How to Lock the Dock on a MacBook

A MacBook Pro computer

One of the many great innovations that Apple poured into its OS X was the dock--a palette of oft-used apps, folders and documents that resides at the bottom (or left or right) of the screen. Adding a new icon to the dock is a simple drag and drop process, as is removing an icon. With that ease of change comes a problem; users can accidentally (or not so accidentally) add and remove some of the icons. While this is usually a mere inconvenience, it becomes an issue when the user doesn't know how to rectify the problem and return the contents of the dock to its original state.

Things You'll Need

• MacBook running OS X

Instructions

1. 

   Configure the dock the way you want it. You add to it simply by dragging an icon into it, and subtract from it by grabbing an icon from the dock and dragging onto the desktop. When you remove an icon from the dock, you'll see and hear a "poof." Note that some of the icons (Finder, Trash) cannot be removed from (or moved within) the dock. You are able to size the dock by grabbing the vertical line to the left of the trash icon and dragging up to increase its size, and down to make it smaller.

2. 

   Situate your doc where you want it; it can either reside on the left-hand side or right-hand side of the screen or the bottom of the screen. The dock can also be set to "auto hide," which means the dock retracts until you run the mouse over it. All of the options for configuring the dock can be set in "Dock" under "System Preferences."

3. 

   Double click on the user's home folder (under "Users"). Then double click on the "Library" folder and double click again on the "Preferences" folder. Inside the Preferences folder, find the file called com.apple.dock.plist, and click on it once to highlight it.

4. 

   Once the com.apple.dock.plist file has been highlighted, type in Apple-I, or Get Info under the "File" menu. A new window with many section will open. Ignore all of them except the "General" section, and click the triangle to reveal the options under "General." Click on the box next to "Locked" and then close all the windows. Users still will be able to customize the items in their docks, but upon logout, the dock will revert back to its original state.

5. 

   An alternate method is to use Apple's built-in Parental Controls option. This is also configured under System Preferences/Parental Controls. To enable Parental Controls, the user has to be changed to a managed account. This is a good option only if you plan on using other function of the Parental Controls, because it limits some user freedoms (performing software installs and updates, for example).

Tips & Warnings

• Having the dock automatically hide helps eliminate accidentally removing icons. These steps will work on any Mac running OS X.

References

• Apple