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Mavericks Dock: Change color

The new bright side dock in mavericks is ugly and hard for the eye. There MUST be a solution to change the white background to something more easy for the eye.


(I don't mention the new ugly calendar and contacts because I hardly use them, but the new Apple Design Team seems to think that white is a reasonable color for an app background - they are obviously wrong) 😮

OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 1:53 AM

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261 replies

Oct 23, 2013 9:44 PM in response to haihoo

I hope Apple gives us a way to change the tint and transparency of the dock. It's pretty unusable on the sides now. That white is just too washed out, and the contrast between icons and the dock is atrocious.


I had to move it back down to the bottom of the screen. It's still white, but you can at least see the icons again.

Oct 24, 2013 9:44 AM in response to haihoo

I'll bump this one as well. I use the dock on the left side (because I value my vertical real estate) and the new color scheme is atrocious. I would love to: a) change the dock background color, b) make it transparent (like Mountain Lion), or even c) give it a 3D look. ANY of those would be better than what we've been given in this incarnation. For a company renowned for its creativity, this is an incredibly un-creative look and solution.

Oct 24, 2013 11:07 AM in response to billdevoe

I suppose we should be grateful the icons ar still in color. They already grayed up Aperture to match the austere whims of the design team, who probably never had to endure green screens or mono TVs.


Apart from tabbed Finder, it is the only thing I have noticed really different resulting from their millions of investment. Maybe I'm not pushing the Mac hard enough to get the benefits. Good news is it didn't break anything.

Oct 24, 2013 11:53 AM in response to haihoo

What a boatload. I admit being thankful they dropped the faux leather nonsense. But. Color and contrast IS a visual cue to the eye Mr Ive.


I have a suggestion while they are at it. Since they removed all color from the Finder sidebar icons after 10.6 and you can't read those any longer. They did this to the dock and now you cannot read it either.


Why not just make EVERYTHING the same pale grey color? A completely uniform, pale grey screen. It will be nice and uniform and consistent. Obviously that is more important than the user being able to read what is on the screen after all.


Who needs color or contrast?

Oct 24, 2013 5:24 PM in response to haihoo

I can't see which apps are running using the new Mavericks dock. And I can't fix it with Tinkertool the way I used to because that preference is gone. I hope Apple realizes that this is not "just" an aesthetic issue, although that matters, but that it also affects usability. I see no option in the accessiblity preferences to change this. Apparently Apple's aesthetics trump the user exerience. There was a time when we could choose these things for ourselves. Please, Apple, give this little bit of autonomy and usability back to us. After all, this is supposed to be about *personal* computing, not Apple's brand image.

Oct 24, 2013 6:26 PM in response to haihoo

Completely agree. Have been searching for a solution for this for half the day. I just can't get used to it. I would venture to say for most computer users an inverse color scheme is actually preferred. Give us the option to remove this dock background or change the color and transparency NOW!


Did removing the 5 lines of code that used to let us disable it really cause code bloat? Really was it worth it? Perhaps it is incompatible with AppNap?

Mavericks Dock: Change color

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