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 (code is in one row):
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.
Here is a quick video:
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.
I only get the following:
I can’t even use kill Dock!:” kill Dock
-bash: kill: Dock: arguments must be process or job IDs”
Yes, I’m logged in as Admin, even tried adding sudo to the defaults script and entered the correct password…
Hi Jim,
This code:
has to be in one line. It seems the code has been split in multiple lines. I just checked this code again and it is working with 10.7.
As I see, you have used
which is wrong, you should use
Don’t run both codes in one line or at the same time.
Please let me know your results.
Nick
Hi, was having the same problems as Jim but instead of copying and pasting the text I just retyped it and works fine,,,, I think the above text doesn’t have the correct characters in it after going through html and clipboards etc. especially the ‘ character
Hi Tim,
Thank you very much for your feedback. In fact, this could be the problem.
Great to see it has worked for you!
Nick
would this trick also work for launchpad? would love to be able space out my applications
Hi Shayan,
uhm do you really need it over there? You are able to group them like on your iPhone or iPad. Otherwise, just try to rearrange them.
Nick
can’t just copy and paste the code as inverted comma and apostrophe characters won’t copy over correctly.
Copy Paste should be working now. I put the code in an own “code-area” so it seems to be working again. Sorry for that, just used a div container to highlight the code, seems this has broken the code itself.
New guy here wanted to say thanks you. Was looking for an app, but like you said; no need for that any more. Love the whole Lion/Mac OS X thing.
Oh yeah, Lion is a great OS, let’s hope this function will work with the next updates as well.
Worked well. Thank you.
You are welcome, great to hear it is working for you!