Open app not visible in dock?

[aishafenton]

Hi,

Does anyone know of a way to hide a running application's dock icon?

For instance.. I like to have Stickies running in the background but I don't want to have it cluttering up my dock..

And on a more general note..
Does anyone else out there think that in OSX there needs to be something equivalent to the Window's (yuk) System tray??

I do like the dock.. but some things I run just don't require that much attention...

Thanks,
Aisha

[griffman]

Here's a description of how to do it:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...10420005353216

However, the problem is that this puts the app in background mode, which means you can't type in it -- so Stickies is not a good candidate. But other 'process only' tasks may be...

-rob.

[tismey]

Originally posted by griffman
Here's a description of how to do it:

[url]http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?

is macosxhints still there? Whenever I try and connect to it nowadays, I just get a time-out error (and this is on many different machines/OSs/Browsers, so it ain't that....)

Anyway, my point is, I've been wondering how to hide a running app's icon for a bit, but can't get to this page to find out how to do it.

Help?

[aishafenton]

This hack does work.. but it still isn't the complete solution. The problem with this hack is that it puts the application into permanent background mode.. meaning that no keystrokes can go to it...

So doing this to Stickies, for example, is a bad idea, since you wouldn't be able to type to it...

Any other ideas anyone???



Quote "www.macosxhints.com" ...

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If you'd like to have an application running, but without a dock icon, there's a way achieve this by modifying the application's plist file. Read the rest of this article if you'd like the (fairly simple) instructions.

NOTE: This one goes in the clearly 'experimental' category. I have not tried this myself yet, but the source (the X4U mailing list) is generally good, and it seems to make logical sense. Use at your own risk!!

Open a terminal session, and first navigate to the "Contents" folder of the application you'd like to modify (note - you may want to make a backup of the app first, especially if it's one of the Apple-installed applications). This example uses Key Caps:

cd 'Applications/Utilities/Key Caps.app/Contents/'

Now, edit the Info.plist file:

vi Info.plist

You can use vi, pico, or emacs to do the editing.

Just before the closing Just before the closing </dict> tag, add

<key>NSBGOnly</key>
<string>1</string>

Save the edited Info.plist, then launch Key Caps from the GUI (it's in /Applications). If your edit was successful, you should see the Key Caps window come up, but no icon in the dock.

[prahn]

Does anybody know how I can hide an icon from an app in the Dock. I always have DropDrawers running. (A great little utility with a nice Aqua interface). I never want it to quit...

What can I do to make the icon in my Dock disappear?

[Jadey]

An application has to be written to do this. Some have this feature implemented. Email the author and ask if she will consider adding it in.

[Iuis]

I am not sure if I understand your Question..why would you want an icon disappear if you have it always running?
can't you just drag it out of the dock?

[Darkshadow]

If it's a Cocoa app you want to do this to, you're in luck, but if it's a Carbon app you'll have to get the author of it to implement it.

If it's a Cocoa app, navigate to it, control-click (or right click on the mouse if you have a two button one), select 'Show Package Contents' from the pop up menu.

Open up the Contents folder. There will be a file called Info.plist. Open that up in your favorite text editor (NOTE: if you open it up in TextEdit, make sure that it is set to plain text, NOT rich text format).

At the bottom, before the <xmp></dict></xmp> line, add this in:

<xmp><key></xmp>NSUIElement<xmp></key></xmp>
<xmp><string></xmp>1<xmp></string></xmp>

Then save the file, and restart the the app if it's running.

Note that this will also disable the application's menu bar...you won't be able to see that, either.

If you want to set it back to normal, all you have to do is either change the 1 in that second line to 0, or just delete both lines. Restart the app if it's running.