Customize your Mac’s Dock with this quick and easy tutorial on changing the indicator light color.
This guide is about the How to Change the Dock Indicator Lights Color in Mac OS X. I will try my best so that you understand this guide very well. I hope you all like this guide How to Change the Dock Indicator Lights Color in Mac OS X.
The color bars in the Mac OS X dock provide an easy way to tell which apps are running by looking at the dock. OS X basically offers you two options for these indicators, i.e. either show them or not, but since we want to customize things, we’ll cover how to change the look of the LEDs so that they appear in completely different colors. Alternatively, this may involve using a simple indicator that also removes the glowing appearance, which can leave the OS X dock looking a little more minimalist:
to change the Dock detectors are actually two ways, one to use the free tool called MacUtil, and the other is done completely manually without any applications or third-party downloads. MacUtil is the easiest way, so it’s a generally recommended approach, and we’ll cover that first. Because either method changes system files, it’s a good idea to do a quick manual backup to your Time Machine before you begin. It’s unlikely something will go wrong, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry. As always with these system changes, proceed at your own risk.
Change the color of the OS X docking lights with MacUtil
We deal first instant method using a free third-party säätöapuohjelmaa called MacUtil. If you want to do it yourself or use different colors than what MacUtil offers, go to the manual approach below:
- Get MacUtil for free from the developer
- Start MacUtil and click the button next to Change LED color for open applications
- Enter the administrator password to verify the changes
- Select the color you want to change
You now have several color options to choose from: Default (literally the default on OS X), Green, Light, Light Purple, Purple, Turquoise, Purple, Vivid, Yellow, and “Custom”, which rely on your own. image file input, and can be used to make the LEDs any color.
If you just want to make the LEDs clearer, “Vivid” is an obvious choice that brightens the default setting, making it a little clearer which applications are active and which aren’t.
Whatever color you choose, the changes are made immediately and take effect quickly, so there’s little point in trying a few and seeing what you like the most.
Here is “Vivid”, which greatly facilitates:
This is what “Yellow” track lights looks like:
And here’s what “Violet” the LEDs look like this:
And here’s what Color of the “Custom” light It looks like we chose a black rectangle that looks pretty good if you like minimalism more than glowing sparkle:
For those interested in black, it’s just a small 10 × 3 file that’s black, you can download it here or save a small little black image below if you’re interested in using it yourself.
Note that this black sample pointer is not retina ready, so if you have a retina Mac, you will want to use a higher resolution version instead. I just made this file myself, which is very easy to do by grabbing one of the files in the manual approach below, making the desired color changes, then saving and using it with MacUtil’s “Custom” character function.
Of course, this is really easy to change from MacUtil, but if you want to do it manually, it will be covered next.
Manually change the dock lights
For the do-it-yourself crowd, you can do all of this all by yourself by editing the system files and replacing them with your own variations. It doesn’t rain anyone’s parade, but it’s a tedious process, so unless you have a particular desire to use a particular image, it’s easier to just use the MacUtil method described above. Nevertheless, we will show you how you can modify these files yourself if you tend to move manually.
This requires changing the system files yourself, it is always a good idea to do a quick manual backup to Time Machine or any other use before making changes to system folders and their contents.
- In the Go to Folder Finder, call Command + Shift + G and type the following path:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/
- Use the “Folder Search” feature in the upper right corner, limit the search to the “Resources” folder only, and search for “indicator_”
- Select all of them and make a copy of these files to a folder on your desktop called Indicator Backup – this is so that you can easily revert back to defaults if you decide that replacement indicators are uncomfortable.
- Edit or replace Resources / directory contents to change indicators, focus on the following files:
indicator_large.pngindicator_large @ 2x.pngindicator_medium_simple.pngindicator_medium_simple @ 2x.pngindicator_medium.pngindicator_medium @ 2x.pngindicator_small_simple.pngindicator_small_simple @ 2x.pngindicator
- Go to the terminal and kill the dock to upgrade it for the changes to take effect
killall Dock
- Enjoy the new Dock indicator icons
Because its value is @ 2x, it indicates whether the image file for the retina screens is the size or not, and if you don’t have a retina Mac, you don’t need to replace them for the changes to take effect.
You can edit these files however you want, whether it’s making simple hue and saturation changes with Preview, or replacing them with completely different images and your own art created through Pixelmator, Photoshop, or an image editing application of your choice.
Good customization!
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