Can my apps run in stealth mode?

I’m looking for a way to load apps when I log in to my Mac without having them displayed in the Dock – I want them to run invisibly in the background. In Login Items preferences there’s a column labelled Hide, but adding an app to this and ticking the hide box appears to make no difference. Sam Yu That option in Login Items is intended to remove the icon clutter from the menu bar for those little helper apps, like Dropbox and Air Display, that don’t normally appear in the Dock anyway. Apps that normally display a Dock icon will still do so with the Hide option ticked. It is possible to hide the Dock icon for running apps using this Terminal command:

Just replace <appname> with the name that appears when the pointer is over the Dock icon. This isn’t always the same as the name that appears in the menu. Chrome’s name is actually “Google Chrome”, for example, and you’ll need to surround it with quote marks because the name contains a space.

Fun though this little hack is, it isn’t especially useful. It only hides the Dock icon and menu for the app, not windows that are already open. And for some apps, doing anything that causes the app to gain focus can pop any hidden windows back into view. It’s also not permanent.

To hide an application from the Dock automatically, create an Automator application containing this AppleScript: tell application “Calendar”

activate end tell tell application “System Events”

set visible of process “Calendar” to false end tell