Hiding Program's Dock Icons

m435tr0d

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I have a token few programs which I would like to hide the dock icons for. I was a good little boy and I tried to do my research before posting with my question. I found the following page, but it didn't seem to explain the topic at hand in a way that I could understand. I am rather new to macintosh. Thanks for any help!

Source
digatalee from macosxhints.com said:
Thanks to the recent version of Launch Bar (IMHO the finest App Switcher+ I've ever had the pleasure to use), their instructions for hiding the icon in the Dock appears to work for any application:

In order to get rid of the dock icon, you must modify the file named 'Info.plist' inside the Application's package (i.e. Sherlock.app/Contents/Info.plist). Open this file in your favorite text editor and add the following section (if it's already present simply change the 0 to a 1 in the string tag:

[KEY]NSUIElement[/KEY]
[STRING]1[/STRING]

NOTE: I substituted the standard square brackets for the purposes of posting here; you must substitute the angle brackets when editing. So far I've hidden my Sherlock and System Preferences icons. With the System Prefs you will have to write-enable the 'Info.plist' file by changing the permissions in a Terminal window:

sudo chmod 464 /Applications/System Preferences.app/Contents/Info.plist

Enjoy!
 
I am sorry I forgot to include what system I am on.

Mac OSX 10.3.9

...you must modify the file named 'Info.plist' inside the Application's package...
Exactly where would this file be? I don't understand what "Application's package" means. Sorry for being so dense!

Also, is the file actually literally named "Info.plist" or will it be named something to do with the applications name and a .plist file extension? e.g. xxxxxfirefoxx.plist
 
Actually, it's very simple :)

What one normally sees as a program icon is in reality a folder with a '.app' extension. This extension makes Mac OS X treat that kind of foldes specially.

Now, to get to the files inside, you do the following: right-click or ctrl-click on an application icon. that'll bring up a context-menu. from this menu you'll have to select 'Show package contents'. a new Finder window will open with just a folder named 'Contents' in it. open this folder and you are now inside the program and can find the stuff you need and modify as needed.

Good Luck
 
[Edit: Whoops, I'm too late. What Bjarne said. :) ]

As for the tip itself, I'm not sure exactly. I assume the given text should be placed directly after the first <dict> tag, but I personally can't get this to work at all. Maybe it's just because I'm on Tiger rather than Panther.
 
Thanks for the responses! I understand now and I got it to work. The only issue I found was it totally disables the menu for one program, so it can't even be located in order to use. So this works fine if you simply need something to run in the background and you don't need to change anything or use the menu.

Still wondering if there is a way to still be able to find the program and use it from the menu up top? I am trying to do this with tomato torrent.

Also, sometimes you have to logout to see the effects. You may also try moving the .app file to the desktop and then moving it back sometimes that will clear the cache of the info.plist file.

EDIT:
Lastly, this is sort of a no-brainer but, be sure you are changing the brackets "[]" to "<>"
 
Well, I googled to he77 and back! Only to determine that there really is not currently any way to 'Hide the Dock Icon for an Open Application' without also 'Disabling the Applications Menu Bar.' So no solution from what I can see. However if anyone comes upon anything, please post here. I subscribed to this post and will get your message.

Mikuro, I hope you got your problem all figured out from the advice I gave you! :D
 
m435tr0d said:
Also, sometimes you have to logout to see the effects. You may also try moving the .app file to the desktop and then moving it back sometimes that will clear the cache of the info.plist file.

EDIT:
Lastly, this is sort of a no-brainer but, be sure you are changing the brackets "[]" to "<>"
Yeah, I know about both of those. It resulted in an app that just couldn't load. The started appearing in the dock and immediately fizzled out. But I figured out why. I just had to change "KEY" and "STRING" to lowercase letters. So it ought to look like this:
Code:
<key>NSUIElement</key>
<string>1</string>
Does it work with the capital letters in Panther?

Aside from the missing menu bar, there's also no obvious way to QUIT some apps in this mode, since the only ways to quit most programs are from the menu bar or dock. Some apps, like System Preferences, will auto-quit when you close the window, but Sherlock won't. The only way to quit it is to use Activity Monitor. [Edit: Actually, I just noticed that Command-Q DOES work, even though the menu isn't available.]

Neat trick, but I don't think I'll be using it much.
 
Yeah, I did actually use lowercase letters. Don't really know why I changed it, just felt right. Anyhow, yeah unfortunately the program becomes almost completely inaccessible. You really can't even tell it's running. I guess it is great for those programs that you want to run in the background and you don't need to see the icon for it. For example I am using jiggler (just shakes your mouse at a specified interval of inactive time) to keep my computer from going into inactivity and I really don't need the icon, so I just turn it on and leave it.
 
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