OSX Dock Assimilation

April 2, 2007 7:14 AM

How can I make the OSX Dock the same for all user accounts? There must be an easier way to do this in 10.4 then logging in as each user and editing the dock manually. I don't want to lock the dock - just make it the same initially for all user accounts.
posted by wearyaswater to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Try copying ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist from the user with the correct settings to the same location for the other users.
posted by veedubya at 7:24 AM on April 2, 2007

You could do what veedubya suggests, but the ownership will be wrong and the dock will be locked, so be sure to follow that with chown to set the owner for each copy to match the shortname for each account.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:28 AM on April 2, 2007

Yup, that's true. If you're not comfortable with chown, right-click on the copied file, choose 'Get Info', and change the ownership and permissions from the pop-up.
posted by veedubya at 7:35 AM on April 2, 2007

On Windows, when you create a new account it's possible to clone an existing account as the default. Does OSX have any equivalent function?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:43 AM on April 2, 2007

The default user's home directory is stored at something like '/System/Library/User Template/English.jproj'. You might want to stick a good com.apple.dock.plist in there ('/System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences') before you create your user accounts.
posted by sudama at 11:08 AM on April 2, 2007