Any way to lock the dock?

Set up an account just for your kids to use (or any account that does not have Administrator privileges), log into that account and set up the Dock the way you want it to be. Then from your account, go to the Parental Controls system preference, unlock the preference, select your kids' account, and on the System tab uncheck the box that says "Can modify the Dock".

Regards.

Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

You can't set parental controls for an account with Administrator privileges; by definition such accounts have (and must have) all privileges. It's a really bad idea, in my opinion, to have your kids using an account with admin privileges in any case.

EDIT: VK has an answer for you if you really don't want to set up a separate account your kids. I still think that would be a good idea, but VK's method will work, though of course you'll have to unlock the Dock anytime you want to change it for yourself.

Regards.

Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

run the following two commands in the terminal:

*defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true*

*killall Dock*

\\
To unlock it, substitute false for true in the first command.

Thanks, VK. I hadn't run across that one.

This of course locks the Dock for everyone using that account which might be a pain at times, so it still might be best for the OP to have a separate account for the kids, but yours is a good option.

Cheers.

Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

No problem. BTW, I think Onyx has GUI controls for this if someone doesn't want to use the terminal.

It might be useful to create an automator workflow that does this, and also have one that reverses this command (I'm assuming the same thing, except for "false" at the end). Then you should easily be able to lock and unlock the dock by running the specific workflow (save them as applications to make this even easier).

that's a good point. You can even make it just one application instead of two so that clicking on it will toggle this feature on/off. I'll post one later in case anyone is interested.

Of course the OP would have to hide if from his/her kids if they are to be prevented from deliberately modifying the Dock. Don't know if that's a problem or just the accidental Dock modifications.

I wonder if it would be easier to just make a copy of the dock plist file, and drag it back to the preferences folder whenever you discover the kids have been at it again. It's at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist (and there's a com.apple.dock.db file there as well, though I don't know if you'd need to copy that one as well).

But aside from that, having 2 kids myself, I'd say it was a very bad idea to let them use my main admin account. They change things ALL the time.

and here is an apple script to toggle the lock on Dock on/off. Paste it into Script Editor and save it as an application.
\\


<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #ADD8E6;
overflow: auto;"
title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">
try
set x to do shell script "defaults read com.apple.dock contents-immutable"
if (x is equal to "0") then
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true; sleep 1; killall Dock"
else
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool false; sleep 1; killall Dock"
end if
on error
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true; sleep 1; killall Dock"

end try
</pre>

if you copy and paste the following into terminal it will lock your toolbar:

defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true

then follow it with this to execute the command:

osascript -e 'tell application "Dock" to quit'

to unlock the toolbar back to normal so you can add or remove more icons:

defaults delete com.apple.dock contents-immutable

then follow it with this to execute the command:

osascript -e 'tell application "Dock" to quit'

hope this helps 😉