This post will explore the different possibilities open to you, outline a variety of relevant websites and applications, along with providing a walkthrough of how to alter the style of your Dock.

Brief history of the Dock

As mentioned above, the Dock has been present since the very early days of OS X. Through the years, it has undergone a few major design changes.

OS X Puma and Cheetah

OS X Tiger and Panther

OS X Leopard

These changes haven’t always been met favorably, particularly the reflections and gloss featured in the new Leopard dock (personally, I’ve never been a major fan). Ars Technica, along with others, have raised interesting critical points.

In-Built OS X Options

With recent updates to Leopard, Apple ha re-enabled the level of customization found in previous versions of OS X. It is possible to move the Dock to the left or right of your monitor, and experience a slightly different design. Other options such as auto-hiding and using different minimize effects are still available.

Many Mac users prefer to align the Dock to the side of the screen, making the most of the widescreen real estate present on new machines. These limited in-built options don’t come close to justifying a whole post on customizing your Dock, however, and far more fun can be had when third party applications are used to change its appearance.

Other Software Options

The Dock, as with any OS item, is made up of a collection of different images. Shortly after the release of Leopard, people found where these image ‘resources’ were located, and experimented with swapping them for others. As this is a fairly technical operation, several different Dock manipulation tools have abounded which are able to swap the image resources automatically. I’m only going to focus on a couple, so it’s worth searching for others if the ones mentioned don’t fit your needs. Here is a quick run-down of the main tools available:

• Mirage – Clear all background material from your Dock
• CandyBar – Complete customization control over the Dock
• SuperDocker – Simple utility for making changes
• Dock Library – Another simple swapping utility

Obviously, in addition to any of these applications, you’ll need to find a set of Dock resources which suit the look you are aiming for. A site called (very appropriately) Leopard Docks catalogs a huge range of different themes which you’ll be able to apply through the above applications. Jack Rebel also has a few nice options.

CandyBar is arguably the most popular option for quickly customizing your dock, so here is a quick walkthrough of the process.

Step 1: Download and install CandyBar.

Step 2: Head over to Leopard Docks to choose and download a Dock that catches your eye.

Step 3: Open CandyBar and select the ‘Dock’ icon in the top left corner.

Step 4: Drag and drop your downloaded Dock resources into the appropriate location on the right hand side. The files in the zip you downloaded from Leopard Docks should be appropriately named to make it obvious which ones to drag where.

Step 5 & 6: You will then need to enter your password (CandyBar requires authorization in order to replace the system files making up your dock), and then agree to restart your Dock (to refresh the graphics). If all goes well, you should then be looking at a delightful updated Dock style:

It’s important to note that CandyBar makes it easy to revert your Dock back to the original style if you grow tired of the altered version. It’s as simple as clicking ‘Restore’ in the top right corner, so you don’t need to worry about experimenting with a questionable ‘grass’ dock…

A Few Examples

Here are a few examples of some truly lick-able Docks to boost your levels of inspiration:

A wooden theme:

A ‘slick retro’ dock, with a glossy silver feel:

For all you chocolate lovers out there:

And finally, a dock to complement the default Leopard wallpaper – Aurora:

Conclusion

No longer does the Dock need to be an untouchable part of your system look and feel. With the tools outlined you’re able to take control and change it for the better (or worse –some themes are truly awful). I hope you have fun experimenting, and please feel free to look at our earlier customizing articles relating to wallpapers and icon applications if you grow tired of applying different Dock themes.

I’m always interested to see new themes and effects, so please feel free to post a link to screenshot below and share the masterpiece you’ve managed to create!

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Apple’s user interface is heralded as a sleek, modern experience. A great deal of attention is paid to the design of icons, and a guide is published to help ensure that developers also create icons which meet the standards of OS X.

If you’d like to use custom icons in OS X — whether for applications, files or folders — there are a couple of different ways to achieve your goal.

• On an individual basis — i.e. selecting individual files or applications and just changing that one icon
• On a system-wide basis — applying an ‘icon set’ to change the look and feel of all the OS X icons system wide

The Simple Method

The easiest method of changing individual icons requires no software, and is very straight forward. It essentially involves copying the icon from one file/folder/volume to another.

1. Select the item whose icon you want to stamp onto another.
2. Perform a ‘Get Info’ action, and select the icon towards the upper left of the window.
3. Press Command-C to copy the icon to the clipboard
4. Select the item you’d like to change the icon of, perform ‘Get Info’, then click the icon in the top left
5. Press Command-V to replace the icon with the one copied previously.

This is great for changing a limited number of icons. If, however, you want to change the appearance of the whole operating system, there is a need for a more powerful tool.

Using CandyBar

CandyBar is an application designed by Panic, which makes organizing and applying icons (and icon sets) remarkably straight forward. It costs $29, but there is a free trial available so you can decide whether it is worth your hard earned money.

CandyBar allows you to customize individual icons easily, including those which can be difficult to alter with the simple method (such as the Recycle Bin icon). It also provides the ability to apply a system icon set to your whole computer. This is useful if you’d like to change the style of folders system-wide, or alter the toolbar icons in the finder. The user interface for storing and applying icons is very straight forward.

Finding Icons and Resources

So you’re not starting from scratch, here are a few fantastic icon sets which will go a long way towards improving your Mac experience.

• Somatic – A thoroughly unique and ‘cartoony’ icon set, which can completely change the style of your Mac
• Agua – Alternatives to the default Aqua icons for OS X. Keeping a similar style, but with arguably a more simplified, professional style.
• Agua Folders – A set of Leopard-style folders, which make it easy to illustrate the content of your folders
• Litho System – A bright and well-worn system replacement icon set. Colorful and unique.
• Amora – Futuristic system and app icons, includes robots and mechanical devices in a black and white color scheme.

A great community and forum dedicated to Mac icons and themes is MacThemes, where you’ll find regular new releases and the latest news surrounding icon applications. Other communities and resources include:

• The Iconfactory – This is undoubtedly one of the largest Mac icon archives. It’s also the home of the CandyBar software.
• Pixelgirl Presents – Housing hundreds of Mac OS X icon sets that cover the full range from simple, professional icons, to funky and cartoon-style. If you’re looking for something unique, check out their designs.
• InterfaceLIFT – This site offers over 775 icon sets in a wide range of subjects. Some are better than others, but it’s an excellent resource.

If you come across any particularly good icon sets, please do let me know in the comments. In future articles I’ll be explaining how to customize the style of the OS X Dock, showcasing some interesting wallpaper applications, and highlighting how you can apply a different theme to your windows and applications.

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No sooner do I write about how I miss CandyBar then lo and behold it appears! CandyBar 3 was released today, available at Panic. It’s $29 for a license, and there’s a free 14 day trial if you want to take it for a spin first. A discount is available to registered users of either Pixadex 2 or CandyBar 2. Leopard only.

The new version is slick. Along with the usual icon swapping capabilities, there are two new features in CandyBar 3 – the ability to customize the dock, and direct integration of Pixadex. There are a number of new icon sets released at the IconFactory at the same time, all including dock mods. The dock to the right is from the icon set that comes preloaded, Float. It’s a fairly clean set, although I’m personally really liking the look of the dock in Amora. The understated black and red there is quite nice.

As a useful touch, the icons and the dock can be changed independently. CandyBar 3 also allows you to change system icons that it previously couldn’t, a nice feature given the number of strangely-bland system icons in Leopard.

Another nice feature is what seems to be the integration of QuickLook – a menu accessible by control-clicking on the icon thumbnails shows the ‘IconLook’ view, a comparison of the different sizes from 16×16 to 512×512 in a very QuickLook-like transparent black window. A nicely visible blue halo indicates icons that have changed from the default in the set.

The biggest benefit, though, is the combination of Pixadex and CandyBar, especially for people (like me) who tend to pick and choose single icons on top of a theme – this integration makes picking an icon as easy as choosing a song in iTunes. One click imports icons loose on your hard drive, although the trial version can only manage 250 loose icons. You can view, change, and use icons from this library as easily as those from iContainers. As before, you can also save your various choices as an iContainer for use later or on other machines.

Previously, I’d not been a particular fan of CandyBar, preferring the freeware LiteIcon (also recently updated for Leopard, but without dock-mod capabilities) and the not-free ShapeShifter. Still, Panic seems to have used the time before this release to make CandyBar 3 much more than just a compatibility update, with the new features making it an improvement over the solutions I’d tried in the past.

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Recently Cabel, while updating us all about the compatibility states of all of Panic’s apps with Leopard, let slip a few of the future features of the upcoming CandyBar 3.

First the bad news: CandyBar 2, does not and will not launch in Leopard due to a “well designed security system”, however 3.0 is coming . CandyBar 2 will be discontinued after CandyBar 3 is released, which will be Leopard only.

So what are some of these new features then?

Well the big one is that 3.0 will allow customization of the Leopard dock. There is no clue as to what extent you can play around, but I would imagine it will be a great way to customize the appearance of your new Leopard desktop.

Other future features include: support for Leopard’s new, enormous, 512px x 512px icon size and “significantly more robust icon restoration”.

We can expect 3.0 to be with us before the end of November.

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