Can we copy a Dock setup to another Mac?

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Level 1

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Can we copy a Dock setup to another Mac?

I manage a number of Macs in a lab. They are all running Yosemite and have the same apps installed. I've created a Dock setup on one of them and would like to copy that setup to all of them.

I tried copying ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist to one of the other systems and then issued "killall -HUP Dock" on the other machine. This didn't update the Dock on the second machine. In fact, it seems to have reset it to the install defaults.

Is there a way to do this? Is there a cache tree somewhere that I need to clobber before copying the plist over to the new systems?

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 6GB RAID 0, BRU PE, ATTO, HP LTO-5

Posted on Apr 30, 2015 4:19 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Niek1998

Level 1

14 points

May 1, 2015 8:52 AM in response to Tim Jones13

Yes you can, but make sure you don't have customs icons.

Go to this folder: ~/library/preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Copy that file to a usb stick or something, and place that file in the folder '' ~/library/preferences/com.apple.dock.plist '' on your macbook. But make sure you have a bakcup of your old plist file of your macbook. Just drag and drop the new plist file on your macbook and your good to go

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Answer 2

Tim Jones13 Author

Level 1

26 points

May 1, 2015 9:05 AM in response to Niek1998

Unfortunately, that's what I did, and that doesn't work. Granted, it worked back in 10.8.5 and earlier, but it doesn't appear to work in Yosemite.

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Answer 3

Niek1998

Level 1

14 points

May 1, 2015 9:09 AM in response to Tim Jones13

After you do that, that you ''kill'' finder, that means restart finder?

killall -KILL Finder

That command of above should help you out!

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Answer 4

Tim Jones13 Author

Level 1

26 points

May 1, 2015 9:34 AM in response to Niek1998

Still no joy. Killing the Finder doesn't affect the Dock, you have to kill the Dock to restart it. As I mentioned, I tried that.

It appears that the com.apple.dock.plist file has no bearing on what's displayed, so there must be a cache or defaults setting in Yosemite that I'm missing.

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Answer 5

Tim Jones13 Author

Level 1

26 points

May 1, 2015 9:48 AM in response to Tim Jones13

I found the secret:

copy the new com.apple.dock.plist into each user's Library/Preferences folder
execute "defaults read /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist"
execute "killall Dock"

This has now allowed me to copy the default Dock to the lab systems and easily restore it when the users muck around with it during a session.

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