cDock 3
Customize your Dock in a variety of creative ways
$4.99 From macEnhance, cdock.macenhance.com Needs OS X 10.10 or later
The macOS Dock has become indispensable for most users, allowing us to launch apps, force quit them when they misbehave, allocate them to Spaces, and quickly access folders like Documents and Downloads.
However, save for a few basic options — like where to place it and whether or not to display it permanently — there are very few options for customizing it. cDock is a tool that changes this by offering dozens of options for changing the way the Dock is able to both look and behave. If you’ve ever lamented the inability to make your Dock look the way you want it to, cDock may just be for you. However, be warned that with this freedom comes a couple of caveats.
To install cDock, you first have to disable Apple’s System Integration Protection (SIP). SIP, which first appeared in El Capitan, restricts the ability of third–party apps to use the root user account to modify protected parts of the OS. In order to install some of its components, cDock needs access to those files and folders that are protected. Turning off SIP involves booting to your Mac’s recovery partition and typing in a Terminal command. Full instructions are given and you can switch it back on once cDock has installed (unless you’re running macOS Mojave, going by cDock’s documentation), but even that may be enough to dissuade a large number of avid Mac users.
If you’re happy to go ahead you’ll be rewarded with the ability to change the background color of the Dock, or specify an image to use as the background. You can also change the width of the Dock, the radius of its corners, and the transparency of the background. cDock can also change the background color of the App Switcher, hide certain icons in the Dock, remove the Trash or, alternatively, show a badge on the Trash icon that indicates how many items are in it. cDock can even change the spacing between the items featured in the Dock.
If changing options individually is too time–consuming, you can create themes and apply settings that let you switch between your preferred Dock attributes all at once. There are an impressive number of options available, and, once you’ve installed cDock, using it is just a matter of checking off boxes to apply settings. Whether it’s worth the price tag is entirely down to how much you value the ability to customize your Dock.
the bottom line. cDock’s need to disable SIP may put some users off. If you’re not one of them, cDock is a simple and effective way of personalizing the Dock.