Terminal tweaks
Customise the Dock to work even more efficiently
Surprisingly, the Dock has a number of options that can make it an even more useful and effective timesaver, yet these features aren’t available in its System
Preferences pane. To use them, you’ll need to use Terminal, which you’ll find in /Applications/Utilities. If that intimidates you, we’ll introduce you to a third-party app that provides the same results.
Before you begin, make sure you have a recent backup of your entire system – Terminal is very powerful, and although you’ll be fine if you type exactly the commands here, it has the potential to royally muck things up.
As a precaution, make a backup of the Dock’s current settings: in Finder, hold å and choose Go > Library. From the folder that opens, copy com.apple.dock. plist to another folder. If you later want to undo all changes made here, copy this back to the original folder, replacing the one you’ve changed, then open Terminal, type killall Dock and press ® .
1 Recent items in the Dock
Ready to go? For faster access to apps you use often, add a ‘recent items’ stack to the right of the Dock’s dividing line.
In Terminal, type defaults write com. apple.dock persistent-others -arrayadd '{"tile-data" = {"list-type" = 1;}; "tile-type" = "recents-tile";}'; killall
Dock and press ® . This adds a new icon to the left of the Trash icon. Click it. The stack shows the same number of recent apps as are shown in > Recent Items; you can change this number in System Prefs > General > Recent Items.
You can ≈- click on the stack’s icon to set how its contents are displayed – in a fan, grid or list – and whether it contains recent apps, documents or servers, among other things. Want multiple stacks to access more than one of these things? Run the Terminal command again to add another stack, then configure it to suit.
2 Indicate hidden apps
The Dock displays a dot beneath the icons of apps that are open, but it doesn’t indicate those whose windows you’ve hidden by pressing ç+H. In Terminal, type defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool yes; killall Dock and press ® . Now when you hide an app’s windows, its Dock icon will become semi-transparent as a reminder. 3 Group icons in the Dock
You can add spacers to the Dock to make it easier to navigate – useful if it’s very busy. In Terminal, type: defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type" = "spacertile";}'; killall Dock and press ® . Drag the spacer where you want it, and repeat the command if you want to add more. If you want a spacer that’s narrower than a regular icon, type smallspacer-tile instead of spacer-tile, and if you want one in the Dock’s right side, type persistent-others instead of persistent-apps. To remove a spacer, ≈- click it and choose Remove from Dock.