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RumorzGuy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 17, 2008
264
82
Guam, Mariana Islands, U.S.A.
As I mentioned earlier, yesterday I abandoned Sierra and dropped back down to El Capitan, where I will remain until this old machine kicks the bucket.

While I posted this message in the El Capitan section, I wanted to post it here as well, in the hope that some very smart person will help me to figure this out, assuming, of course, that much hasn't changed with the Dock between El Capitan and Sierra.

There is one thing which I would like to change/control in the Dock, which Apple apparently has made very difficult -- if not impossible -- to do; that is, change the color of the indicator light, or status light, of running apps.

There used to be a number of apps and hacks which made this possible in earlier versions of Mac OS X, and there are still a few that do -- such as cDock -- which I uninstalled just yesterday, along with a few other apps. On the positive side, my system is now running a lot snappier and noticeably faster since I removed those apps, because they hook into the OS and slow it down some.

It also used to be possible in earlier versions of Mac OS X to change the color of the indicator light by altering certain PNG images in /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources. These PNGs included the word "indicator" in their file name.

However, these files no longer exist in El Capitan and forward. I am not sure in which OS version they were actually removed.

I just spent a few hours scouring the web looking for something that would work in El Capitan, including apps, haxies and Terminal tricks. I found nothing that works in El Capitan.

Next, I started altering quite a few PNGs in El Capitan's Dock.app, but again, it was to no avail. I don't know if it is because of SIP or what.

I am beginning to doubt that the indicator light is even an image file. I suspect that it may possibly be actual code that is embedded somewhere else, or perhaps even a parameter in some plist file.

Anyway, that is all that I want to do; that is, be able to change the color of the indicator light, or app status light, or whatever it is called. I don't want to change the Dock in any other way. That's it.

If any developers here have discovered how to do this via the Terminal or any other way, without using a third party app, please let me know.

As I said, I plan on staying on El Capitan until this almost eight-year-old iMac bites the dust, so there is no chance -- at least I hope not -- of the change being undone.

Thanks in advance to whatever brainiac can figure this out for me. :)
 
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