Create a “Sky” and “Wood” Custom Dock

Written on October 31, 2007 by Todd Baur and 70 people have commented

I learned that the background on the Dock in Leopard is a set of 4 PNG image files, and I got the hamsters running. I made Sky and Wood for you, and here’s what they look like:

Installation

showcontents.jpg To ‘install’ them, go to /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock and click on the gear icon in the Finder window.

Select “Show Package Contents” and then go to Contents/Resources/ and copy these files in. They will replace the system images, so be sure to backup the originals!

Download Sky
Download Wood

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  1. #1 Antonis says:

    Nice. I bet most Leopard-ised tweak utilities (CandyBar, Onyx, Cocktail etc) will automate this process.

    How did you get rid of the reflections? IIRC the stock Dock also draws reflections for all icons it carries but I see none in your versions.

  2. #2 Elizabeth says:

    Is it too simple to think that four transparent PNG’s would work to “erase” the dock background entirely, leaving the icons floating above the desktop?

  3. #3 John M says:

    Hello Todd,

    I backed up my dock files and then copied over the wood files and nothing changed even after a reboot. Am I missing something?

  4. #4 Todd Baur says:

    If you’re comfortable using Terminal, you can use the command ’sudo ditto Downloads/Wood/*.png /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/’ (assuming that Downloads/Wood/ is the location of the PNG files.

  5. #5 John M says:

    Todd,

    Thank you for the quick response. The files are where they need to be just as per your directions but still no luck after an hour later. BTW, thank you for creating these files as well. I am going to try sky and see what happens.

  6. #6 John M says:

    Todd,

    I noticed that sky has 6 files while wood only has 4? Is that normal?

  7. #7 Todd Baur says:

    I included the original file I cut the sky background from for anyone who is interested in customizing it some more.

  8. #8 Matt Radel says:

    That’s pretty nifty. I love the wood!

  9. #9 rob says:

    the wood isn’t working for me either

  10. #10 Dave says:

    So they only work if your dock is on the bottom? I set my dock to the left. How do you make them work if you choose that option? Thanks and nicely done.

  11. #11 John M says:

    How many folks here have tried with no success to get this to work. Todd’s work is magnificent but I cannot get it to work. :(

  12. #12 Todd Baur says:

    Make sure you log out and log back in before it takes effect!

  13. #13 John M says:

    Todd,

    I logged in and out. rebooted, did it all even revived all dock files (from backup) then retried wood files still no luck. Hopefully can figure this out someday. Thank you for your help anyway.

    John

  14. #14 Todd Baur says:

    When you view the images in the Dock package are they shown as the Wood files or the system ones? I made sure the Finder viewed the Wood before I switched over.

  15. #15 John M says:

    Todd,

    I got it to work. I had to physically remove the old files and then copy and paste in your wood files. It did not replace them if I just did the overwrite thing.

    Thank you. Nice job.

    John

  16. #16 Timoni Grone says:

    Even with the authorization, I wasn’t able to overwrite the scurve-.pngs until I removed the original files as well (similar to John M’s description).

  17. #17 CC says:

    Yeah I had the same problem as above, had to manually delete and replace the files. You can do a Killall Dock at the terminal instead of doing the login thing.

    Thanks

    You can check out my desktop here http://deepink.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/my-dektop.jpg

  18. #18 Matt says:

    If anybody’s interested, I made a couple dock looks of my one. One is another wood look, although this one with some reflectivity and chrome endcaps, and the other looks like an ice block, with the “running application” indicator also replaced for clarity.

    http://www.hine.org/graphic/2007_10_docks/

  19. #19 Stephanie Guertin says:

    @Elizabeth - Yes, four transparent .pngs produce a very eerie floating-in-midair transparent effect.

  20. #20 Matt says:

    Does it? I noticed that the alpha channel in the pngs seems to specify reflectivity, which is basically transparency, but applied over an image of the area just above the dock, but top-bottom mirrored. This is cute, but it seemed to make it impossible to have “regular” transparency.

  21. #21 Todd Baur says:

    Actually, I’m kinda glad that the Wood one doesn’t reflect because wood doesn’t reflect naturally unless it is highly polished. So I guess it is all a matter of taste if you like that or not.

  22. #22 That Guy says:

    This would be perfect for ResExcellence!!!

    Oh wait…

  23. #23 Jeremy Brown says:

    I love the wood. Thanks.

    Here is a picture of my desktop, with my solution for the lack of Hierarchical folders in the dock

  24. #24 Jeremy Brown says:

    Opps. That link address should be: http://web.mac.com/jeremydavidbrown/randompictures/mydesktop2.jpg

  25. #25 Paul Andrews says:

    I finally got it to work, the wood looks great, thanks.
    It asked me to authenticate about 10 times before it allowed me to paste the new PNGs in to the folder.

  26. #26 badhad says:

    Initially I had the same problem with the new effect appearing to not apply. Simple solution is to change the dock to show as a side bar and then change it back to show at the bottom. Hope this helps others.

    Thanks for share. Loving the wood effect - primarily because it makes the dock sooooo much easier to see now. esp the stupid active application glowing ball which was almost impossible to see on the mirrored dock.

  27. #27 LunaC says:

    Kind of off topic, but has anyone found a way to remove the shadows around the icons in the dock?

  28. #28 Matt says:

    Luna, if you poke around in that same folder with the dock images, I think there’s a dock item shadow image somewhere. I imagine setting that to fully transparent would do the trick, although I haven’t played with it.

  29. #29 Macintosh Sauce says:

    Check mine out so far… I am updating this folder with new colours throughout the day. :)

    http://www.jamesnrhodes.com/personal/macosx/files/

  30. #30 dennis says:

    just a quick thanks for the wood dock. it looks great and really makes it easier to see what applications are running!

  31. #31 LunaC says:

    No luck so far trying to remove the shadows above the dock icons. I tried replacing a fully transparent pmg with both shadow.png (couldn’t see any changes with that) and stackitemshadow.png.. that did remove shadows from stacks icons, dock shadows remained.

    I noticed it the dock is at the side, and magnification is turned on, the shadows aren’t there even on mouseover… so I know this has to be possible. The double shadowing and the top of the shadow getting cut off on some icons is distracting. (Turn on magnification, look at mail right above the number indicator and there’s an example of the shadow getting cut off.)

    I’m going to keep poking around later today if I get the time, this is personal now ;)

    @Jeremy Brown: How did you get the menus in there?

  32. #32 Niclet says:

    Don’t forget to fade left and right borders a little bit if you don’t want to have those black triangles on the bottom corners.

    Now, the next step would be to get it animate! Imagine those Dock-clouds gently moving under the apps ;)

  33. #33 The Smartest Man in the World says:

    Love it! Thanks!

  34. #34 Jim says:

    Absolutely love the wood dock. Only problem is I keep my dock on the right since vertical real-estate is more valuable to me. Is it possible to update the look of the dock when it is positioned on the right or left side of the screen? There are a bunch of images labeled right1.png, right2.png, etc… but these only seem to apply to the permiter of the dock, not the main region.

  35. #35 BigKM says:

    Anyone having trouble with this needs to not replace the images but accutally delete them first then move the new ones into place.

  36. #36 John says:

    haha…he made wood for us…
    i know it’s lame…but i couldn’t resist

  37. #37 NE says:

    I tried to get it to work but all it did was copy the images into the folder, it did not replace any thing.
    This is a genius idea and i would love for it to work.
    NE

  38. #38 James says:

    Hey guys - I created a site just for Leopard Docks - http://www.leoparddocks.com/ - check it out and submit any and all designs you have done. Help me get this thing going!

  39. #39 Tj says:

    Changed the images to be transparent, but there is a thin strip at the bottom. I can’t figure out what file this is that needs to be changed. The images is a really light gray. Anybody know which file this is?

  40. #40 Matt says:

    TJ-Yes, it’s “frontline.png”.

    BigKM-Yes, you do have to delete the old images first, then move in the modified ones (of course you should back up your old ones first).

  41. #41 Kevin says:

    If you replace the originals for the wood and wanted to switch back, you would drag them back and delete the wood. For some people, you can’t replace the L and M because of an error (34, I believe). To bypass the error, use time machine.

  42. #42 NE says:

    what are the names of the pictures you have to delete?

  43. #43 Matt says:

    The ones with the same names as the ones you’re putting in.

  44. #44 NE says:

    What If There Are None With The Same Name

  45. #45 Patrick says:

    Thanks for the new dock - I liked the old Leopard dock but love the new wooden one.

    One issue - a day or so after installing I ran Verify Permissions from Disk Utility and got a hit for each of the four new dock files (see below). I haven’t repaired permissions to see what happens.

    User differs on “System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/scurve-l.png”, should be 0, user is 501.
    Group differs on “System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/scurve-l.png”, should be 0, group is 501.
    User differs on “System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/scurve-m.png”, should be 0, user is 501.
    User differs on “System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/scurve-sm.png”, should be 0, user is 501.
    User differs on “System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/scurve-xl.png”, should be 0, user is 501.

  46. #46 Matt says:

    NE- Then you’re probably looking in the wrong place?

    Patrick- No big deal, it’s just catching that those files belong to you rather than root. You can “repair” them if you want.

  47. #47 Dwight D. White says:

    When I copy the wood pngs to the resources folder, I’m getting the message “unable to complete operation since scurve-l.png is in-use.”

    Am I missing a step?

  48. #48 Matt says:

    Again, try deleting the existing files with the same file names before copying the new ones in. The OS seems to have a problem with overwriting the existing files (if in use), but not with deleting them.

  49. #49 JAK says:

    I had to actually remove the files because I could overwrite all but one of them, I’m assuming the one that the Dock was currently using. So I simply dragged that one to the trash and then just added the other files.

  50. #50 jim says:

    So no-one knows if you can modify the appearance of the dock when it is on the left or right hand side of the screen?

  51. #51 Jim says:

    I found these instructions how to make your dock transparent for leopard. Works great!

  52. #52 NE says:

    if i want the ice dock how do i get it??

  53. #53 Krio says:

    Wow this is all great stuff!

    I found this on the web:

    Leoparddocks.com

    Somebody is collecting all kinds of docks!
    Maybe nice to have one place to put all this wonderfull custom docks! It even has a automator action to easy update your dock!

    how about that…

    my dock is now 2D it is more… let say… easy on the eyes?

  54. #54 Christopher Anderton says:

    I also created some wood docks with borders (on my link)

  55. #55 Joseph says:

    Good day. Has anyone figured out how to get the sky or wood to appear if the dock is on the left or right? Mine works fine when at the bottom but not either of the sides.

  56. #56 Ryan says:

    I used Preview to make my dock black with bright green indicator lights. Probably not for everyone, but I love it!

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