Place an alias to anything on either side of the Dock

May 09, '06 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

In the Dock, applications normally appear on the left side of the divider (or above if the Dock is positioned on the side of the screen), and files and folders appear on the right side (or below).

One exception is a Finder alias, which despite being a file, will appear on the left side if the original to which it points is an application. It appears that this difference can be attributed to the file type of the alias, which may match the file type of the original for files but is set to fapa for aliases to applications. By changing the file type of an alias to or from fapa, it is possible to make it appear on either side of the Dock's dividing line.

To modify a file or folder alias so that it can be placed on the left side of the Dock, use either of these commands, entered using Terminal (in /Applications -> Utilities). The first command requires the Developer Tools be installed, while the second does not:

  1. /Developer/Tools/SetFile -t "fapa" /path/to/FileorFolderalias
  2. osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set (file type) of (choose file) to "fapa"'
To modify an application alias to place it on the right, use either of these commands (same rules as above):
  1. /Developer/Tools/SetFile -t "" /path/to/Appalias
  2. osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set (file type) of (choose file) to ""'
Read on for some things to be aware of if you want to use this trick...

File aliases seem to be happy regardless of which side they are on, but there are some limitations with application and folder aliases. Most noticeable will be the insistence of application aliases placed on the right side to continue 'bouncing,' even after the program has finished launching. In fact, the bouncing will continue even after the program is quit (until the icon is clicked on). For this reason, it won't be practical to use this trick unless your preference is to disable the "Animate opening applications" setting in the Dock System Preferences panel.

Another limitation of application aliases (it might be feature, depending on the situation) is that the program won't appear in the Command-Tab application switcher, nor will its active status be indicated by a triangle under the icon. However, open windows belonging to the program appear in Exposé, and it is possible to drag documents onto the icon to open them.

Folder aliases aren't very useful on the left -- they open their corresponding folder when clicked, but won't have any advanced folder properties. Control-clicking will not display the folder's contents, and drag and drop of items to the icon will not result in those items being moved to the folder.

Another feature of the trick is that it becomes possible to have the same original item represented twice in the Dock -- once on the left, and once on the right. Though not so useful now, when Apple comes out with a 50" PowerBook, it might make items easier to get to if there are aliases for them on either end of the Dock.

[robg adds: This older hint explains how you can do similar things to original files or folders (moving them from the right to the left), but this solution is much simpler -- albeit with some limitations as explained above.]

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