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Terminal Tips: Make the Dock spring loaded

by Cory Bohon Sep 24th 2008 at 7:00AM

Spring-loaded Dock items, just like spring-loaded Finder items, are supposed to save you time by allowing you to drag a file over the folder/icon, hover for a few seconds, and have the application/folder open. Some people like these spring loaded items, while others don't -- with this Terminal "hack," you can either enable or disable this Dock feature. To enable it, open Terminal.app (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and type the following command, pressing enter:

defaults write com.apple.dock enable-spring-load-actions-on-all-items -boolean YES

To disable spring loaded items, replace the "YES" in the command above with a "NO."


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Spring-loaded Dock items, just like spring-loaded Finder items, are supposed to save you time by allowing you to drag a file over the...
 

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maso4

How do I use Terminal to kill the spring loaded folders in Finder, as mentioned in the post? Those bug me a great deal. TIA

September 24 2008 at 7:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to maso4's comment
Chris

Finder > Preferences >Spring Loaded Folders - Uncheck the box.

September 24 2008 at 7:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
maso4

doh. my stupidity astounds me.
Thanks

September 24 2008 at 7:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bjorn Nitmo

I'm not getting this. If you drag a .txt file over Text Edit for example and release it, Text Edit opens with the document regardless of whether the 'spring' is active or not. Since you have to release anyway, what avantage does this provide?

September 24 2008 at 4:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Bjorn Nitmo's comment
gentlemanfinn

As David above you said, you can drag a file from stacks onto the finder icon to have it spring open. It makes anything in the dock spring loaded which not all is normally.
I have been using this for so long that I can't remember anything else, only that I never used spring loading before and now I love it.

September 24 2008 at 5:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David

Yes! I restarted both Finder and the Dock and it worked fine for me. A nice thing about this is that you can drag files from a stack directly to the finder icon.

September 24 2008 at 2:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

This is ON by default in Leopard.
That being said, I cannot get this command to work.

September 24 2008 at 12:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Chris's comment
Chris

killall Dock

September 24 2008 at 12:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David

Thanks! This is really a useful tip.

September 24 2008 at 11:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mikey P

Awesome! This will save me much aggrivation!

September 24 2008 at 8:03 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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