Can't remove icons from the dock

Did you *just* upgrade to Mavericks from Lion or earlier?

Because Mountain Lion and Mavericks both let you remove icons from the dock, but it takes a much more deliberate action (a lot of people accidentally removed dock icons previously and had no idea how to get them back). Now to remove something, you need to drag it quite a ways off the dock, and hold it for 1/2 second before the "poof" icon shows. Then let go, and it should be removed from the dock.

Might be corrupted dock preferences ..

Open the Finder. From the Finder menu bar click Go > Go to Folder

Type or copy paste the following:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Click Go then move the com.apple.dock.plist file to the Trash.

Restart your Mac then try deleing app icons from the Dock.

Or if you can't quite get the co-ordination just right, you can always right click on the icon of a non-running app, and in the Options section of the pop up menu select "Remove from Dock." If the app is running, then just uncheck the "Keep in Dock" entry of the Options section.

Francine

Very odd indeed. It you want to follow Carolyn's advice you need to be in the correct Library folder. The path you have given is for the general system Library, which is at the root level of the drive. You want your home ~/Library folder (the tilde matters). There are several ways to open it, now that Apple's Infinite wisdom has declared it should be hidden.

1. Open your user folder, bring up the Show View Options either by Command-j or selecting that from the View menu. At the very bottom of the list of options there is a radio button to Show the Library Folder. Check it. The ~/Library folder immediately appears. Open it, then open Preferences and delete the com.Apple.dock.plist file.

2. Open the Go window and press and hold the Option key and ~/Library folder magically appears in the list, click on it and remove the file.

3. Copy and paste the path Carolyn gave you in the Go to Folder option of the Go menu, find and delete the file. Restart and see if things are correct.

If that doesn't do it, launch Disk Utility and run repair permissions. It won't hurt and sometimes it actually helps. This peculiar problem may be one of those times.

Francine

Glad it's fixed. Be aware that as soon as there is an OS update, and you run it, that button will be unchecked again, so if you want access to your own ~/Library folder you'll need to remember to either re-check it after every update, or use the magic Option key trick in the Go menu.

Francine

Thanks Francine !!

Hi

I’m facing the same problem, but this didn’t work for me

Please help !!!

Thank you! This helped a lot!! 🙂