How to Stop Dock Icons from Animating in Mac OS X via defaults Command

The Mac OS X Dock becomes animated when an app is launching, with a continuous bouncing animation, and also when an app wants to get your attention, with a less consistent and more urgent animated bounce. Both of these can be effect alert methods, but they can also annoy some users.

Regardless, you can make all Dock animations completely, both when launching an app in MacOS X, and even when an application is trying to notify you of something. This is achieved by entering a command string into the terminal (the command line of Mac OS X).

Stop Dock Animations in Mac OS X with a defaults command

defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE;killall Dock&&say animation off

Copy and paste that line into the Terminal then hit return.

Be sure that entire command string is on a single line.

The first part of the command changes a system setting, the second part relaunches the Dock, and the third part informs you verbally that a change has been made successfully.

Re-Enable the Dock Animations in Mac OS X

Of course, you can also reverse this change and regain the bouncy Dock icons in Mac OS X by changing the aforemtnioned default commands parameter to FALSE rather than TRUE.

Again, the relaunching of the Dock is how changes take effect, here it is within a single command string:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool FALSE;killall Finder;say animation on

Note that you don’t have to use capitalized TRUE/FALSE statements, just be consistent.