The Dock
From Applepedia
The Dock is the primary means of switching applications and launching commonly-used applications on Mac OS X. It can also hold icons for commonly-used files and folders, and is the home of the Trash and minimized windows. It is based on the Dock from NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP, rather than the Start Menu in Windows which was stolen from the Apple menu.
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Restarting the Dock
If you change Dock settings from the command line, you need to restart it. You can do this by logging out and back in again; by finding the Dock process and using kill(1); killing all processes called 'Dock':
killall Dock
or via applescript:
osascript -e 'tell application "Dock" to quit'
The 'killall' version is used in the rest of this article.
I want to get rid of it!
Open Terminal and enter these commands
defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool no defaults write com.apple.dock magnification -bool no defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool yes defaults write com.apple.dock orientation -string top defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 16 killall Dock
This hides the dock in the top right corner under the menu bar, with the nice side effect of freeing up the few pixels it eats even when hidden in the other three screen edges. Finaly the dock is killed (it restarts automatically) so that the changes take effect. The few times I need it, I usually just toggle the autohide setting via the keyboard (Command-Option-D by default; configure a better one in system preferences), though it's possible to hover the cursor just under the menu bar too.
Oh, and these tweaks (specifically, the launchanim setting) also turns off the annoying bouncing icons when launching an application. Have fun!
From this MacOSXHints article.
Tips and Tricks
- Right click on any application in the dock and press Option and Force Quit will be added to the context menu
- Right-click on the divider between applications and files to quickly change any options, or click on it to resize the dock.
- You can change the dock size via that method, or in the Dock preference pane, however there is a limit to how small you can make it. Try this:
defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -float 10 killall Dock
- Use ClearDock to change the background color of the Dock.
- Drag your Applications folder onto the dock. Now, when you hold down you mouse on it (or god forbid, right click), it'll list it's contents.
- Use TinkerTool to get more options as to where to place it.
- A little-known fact about the Dock is that it controls the window minimization effects. In addition to the "genie" and "scale" effects selectable in System Preferences, there is also a "suck" effect which can be set by editing the Dock's property list. This is most easily achieved by typing in at the command line:
defaults write com.apple.Dock mineffect "suck" killall Dock
Technical Information
As part of its role controlling window effects, the Dock is where Exposé is implemented. Furthermore, it's also the Dashboard's rendering container, and the parent process for all DashboardClient processes.
