Mavericks Dock: Change color

Adding my dislike, this was the first bad point about Mavericks I saw. Been an avid side dock user for years, looks great on any Mac, but Mavericks has ruined it! It looks ugly in my peripheral vision while using the computer, then when looking for icons I can't distinguish them easily. Folders in the side dock are indistinguishable!

Apple, add an option to change opacity. Developers, hack it.

Sent feedback.

Current solution: Command-Option-D. Nice and quick in Mavericks. Grrr.

I'll send feedback as I'm sure posting here does nothing to help change it but I have to vent and add my agreement here, what a failure this dock is....it's hideous. I pride myself in not minding change too much. Most changes are indeed for ther better and Maverick seems great except for this very glaring mess of a new dock. Atrocious.

I totally agree. I was highly shocked to see that there is no way to customize this... These changes for bad will probably mean that eventually I'll be passing my time using Linux in a virtual machine and just start Mac apps when I need them. So sad.

Also, I wonder whether they at Apple use their own OS at all. How come no one inside noticed such an evident thing?!?

Yes, the dock is really awful. In fact most design decisions in Mavericks are pretty bad.

White is such a hard background to work with -- you really need a balance of dark and light on a screen to be comfortable. Mavericks is really white, most of the time.

I think Apple is trying to copy Google and thinks simplicity in colour and design mean stability, ease and a robust, effective UI. Not sure I buy into that.

As I work with Mavericks and see that awful dock colour right off the bat, I feel like maybe the OS isn't loading graphics or BG images -- it feels like things are missing. So right away it doesn't draw you in, but makes you feel uneasy.

On an interesting note, if you go to the App Store, which is nicely designed, Apple uses lots of lines, shading and enclosing boxes. They needed to do more of that to make the UI work, in my humble opinion.

Anyhow, yes -- the dock colour *****! Some nice touches to the new OS but design, is not one of them.

I so agree, the Dock looks awful. Also, Calendar and Notes which I use ALL the time. Can't get used to it. No lines and so white. Seriously, what's with the white? We all know white strains the eyes. The Calendar looks pretty close to the Google's Calendar...hmmm. Notes is hard on the eyes and brain too and I wish they could put back the lines and get rid of that cream yuk colour. Please bring back the old Notes colour. I was very disappointed with what they did to the Dock, Calendar, and Notes. Hey, would it be asking too much to have a little choice on colour? Come on Apple.

I'm dismayed by this dock bar.

The Downloads folder literally disappears, others are just hard to see.

Until this is fixed (yes, it is broken) it's Option-Command-D for me.

If you are one of those rare birds that take their dock 'on the side' it is far more apparent.

Viewed from the bottom, not quite as distracting. Still disturbing, however.

Yes, absolutely.

Doesn't look as bad at the bottom. Maybe Apple should have just left it alone, just the way it was -- if one selects one of the sides.

Don't know if I'm a "rare bird", most people I know use the dock on either side and not the bottom. Either way, it is much uglier with the side placement. What were they thinking?!?!

I didn't realize how many people set up their dock on the side.

All my pals are bottom feeders.

But yea, what were they thinking?

Gotta hunch this gets sorted out. Might not be priority 1A but it will be addressed.

Considering how important aesthetics is to Apple, this is perplexing.

Here comes iOS to a computer near you.

I have sent my complaints to Apple also.

In the meantime, I did find this terminal command that might be of use to some. It actually turns the dock transparent rather than white. Not a perfect solution by any stretch, but it's a little bit of a help.

defaults write com.apple.dock hide-mirror -bool true;killall Dock

I tried this. All it did was default my desktop picture to the Mavericks screen.

And you gave me such hope, too.

I left feedback with Apple re: the dock. I used to use Mirage for years to get a completely transparent dock but when I went to see if the developer was planning an update, I could have sworn I read a comment by the developer saying he can't update it because Apple's basically locked the file down for editors.

Which would explain why there have been no other 3rd party apps to do this simple function.

The dock really looks terrible against my dark background and even though I tried the 'hide' function, it became too much of a pain when I have too many windows and files minimized.

Betty_Woo wrote:

even though I tried the 'hide' function, it became too much of a pain when I have too many windows and files minimized.

It's been several years, but IIRC it took me a whole day to get used to it and now I wouldn't have it any other way. I've heard from several other users that say they got used to it rapidly.

just updated to Mavericks--I guess this FORCED WHITE DOCK is to remind us we have something new. Cmon, Apple, stop forcing things like this on us. Okay, have it be that way on first install, but give your customers options. I keep a fairly dark neutral screen for photography purposes, and now I have this **** ugly bright dock on the left. Things like this are why my iMac is still running Snow Leopard. Don't take away options, increase them.