Change the Mac OS X Dock from 3D to 2D in Leopard & Snow Leopard

Dec 24, 2007 - 8 Comments

lock mac dock

The appearance of the new Dock changed in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard which has caused somewhat of an uproar in the Mac community, some of whom even claim it looks like it belongs in Windows Vista. That change stuck around in later versions of OS X as well.

If you’re totally insulted by the new 3D dock, or if you just prefer the old Dock appearance, it’s very easy to change and you don’t need to be a super Mac genius to figure it out.

Simply launch your terminal and type the following commands:

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

then you will want to kill the Dock to relaunch it without the glass effect:
killall Dock

to get the reflective 3D Dock back, simply type the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO

again, you will want to kill the Dock to relaunch it. Enjoy!

This command works in OS X Mountain Lion, Lion, Leopard, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard, newer versions of OS X will need to use an app like cDock to modify the appearance of the Dock on their Macs if desired.

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Related articles:

Posted by: William Pearson in Command Line, Customize, Mac OS, Tips & Tricks

8 Comments

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  1. junebeetle says:

    For some reason, this is not working for me on Mavericks. Any ideas anyone? I like the right and left side dock appearance better than the bottom… :)

  2. lucas says:

    works on lion 10.7.3

  3. Lozil says:

    Just made a simple script to toggle between 2D and 3D dock, You can find it at my blog http://lozil.blogspot.com/2009/09/dock-switcher-for-leopard.html

  4. […] use at your own risk, but here’s a link that might help (refers to leopard, but might work in SL) Change the 10.5 Leopard Dock from 3D to 2D – OS X Daily __________________ My Macs: Early 2008 8 core 2.8GHz 8gig ram Mac Pro; Mac mini G4, 1.25 GHz, […]

  5. Gooie Green says:

    I never really noticed the different… in fact, I welcomed it! Looks a lot nicer.

    But then again, I never really notice such things, given I rock a left-side dock.

  6. macmedia says:

    COOL!! This is so much better!
    I hated the leopard dock in that I could never see easily what programs were open.

  7. Dirk says:

    Oh, THANK YOU. I just fired up my new iMac, and as soon as I saw the left and right dock appearance, I wanted it on the bottom, too. I had to have it! Now I can see what apps are running without squinting.

  8. Dar Al Salam says:

    i like the 3d dock , looks a bit modern to me

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