This is a quick tutorial that shows you how to spice up your dock. Check it out after the jump.
First you need to BACKUP your original files before you overwrite them!
And since most of you are lazy (as I am) HERE is the backup for the files you should be altering.
To Navigate to the Dock Images Folder
- Navigate to System/Library/CoreServices/
- Right click on Dock.app and choose “Show Package Contents”
- Then navigate to Contents/Resources/
- Find the 4 ’scurve’ PNG files in here, you should see this:
These are the 4 Dock image files. They are in different sizes so no matter what size your dock is (snicker), you’ll have the crispest textures. So copy these to your desktop or new folder, and open them up in your favorite image-editing software.
Editing the Dock Files
Now the first file you should do any editing is the scurve-m.png file. Since this is the largest one, and anything you do you can easily be scaled down for the other sizes.
Here’s the fun part, DESIGN!!! Let your imagination run wild here. Paste in some textures, photos, ANYTHING you can think of. For example, here is the photo I used for ‘CoffeeTable’, because it actually is my coffee table:
Setting the Reflection on your Dock
Once you have your texture set up, you can now choose the ‘reflectiveness’ of the texture when it’s on your dock. This is determined by the transparency your texture layer is at. I usually choose anything from 90-75, depending on personal taste.
Now copy over your texture to the other 3 scurve PNG files and make sure that they are aligned and covering up the whole canvas.
Saving and Activating your custom Dock
You can either use this Automator script, written by Unplugged Software, or you can do it the exact same you accessed them the first place, but it can get tricky.
If you’ve do decided to do it by hand, then you’ll need to first DELETE the 4 png files in the ‘Resources’ folder (the four shown in the picture above). COPY and PASTE your new 4 pngs into this folder. Then you need to run Terminal, and type “killall Dock” (without quotes) and hit enter.
November 9th, 2007 at 4:29 am
Thanks for the tutorial mate!
Do you align them all to the top right, or top centre?
November 9th, 2007 at 5:47 am
@lennel: Top center!
November 10th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
[…] just like my coffee table dock for now, but I may try this soon. It worked before I undid […]
November 12th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
What does “killall Dock” do? Restarts the Dock?
Nice tutorial, by the way.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
@Phsyco: Yes
Don’t worry, it won’t quit any applications!
November 12th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Thanks Zak! Good to know ’cause I don’t want to bring destruction to my baby, nor I want to panic. hehe
December 6th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Hey what programme do you use to edit the images and stuff? I am not really an expert on images editing… HELP!
January 14th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Use anything from MS Paint (windows) to Adobe Photoshop. I dont know a MS Paint equiv for mac but I use Photoshop and its easy enough to use.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:09 am
I love the coffee table. How can I set it up so that I can use it when the dock is on the side?
February 13th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Wow very good been wondering how transparents work. thx.
March 26th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
HI, everytime i install a new dock it becomes really stretched and always looks really bad, i have a very long dock, is there any way to keep the proportions of the docks? thanks
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:18 am
Hi i followed ur instructions and did the killall dock and nothing is happening….wot do i do? pls help
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:25 am
Oh crap….did i delete the dock? PLSSS HEEELPP
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 pm
How do you customizr the lights when you open a app.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
heyy
i was just wondering, how do u change the reflectiveness?
January 31st, 2009 at 3:19 pm
you can customize your lights in candybar 3. you can use any image.
December 12th, 2009 at 4:47 am
I have the problem that because I use a very widescreen monitor I place my dock on the left of the screen to free up real estate. To change your dock in this location you need to go to the Core System/…/Resources like normal and instead of modifying the scurve .png files you have to modify files named left 1, left 2, …, left 5 (and one other that I couldn’t find to change the fill colour of the dock). That is all well and good but i managed to delete my backups of the originals and when one of my files was the wrong size the dock stopped working. As a result I can’t manage to restore to defults to find the correct size (the ‘light’ [indicator_medium] is the file in question). Can anybody send me a link (or the files) to help me? Note that programs like Candybar will not restore properly because of the dock being located on the left of the screen. (also, what is the name of the .png I need to modify the fill of the dock, remember it is located on the left of the screen)
Thanks everyone
December 12th, 2009 at 4:49 am
aww man i’m sorry, I should have noticed that there is a ‘contact us’ tab near the top. Please feel free to delete these posts. >