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Zap Stack Background and Float Inside Icons

Some Mac users love to view content of stack as Fan View yet hating the fact that it can barely display ten or more applications. If you're one of those users, you will be very happy to follow this trick, which will make your stack background "invisible" and all icons inside that stack will be see as if they're "floating".

Invisible Stack

Shown Above. Invisible Stack with Grid View

Invisible Stack Background

For those who are curious with what's going on, follow these instructions to make your stack background disappear.

  1. Open Finder
  2. Go to Macintosh HD → System → Library → Core Services
  3. Look for Dock and control-click on it
  4. Choose Show Package Contents from its contextual menu and then go inside Contents → Resources
  5. Back up and delete from that folder all of image files prefixed with stackbackground-
  6. Use your Terminal to restart Dock by executing command line
    killall Dock

After you've successfully restarted your Dock, try to expand your stack, the result should look like what's seen on the screenshot shown before.

Off-Topic Yet As Interesting

Anyway, if you've enough creativity and time to tweak around, you can actually change those images with another mind-blowing background images, such as adding a little star to bottom-left background image results in :

Starred Stack

Shown Above. Stack Background with Little Star Attached

Let's see how you can use your creative thinking on something that's almost useless like this.

Categories: Tweak
Tags: Stack, Tweak

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12 Comments

Olav 

Nice tweak. This is something I will use :)
Thanks.

Off topic:
Anyone with positive experience with CrystalClear Interface?

Rob 

That is some sweetness right there!

Tyler 

So is there any way to add the background back to the folder once you have deleted the pics?

Wendy 

Use backup images or create new account. Those are the ways that I know. :)

NaVi 

Nice tweak!  Now everything looks transparent =)

puppu 

hi,

i just found 1 file with the name stack  "stackitemshadow" is there any other file i need to take a backup of? the changes did not take place when i did the killall Dock in terminal.. :(

thanks!

Mike 

I like how this looks, thanks for the tip!

alex 

cool!!

NaVi 

I have a really off-topic question...  But I am searching for a nice external hard disk to backup my iMac. In the "mac-basics" movie about time machine on the apple site, a mac pro look-a-like hard disk is shown. There is a big G on it. Does anyone know what brand and/or model that is?  Thanks in advance :P

NaVi 

Oops, sorry... I found it.. I searched through google first and didn't find anything so I posted here :S   But then I got the very smart (cough) idea to look on the apple store, were I found it... So wendy, if you want you can delete my two posts ;P
Sorry for this..

Stevo 

Hey. This looks nice in theory. Well, it looks nice, but I tried it and....
There's a reason for the backgrounds that are provided with large stacks, I think. They cut out the visual noise of whatever else is going on on your desktop to allow you to focus on finding what it is that you are actually looking for. So in this case I think that a person might be better served by sacrificing form for function. I was anyway...

Andrei 

Yeap...works for me too.
I find it very useful . Thanks