Mac Apps

Personalize Your Dock with Superdocker

SuperDocker is a great way to extend your docks personalization options, lets take a look at all that SuperDocker has to offer.

When you open SuperDocker you’ll see several categories on the left side of the window. Here you can customize your dock, finder, safari, dashboard and so on. Let’s start with the Dock settings. Download Superdocker direct from the SoftronicΒ site for free.


Dock

1. β€œIcons Transparency” – This will lower the transparency of any hidden items on your dock down to 50%.

2. β€œAutomatically Hide” – will hide the whole dock when your cursor is wondering around the screen. When you mouse down to the bottom the dock will pop back up, move away from the Dock and it will hide again. I love this option because the Dock is not in the way of my browser window so I can get a fuller screen.

3. β€œLock Icons” – will lock all your items on the dock so you don’t accidentally drag them off the away and poof their gone.

4. β€œDock Style” – You can turn your dock 3D or 2D, this option is really disappointing to me because the 3D version is not that impressive at all.

5. β€œAlignment” – You can adjust which side the dock sits, Left, Center or Right side.

6. β€œPosition on screen” – You can completely move your dock to either the left or right side of the screen opposed to its default setting at the bottom of your display.

7. β€œMinimize Using” – You have Genie, Scale and Suck with a β€œProportionally” checkbox. The three options Genie, Scale and Suck are the effect your windows make when you minimize them. They differ only slightly; mess around with them until you find one that fits you. If you check the β€œProportionally” box all windows you minimize will show up proportionally on the dock and not just a fixed square.

8. β€œAdd Separator” – You can add a separator between your applications and documents, not only does this divider separate your icons but you can also click and drag the divider to resize the dock itself.

Stacks

The first checkbox here is pretty handy if you have items in your grid with long names. Check this box hit β€œapply” Β then mouse over your items in grid mode and each file/folder will be highlighted white showing the full name.

β€œAppearance” – You can customize the color of the grids background, I think the default setting, which is black, looks pretty sleek. You can choose from default, white, blue, red, green or select β€œother color” and make your own color using a palette wheel.


Applications

Finder

1. β€œQuit to Finder” – This option allows you to use the hot key ctrl + Q to close the Finder window, I always found myself trying to quit the Finder using this hotkey so I love this option.

2. β€œShow Hidden Items” – This simply shows hidden items in the Finder window.

Dashboard

β€œDeveloper Mode” – This will allow you to throw widgets right onto your desktop for easier access opposed to opening the dashboard each time.

Safari

1. β€œOpen new Window” – I don’t like this option, I like having Google come up in my new tab or my top sites but check this box and your new tabs will be blank pages.

2. β€œDevelopment Menu” – This is over my head however for web developers it will prove more useful by adding a developer menu in Safari.

3. β€œWeb Inspector” – This will add Web Inspector but you have to have Development Menu activated.

System

1. β€œExtension” – Change the format in your Screen Captures save.

2. β€œDeactivate Shadows” – Check this to eliminate window shadows when you take a screen shot.

3. β€œDisplay Crash” will disable the crash panel when an app crashes. β€œFull Printing” and β€œFull Save” automatically enlarge these panels.

4. β€œLogin Screen Background” – This is a pretty cool feature, you can change the background of your login screen to anything you want. This really adds more of yourself to your Mac.

Others

1. β€œDebug Menu” – You can add the debug menu to your Address Book, iCal and Disk Utility applications.

2. β€œActivate Data Detector” – This will allow you to add certain info to applications with a single click.

3. β€œDisable iPhone/iPod Backup” – This will stop that pesky automatic backup feature that pops up everytime you connect your iPhone or iPod to your Mac.

4. β€œDisable iTunes Store Link” – This will get rid of the arrows next to each song that are linked to the iTunes store.

5. The last feature here is for the Time Machine, check the box to disable the alert that comes up everytime you plug in a new disk. You can also set the Backup Time.

Dock Theme

Here you can change the way your Dock looks even further. Change the color, the style, opacity and so on. You can save several Dock themes and switch between them with ease.

Before you go

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About the author

Chris

I've been a passionate evangelist for Apple and the Macintosh throughout my working life, my first love was a Quadra 605 working with a small creative agency in the south of Norfolk UK in the mid 1990's, I later progressed to other roles in other Macintosh dominated industries, first as a Senior graphic designer at a small printing company and then a production manager at Guardian Media Group. As the publishing and printing sector wained I moved into Internet Marketing and in 2006 co-founded blurtit.com which grew to become one the top 200 visited sites in the US (according to Quantcast), at its peak receiving over 15 million visits per month. For the last ten years I have worked as an Affiliate and Consultant to many different business and start ups, my key skill set being online marketing, on page monetisation, landing page optimisation and traffic generation, if you would like to hire me or discuss your current project please reach out to me here.

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