Change Leopard Dock to 2D

Fri, 26 October 2007

If you don’t like the new 3D look of the Mac OS X Dock in Leopard there is always a way to change it to 2D. If you move your Dock to the side of your screen, the Dock will change to 2D but while on the bottom of the screen - it’s still 3D.

3d_dock.jpg

One way to change it is to open terminal (~/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

and press return key

Then reload the Dock by typing

killall Dock

and press return. Your dock will now look like this

2d_dock.jpg

To return to 3D simply replace YES with NO in the terminal command above and reload the Dock.

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Category Posted in Tips

11 Responses to “Change Leopard Dock to 2D”

  1. Asanka said: Sat, 27 October 2007 at 20:39

    I don’t know Mike.. I don’t like the new dock… I wanted it when I watched the “guided tour”.. but now I miss the old dock…

    There is a shadow around the icons when the dock is 3D, so, I miss that crisp clean look. 2D dock is a great option.. yet.. it is no match for the old dock IMO.

    I feel very odd about this upgrade.. I liked how tiger was when I switched from windows.. now I’m somewhat hurt ..

    PS: apologies for the rant…

  2. Mike said: Sat, 27 October 2007 at 20:56

    I can feel your pain, Asanka. I fell like being in no-man’s land myself. I tried the 3D, then 2D, then back again to 3D, I don’t know… I would say I prefer 3D but two things really get up my nose. One is the shadow behind the icons that you have mentioned, and the other is the little light below the icon.

    That light is just rubbish, plain and simple. Just look at the reflection of the Safari icon, that light gits there just like it’s a part of the icon, like the light reflection on the concave glass over the compass. I wish they gave us at least a bit of choice here.

    If I was really picky, I’d pick this to be my preferred Dock, with some more transparency
    http://www.thinkmac.co.uk/blog/2007/08/hint-how-to-redesign-leopard-dock-so-it.html

  3. pops said: Wed, 31 October 2007 at 08:26

    hi guys,

    just a quick one. i tried the above but unfortunately i ended up with something really really weird. please have a look here:

    http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/1187/picture1gj2.png

    the whole background of the dock has disappeared. since we haven’t modified any images the dock should be still somehow there - undamaged, right? is there anyway to reverse this? i just want my old and original dock back. any help really appreciated!

  4. John P said: Thu, 1 November 2007 at 03:22

    According to John Siracusa on ars technica, the dock can be “flattened” by positioning it to the side. That’s where I put my dock (under tiger) anyway.

  5. pops said: Thu, 1 November 2007 at 09:55

    thanks god i fixed the problem. somehow the whole dock was corrupted after all - i needed to replace it with a fresh copy by tricking the system (you’ll need quick fingers to do so!).

  6. isg said: Thu, 1 November 2007 at 23:29

    My main problem with the default Dock is that it takes up more vertical space than the old one, because of the rather pointless reflections. Also the reflection of windows can make things hard to ‘read.’

  7. LeopardDocks.com said: Mon, 5 November 2007 at 09:01

    I added your 2D Dock tip on my new site - http://www.leoparddocks.com

  8. nsa77 said: Wed, 7 November 2007 at 10:14

    I wish there was a way I could go back to the old dock (Tiger). I don’t like this new one at all :(

  9. RigoR said: Sat, 17 November 2007 at 05:40

    New Dock Sucks… Both of them… I want my Clear Dock Back only icons black arrows and no BG … almost thinking about switching back to Tiger.

    Cool Tip BTW 2D dock it’s way better than 3D .. it’s just no like the tiger one :)

  10. LarryMcj said: Thu, 13 March 2008 at 10:50

    Doesn’t work here.

    defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES …then ENTER, followed by killall Dock …then ENTER turns off the dock altogether. Substituting the NO and redoing everything brings back the original dock. Tried it four times…not making a mistake.

    LarryMcJ

  11. Shloerolic said: Sun, 16 March 2008 at 02:14

    LarryMcj, I had the same issue. It turned out that the dock was set to be hidden. Just move your mouse to the bottom of the screen or press cmd+option+d to make the dock pop back up.

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