Dock Library: Easily Switch Dock Appearances
With the introduction of the latest iteration of Mac OS X Leopard, Apple also changed the visual appearance of your Mac’s main application launcher, the Dock. Since Leopard has been on sale, people have started to take advantage of the new way that the Dock is controlled, including tweaking Dock images and controlling what the Dock looks like. Numerous different apps have sprung up to make Dock switching easier, and one of my favorites is the aptly titled Dock Library.
Dock Library is a free download from Dative Studios. The developer sums up this handy app perfectly: “Dock Library is an application that takes the headache out of managing styles for your Leopard dock.” Once you have Dock Library downloaded and installed, it’s super easy to switch between different Dock themes and to manage them without getting confused or worrying about losing backup system files.
When you launch the app for the first time, you’ll see a fairly empty window, with the original Default Dock present at the top of the list. By visiting sites like LeopardDocks.com or LeopardDocks.net, you can find a virtually endless supply of other docks that you can switch between. After you choose any of the docks that you like, you click the “Import Dock” button on the toolbar of the Dock Library App. After you do so, and select the docks that you want, you can scroll through all of your docks and see them all. This is the primary reason I like this Dock switching app so much more than other ones–it makes it super easy to keep track of everything and preview docks before actually switching to them.
After you have selected the dock you want to use, changing is as simple as clicking on the “Set Dock” button on the upper toolbar. After inputting your password to do the switch, Dock Library will swap out all the necessary files and relaunch the Dock for you.
Dock Library is a free download and is available from Dative Studios.
Seems pretty impressive for a free app. I wasn’t aware of those two websites for dock designs. Will definitely check them out though.
Neat app! Just need drag-and-drop capabilities.
*needs
There’s some very cool docks out there.
Very nice. Of course, if you’re like me the only appearance you’ll ever want is one terminal cut-and-paste away:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock
Still, variety is the spice of life. Some folks like the new dock, some folks don’t. To each his own.
what version of leopard are you on? im running 10.5.4 and it won’t work for me!! please this is really cool i want to be able to do this my e-mail is rpt9281@gmail.com can anyone help??
Yeah,I’m also running 10.5.4 Leopard and it doesnt work. After I press the dock I want and activate it, the dock disappears. Instead, I have to go to the search button, find “Dock” and then it opens Terminal. Then I have to force quit Terminal and I get my dock back, but the problem is that its still the same. Please email me at eshbeast@gmail.com