Derek Bender — design, art direction and illustration

Change the Look of Your Snow Leopard Dock

With the update to Snow Leopard Apple decided to modify the Dock's user interface. Personally, I don't like some of the changes, especially the blue glow around windows when using Exposé. Here I'll show you how to change the Dock's graphics to anything you'd like. If you've ever used Candybar, or a program like it, its the same thing, only we'll change the graphics manually.

I adapted this tutorial from TweakOSX's Customizing Leopard's Dock post, but the techniques are still the same. Start by navigating to /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock in Finder. Right-click Dock and select "Show Package Contents." Next navigate to /Contents/Resources and you're there. All the .png files are in this Resources folder.

Most of these files are images relating in some way to the Dock. The folders with extensions .lproj contain all the variables for each language's phrases used. This is handy if you want to rename the "Trash" or Dock feature to another phrase or word.

The images we need to find are:

• expose-window-selection-big.png
• expose-window-selection-small.png

These images control what the glow will look like when hovering over a window in Exposé. These images can't be changed in programs like Candybar, at least not now anyway.

Once found copy them to a safe place incase you want to change them back later. Next, delete them from Resources. You'll be asked to authenticate the action with your password. Go ahead and modify the original graphics you copied or make new graphics as replacements. I desaturated the original graphics which will make a white glow instead of blue. Now just copy the new graphics into the Dock's Resources folder. You'll be asked to authenticate once more.

Next, open up Terminal (its in the Utilities folder under Applications). Type this and hit enter: "killAll Dock". This will restart the Dock allowing the images you changed to refresh. You're done! Hit F9 and see how it looks.

Knowing this about the Dock and its images you could possibly change a lot more. I'm not a fan of the HUD look to the Dock's menus. Using the same ideas behind the glow we can find the images used in the menus too − although there are a lot more of them. The only thing I couldn't figure out is how to change the text color for these menus. It wouldn't make much sense to change the HUD menu back to pearl (like how it was in Leopard) if the text in it can't be read. If anyone knows how to change the text color, let me know as I'd also love to make those changes.

In the meantime, enjoy the new look of your Dock and if you feel like experimenting beyond what I've showed you here, please share your findings in the comments.