Filed under: OS, Terminal Tips
Terminal Tips: Make hidden Dock icons transparent
defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES
Once you type the command and press enter, you need to restart the Dock by typing "killall Dock" and pressing enter. Once the Dock restarts and you hide applications, you will notice that hidden applications have a transparent look. If you want to reverse the command, just replace the "YES" with a "NO" and restart the Dock again.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jayden said 7:31AM on 8-22-2008
I don't get it?
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Greg said 7:46AM on 8-22-2008
Doesn't work for me.
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Ray Merkler said 7:52AM on 8-22-2008
Works for me. Maybe it's Leopard only?
TimL said 8:07AM on 8-22-2008
It works fine. At first I thought it didn't work because I thought clicking the red X was the same as Hiding. (don't ask me why). Guess I forgot about hte hiding trick alltogether. Command-H on a window and it will hide and go transparent.
Nigel said 8:09AM on 8-22-2008
Yes, works for me too - Leopard.
Xoviet chiK said 8:07AM on 8-22-2008
Nice, now I'll have to find a background that isn't mostly black so it at least looks decent with the non-shelf Dock.
Off-topic- I must not have been paying attention, but I was really disappointed that "Stacks" didn't apply to minimized or hidden applications. I'd love to see Apple implement Stacks with minimized / hidden windows in Safari, etc...!
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Robot Kitten Face said 8:21AM on 8-22-2008
Just download TinkerTool if you're not comfortable going into the terminal. It's much easier and it gives you other options as well.
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aethr said 8:47AM on 8-22-2008
All these tips can be handled very easily by the Secrets prefpane: http://secrets.blacktree.com/
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Hawkman said 8:56AM on 8-22-2008
That's exactly what I came here to post. Great tip - Secrets is a really useful piece of kit.
Caitlin said 1:51PM on 8-22-2008
@Hawkman Awesome Adium ducky. That's what I've been using for over a year.
Jonathan Wise said 8:59AM on 8-22-2008
Great hack! Thanks!
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Think Adrian said 9:07AM on 8-22-2008
Too bad, Adobe's products are buggy when it comes to Exposé and this transparency feature...
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Adam Payne said 10:25AM on 8-22-2008
Apparently I used TinkerTool for this a long time ago. So long ago that I thought this was OS X's normal behavior for Hidden Apps.
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Markito said 11:06AM on 8-22-2008
What app is the cute little log-with-the-smiling-flame that we see in the Dock illustration above?
Thanks,
'kito
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Bryan Veloso said 12:36PM on 8-22-2008
That's Pyro, a single-site browser built around 37signals' chat application, Campfire.
http://www.karppinen.fi/pyro/
Luigi193 said 11:10AM on 8-22-2008
This is one of the best customization tips out there.
I've used this one for year(s)! IT RULEZ!
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(01) said 12:31PM on 8-22-2008
Leopard doesn't do this automatically? In Tiger, hidden apps' icons are transparent (translucent?).
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Aaron Davies said 12:53PM on 8-22-2008
Brilliant! Why had I never heard of that before?
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Caitlin said 1:39PM on 8-22-2008
Or TinkerTool.
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Blocksoft said 1:51PM on 8-22-2008
Bit of shameless self promotion here, but in addition to allowing you to tweak other Dock settings, Docker allows you to turn this setting on and off. Docker can be downloaded for free from http://www.blocksoft.net. Hopefully this helps people who don't like to tinker in the terminal.
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