For those of you who desire a better looking Dock -- other than Apple's current abomination, that is -- and who want to do it "naturally" without relying upon any third party apps or haxies -- such as cDock -- you might consider doing the following:
1. Discover what your machine's default screen resolution is by looking in /Applications/System Preferences/Display prefs pane.
You may have to click on "Scaled" in the prefs pane in order to see what resolution your machine is currently set to.
2. In your favorite graphics program -- I use Adobe Photoshop CS6 -- create a new image of those same dimensions.
3. Using the gradient tool, choose a top color to your liking. Personally, I use blue, or 0000ff, although you might like an even darker blue better.
4. Using the gradient tool, make the bottom color black, or 000000.
5. Save the image as a high quality JPG -- meaning set to 12.
6. Place the image in /Library/Desktop Pictures. This is the MAIN library, and not your Home Library folder.
7. Change your desktop to the newly-created image by going to /Applications/System Preferences/Desktop & Screen Saver prefs pane.
8. Set your Dock to dark mode by using the following command in the Terminal app, which is found in /Applications/Utilities:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleInterfaceStyle Dark; killall Dock
9. If your menubar also switches to dark mode, try using the following command after the previous command:
defaults remove NSGlobalDomain AppleInterfaceStyle
Hopefully, this will remove dark mode from the menubar, but not from the Dock.
10. Please note that using this method, you should NOT have the following options enabled:
• "Use dark menu bar and Dock" in /Applications/System Preferences/General prefs pane.
• None of the options in /Applications/System Preferences/Accessibility/Display should be enabled.
• "Display contrast" should also be set to "normal" in /Applications/System Preferences/Accessibility/Display.
Doing the previous steps will give you a nice solid gradient desktop that is dark on the bottom, with an almost transparent Dock, and light gray/purplish indicator lights. Here is a small portion of mine:
![Dock-Sample.png]()
This is a lot safer method than using apps or haxies which hook into the OS, or swap files, or which may slow down your system or make it unstable.
Enjoy!
1. Discover what your machine's default screen resolution is by looking in /Applications/System Preferences/Display prefs pane.
You may have to click on "Scaled" in the prefs pane in order to see what resolution your machine is currently set to.
2. In your favorite graphics program -- I use Adobe Photoshop CS6 -- create a new image of those same dimensions.
3. Using the gradient tool, choose a top color to your liking. Personally, I use blue, or 0000ff, although you might like an even darker blue better.
4. Using the gradient tool, make the bottom color black, or 000000.
5. Save the image as a high quality JPG -- meaning set to 12.
6. Place the image in /Library/Desktop Pictures. This is the MAIN library, and not your Home Library folder.
7. Change your desktop to the newly-created image by going to /Applications/System Preferences/Desktop & Screen Saver prefs pane.
8. Set your Dock to dark mode by using the following command in the Terminal app, which is found in /Applications/Utilities:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleInterfaceStyle Dark; killall Dock
9. If your menubar also switches to dark mode, try using the following command after the previous command:
defaults remove NSGlobalDomain AppleInterfaceStyle
Hopefully, this will remove dark mode from the menubar, but not from the Dock.
10. Please note that using this method, you should NOT have the following options enabled:
• "Use dark menu bar and Dock" in /Applications/System Preferences/General prefs pane.
• None of the options in /Applications/System Preferences/Accessibility/Display should be enabled.
• "Display contrast" should also be set to "normal" in /Applications/System Preferences/Accessibility/Display.
Doing the previous steps will give you a nice solid gradient desktop that is dark on the bottom, with an almost transparent Dock, and light gray/purplish indicator lights. Here is a small portion of mine:
This is a lot safer method than using apps or haxies which hook into the OS, or swap files, or which may slow down your system or make it unstable.
Enjoy!