31 Responses for "How To Reset Dock in OS X Leopard"

1. Steve May 24th, 2009 at 9:15 pm 1

   Thanks!

   We had a weird problem with our dock and this totally helped fix it.

2. nick July 6th, 2009 at 10:03 am 2

   thanks good work

   the magnification was screwed and this has fixed the issue.

3. unknown123 August 28th, 2009 at 8:17 pm 3

   I dont have those in my preferences folder. When i deleted them and wrote killall dock in terminal, nothing happened. I want to try again but now they arent in my trash and i cant find them!!!

4. New Visitor September 3rd, 2009 at 11:32 am 4

   …after all that to post forgot what I was going to say….

5. New Visitor September 3rd, 2009 at 11:35 am 5

   PS….but Pushkar’s advice worked on Snow Leopard after Mobile Me overwrote the dock from the cloud….and deleted the new Application Stack.

   Thx Pushkar…

6. bryan November 2nd, 2009 at 8:07 pm 6

   Where do i type the killall command? Whre’s the “terminal”?

7. Pushkar Arora November 5th, 2009 at 12:05 am 7

   Hold Cmd + Spacebar and then type terminal in the finder window. It will show up.

8. Chacko November 7th, 2009 at 6:59 pm 8

   Hi is there a way to just reset the Mail application to like when you opened it for the first time?

9. Todd Bradley December 27th, 2009 at 4:53 am 9

   Thanks, that worked like a charm.

10. roeecon May 20th, 2010 at 10:34 pm 10

    Thank you very much you saved my dock

11. bob July 24th, 2010 at 5:39 am 11

    This is an excellent tip that worked perfectly for my dock weirdness problems. Thank you!

12. Erin July 28th, 2010 at 1:38 am 12

    Thanks, helped a Mac newbie out!

13. lanilani September 11th, 2010 at 4:54 am 13

    Thank you! =)

14. Marshall October 11th, 2010 at 10:01 pm 14

    Worked great for me! However, I had set up a user as admin rather than setting up a dedicated admin account (dumb, I know!). Anyway, I had changed the location of certain files in the dock in the prior admin account to folders that had made more sense to me (eg. itunes located in a folder within Applications called Music). That changed everything. The dock does not seem smart enough to relocate the files. So, when I would set up new accounts (such as a guest account), the dock would always display ‘?’ where the original file was to be. i fixed this with your method plus dragging the original apps back onto the dock (thus placing them back in the original Finder folder).

    Hope that helps anyone who did same….

15. Random January 6th, 2011 at 11:01 pm 15

    This Worked amazing! I had messed around with some settings and somehow frozen my dock. Thanks so much!

16. CLFeliz11 January 19th, 2011 at 10:33 pm 16

    Thank you so much it worked.

17. bodypilot February 12th, 2011 at 11:39 am 17

    Really great help, my dock is now unscrewed!

18. Ruben February 23rd, 2011 at 7:37 am 18

    Thnxs a lot!

19. Vincent March 13th, 2011 at 5:38 pm 19

    Excellent tip – many thanks!

20. Rashid April 5th, 2011 at 5:17 pm 20

    Thanks…Just what I needed.

21. Casey April 13th, 2011 at 9:15 am 21

    Thanks! That did it!

22. Tim Probst May 14th, 2011 at 7:52 pm 22

    Thank you so much for the tip! It worked perfectly!

23. Steev in Sunny FLA June 10th, 2011 at 4:35 pm 23

    THANK YOU!!!!!

24. pete June 14th, 2011 at 9:45 am 24

    finally bothered to look online to see how to do this… thanks for the direction, my dock is back!!

25. Di August 15th, 2011 at 4:01 am 25

    Thanks a lot. Worked perfectly!

26. Ethan August 27th, 2011 at 8:05 pm 26

    All my dock settings are locked and i can not make it bigger or smaller and this did not work , any ideas?

27. » How To Reset Dock in OS X Leopard blog November 17th, 2011 at 10:22 pm 27

    [...] http://pushkararora.com/how-to/how-to-reset-dock-in-os-x-leopard/ [...]

28. Hernandez November 27th, 2011 at 12:48 am 28

    how about to restore the default theme?

29. Mike December 14th, 2011 at 1:45 am 29

    Thanks for making this reset information handy. My 2010 MacBook Pro has twice developed a weird problem where the Dock process consumes 100% or more of a CPU core and the cooling fan(s) run at high speed. An Apple Genius fixed it once and I remembered him saying something about deleting Dock files from the preferences folder under my library, but the details escaped me. These instructions worked perfectly. My Mac is running cool and quiet again.

30. Debashish March 5th, 2012 at 6:49 pm 30

    Thanks, it worked like a charm!!!

31. Goran April 27th, 2012 at 4:26 pm 31

    Thanks a lot this works for me .