Issue: Aaaargh!  I hate the transparent, 3-D, glossy Dock in Leopard and Snow Leopard!  What can I do?

Solution: Issue the following command in a Terminal or xterm (X11) window:


then restart the Dock using the following command:


This will convert the Dock appearance to something similar to the Tiger version (i.e., still transparent, but 2-D with no reflections). This is the same appearance that the Dock has by default in Leopard when it is configured in the Dock System Preferences to appear on the side of the screen instead of the bottom.

Repeat with YES replaced by NO to restore the “fancy” Leopard dock appearance. The file modified by defaults in this case is ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist.

OS Version Compatibility: Lion, Snow Leopard, Leopard

Update Status: 03 December 2009