How to keep your dock organized
Since Mac OS X Leopard I was a huge fan of a well structured dock with a little trick.
If you have a lot of programs apps in your dock, it could be possible that you may have lost the overview from time to time. It looks sometimes a bit messy and you have to hover again and again over the icons to find the desired application.
As I’m currently in progress of getting my environment back after a fresh Mac OS X Lion install, I thought about sharing this little trick with you guys. I guess already some of you knew this from previous OS X versions, but maybe I catch some new guys as well.
Now let’s have a look at my dock (click to enlarge):
As you can see, I have grouped my apps to give me a personal better overview. I find the need apps faster in that way. I know there is Launchpad but I’m a fan of “one-click”-action so applications I use very often are placed within the dock..Sure, this WILL expand your dock! But you are able to resize it. Currently I haven’t added all apps yet so my dock will change within the next days. Enough about my dock, now let me show you how to get this done for your dock as well.
Fire up terminal – Path: Applications – Utilities – Terminal
Just type in the following code or use copy and paste:
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'
Hit enter and type in the next command:
killall Dock
Hit enter and your dock will flicker for a second as the process is being restarted. Now you should be able to see the added blank space. Here comes the trick:
Just click on it and move it like any other app in your dock. Place it where you want to have it. Repeat above steps if you need some more. If you are going to add a bunch of them just repeat step one again and again until you have reached your number of wanted spaces and than head over to step two so you don’t have to kill the dock every time.
Oh, if you want to remove a blank space, just click on it and move it from the dock and will get deleted like any other app in your dock.
I remember that there are some apps available to get this done as well but I don’t see any need for them.
Hope this little trick helps you as well, if you have any other way to organize your dock, please let me know via your comment.
