This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.
How To: Separate Dock Icons With A Transparent Icon
If you are like me then you have all your important applications in the dock and use this area as the go to place to launch your applications.
The more you put in here the more cluttered it gets which causes you to often launch applications by accident or can sometimes lead to confusion over where a certain application is located especially if it has been a while since using it last.
What if you could group the applications in the dock?
Well you can. As you can see from the image above I have done just that by using a Terminal command.
In order to do this we will need to use Terminal. To locate Terminal simply navigate to Applications > Utilities and within the Utilities folder you will locate Terminal.
Simply launch and then enter the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘{“tile-type”=”spacer-tile”;}’
After you have pressed return simply enter the following then press return again once you have entered:
killall Dock
The first time you make this change it will take approximately a minute during which time you will not see the dock on the screen at all.
This action will place one space in the dock. Should you wish to add a second, third and so forth then you will need to enter the above commands again in the same order as presented. Upon repeating this command the result will happen immediately.
Should you wish to remove these spaces simply click and drag the space off the dock or directly to the trash. You can also right click on the area which will pop up a option to remove from dock.
Please note that you can not move the empty space to be before the finder icon or on the right hand side of your dock where the folders and trash reside.
Warning: Terminal commands have the ability to change the running operation of your Mac. Please copy and paste the Terminal command as shown directly from the article. Mistakes in keystokes can cause your Mac to perform differently and may in-fact result in a loss of data. It is advised that you only use the Terminal if you feel comfortable with the command line interface. If you are ever unsure please consult your local tech support person.
