Make hidden Applications transparent in the Dock

Here’s a simple Dock hack that is really useful for those of us who have many applications open at once.

When activated, icons of applications that are hidden (either by right clicking the icon in the Dock, or by option-clicking away from the application) will appear transparent within the Dock like the screenshot shows with some Mac apps.

To activate this hack, open up your Terminal and use the following:

Enable transparent hidden Dock icons:

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES

Disable transparent hidden Dock icons:

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool NO

You’ll need to reload the Dock for changes to take effect, from the Terminal type:

killall Dock

Then when you hide an app, the icon for that app appears as translucent in the Dock of Mac OSX. Cool, right?