Hidden enhancements

Use Terminal to fine–tune your Mac’s interface and make it easy to navigate

This set of tips is for making changes to the Dock that Apple doesn’t provide in System Prefs. These require Terminal (located in / Applications/Utilities) and are safe and, in each case, reversible. Do take care, though, to type in the commands exactly as shown.

1 ADD DOCK SPACERS

When you enter the following command: defaults write com.apple. dock persistent–apps -array-add

'{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}', a movable spacer is added to the Dock. Use these to form groups within the left. To remove one, Ctrl–click it and pick Remove from Dock.

3 CREATE A DOCK STACK

To add a stack that has recent apps to the right of the Dock, enter this: defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{"tile-data" = {"list-type" = 1;}; "tile-type" = "recents-tile";}'

2 INDICATE HIDDEN APPS

To make apps whose windows you’ve hidden (with Cmd+H) identifiable, by making their icons semi–transparent in the Dock, use the following command: defaults write com.apple.dock showhidden -bool yes (To revert, enter that again, but change yes to no.)

4 CONFIGURE DOCK STACKS

Each time you run the previous command, a new stack is added to the Dock. Ctrl–click one of those stacks to adjust its presentation style. You can set each stack to show something different — recent apps/documents/ servers, or favorite volumes/items.

Under ‘View content as’, you can alter the appearance of a stack as well, which is useful if you want a particular one to always present its contents in a grid of icons or a menu–like list.