further. In OS X 10.10 Yosemite, we’ve almost come full circle, with the Dock reverting to a simpler semitransparent rectangle regardless of where it’s positioned.

If you’re not thrilled about the Dock’s new togs, you can use the free cDock (sourceforge.net/ projects/cdock) to make a number of stylistic changes. Additionally, the app is capable of updating a number of other aspects of the Dock, including the addition of spacers, creating a ‘recent items’ folder and dimming hidden apps. Note that on first launching cDock, you may get a security warning; if so, open System Preferences, go to Security & Privacy > General and click Open Anyway. Craig Grannell

If you don’t like the Dock’s new togs, you can use cDock to make some stylistic changes