Restoring application icons to OS X Dock
03 November 2007, 10:55 AM
#1
Restoring application icons to OS X Dock
My five year old has been messing about on my Mac. Icons for Mail and some others are no longer there. Anyone know how I put these icons back in the Dock so they stay there?
03 November 2007, 07:49 PM
#4
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I know you have sorted it, but I'm bored so I'll waffle on about the Dock for ab bit 
To add an icon to the Dock you can either launch the corresponding application then click and hold on it's icon in the Dock and you'll get a popup menu where you can select "Keep in Dock". This will add the entry to the com.apple.dock.plist file (found in the /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences folder on your hard drive) which is the pref file for all of the Dock settings.
In a normal setup you can happily add/remove items to/from the dock without any prevention at all, and there is no option within the Dock prefs to limit this behavior.
Typically if you want this level of control you need to start messing around with MCX settings, which is how the Server/Client control stuff works in OS X. If you know where to look and how the system works, then it's easy enough to setup and modify, but it's not dynamic, meaning you'd need to login and logout to change the "locked" state of the Dock.
I've had a little play around and even making the com.apple.dock.plist file read-only doesn't help, as when you relaunch the dock, eg; after a reboot, it's made read/write, so the damage can be done again.
A script could be very easily written to backup the dock settings and allow you to restore them if the dock got screwed up. I'm not overly busy so I'm in the middle of writing one, will probably be done in the next hour or so, will post up when I've finished it.
To add an icon to the Dock you can either launch the corresponding application then click and hold on it's icon in the Dock and you'll get a popup menu where you can select "Keep in Dock". This will add the entry to the com.apple.dock.plist file (found in the /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences folder on your hard drive) which is the pref file for all of the Dock settings.
In a normal setup you can happily add/remove items to/from the dock without any prevention at all, and there is no option within the Dock prefs to limit this behavior.
Typically if you want this level of control you need to start messing around with MCX settings, which is how the Server/Client control stuff works in OS X. If you know where to look and how the system works, then it's easy enough to setup and modify, but it's not dynamic, meaning you'd need to login and logout to change the "locked" state of the Dock.
I've had a little play around and even making the com.apple.dock.plist file read-only doesn't help, as when you relaunch the dock, eg; after a reboot, it's made read/write, so the damage can be done again.
A script could be very easily written to backup the dock settings and allow you to restore them if the dock got screwed up. I'm not overly busy so I'm in the middle of writing one, will probably be done in the next hour or so, will post up when I've finished it.
03 November 2007, 08:54 PM
#5
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Script is finished. It's pretty basic. It will backup the current file (name includes date, so you can have a per day backup, which is all you should need really) and allow you to restore the backup file. If you make more than one backup (eg; one per day) then you can select which one to backup.
If anyone wants a copy then email me: markuswarren@gmail.com
Seems to work happily on 10.4.10 and 10.5.0
If anyone wants a copy then email me: markuswarren@gmail.com
Seems to work happily on 10.4.10 and 10.5.0
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