Tip of the Week: Make Dock items of hidden apps translucent

19Jul07

It looks like I’ve gone and given up on my blog again, but I promise you, I haven’t. Slow news brings very few blog posts. So when things pick up a bit, so will I. But I am soldiering on with my Tips of the Week and Picks of the Week, so at least there is some conselation.

This weeks tip is a bit of a functionality tip for getting more out of the little hidden features in Mac OS X. We all know about hiding (and if you don’t, this is your chance to learn), we know that by hitting ⌘+H (Command+H) or by by choosing ‘Hide…’ from the menu with the name of the application, we can make all the windows of that app disappear while still having them running. This can allow us to get access to apps underneath, to the desktop or even just to clear some space. But in the Dock, there is no visual way to quickly ascertain which apps are visible and which are hidden, so we have to make mental notes and try to remember which apps are where, and that can get confusing.

As it happens, OS X has a built-in feature that you can use to make things a little easier. By modifying a small setting (this is the little hack), you can make the Dock show which applications are hidden by displaying them as a semi-transparent icon. To do this, open up the Terminal (Applications/Utilities) and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool yes

And then press Enter.

Now, for this change you’ve just made to take effect, you have to restart the Dock, which is a fairly simple process. Simply open Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities) and then find the process from the list called ‘Dock’ and hit Quit Process (and then Quit again on the sheet which pops down). The system will then automatically relaunch the Dock and you’re done!

Try hiding an application now, such as the browser window you are reading this in, then look at the Dock icon for that app. Neat, huh?

If you decide that you don’t fancy this mod after you’ve tried it out, no problem. Just repeat the process but replace the “yes” for a “no” in the code you put into Terminal, i.e.

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool no

Then restart the Dock in the same way and you’re back to how you were before.

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