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Daily Trick 41. New List View (10.6)

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Sorry for the long hiatus of daily trick series due to lack of internet connection. Now, we're back on the track again.

If you put the Dock on the left of the screen, you're left with two display options, which are Grid View and List View. However, folks at Mac OS X Hints found a Terminal command to bring out new list view. 

defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES && killall Dock

After execution of the command above, your list view will look like the combination of Grid View and List View.

↑ new List View : After Execution of Command Line

And you can always use command line below to revert back to normal. 

defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool NO && killall Dock

Categories: Daily Tricks
Tags: Daily Trick, Dock, Stack

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24 Comments

Erik Jenkins 

Love the effect! Looks great!

NaVi 

Very nice indeed!! It works in normal dock (on the bottom of the screen) too. You should mention that :-)  Maybe some people think they'll have to put the dock on the left to have this work... Anyway.. I'm using it now!

David Nett 

Fantastic. This is a nice little aesthetic tweak that makes my stacks a lot nicer to use (even when the doc is at the bottom, like mine). Thanks so much.

-David

David Chu 

Actually, defaults is a command. In a Terminal, you can get its usage by typing "man defaults".



For example, you may see all the default settings for the Dock: "defaults read com.apple.dock".  This may display a long list. You may direct it to a text file by "defaults read com.apple.dock > myDoc.txt".  Or you may use "grep" command as a filter to check if this one is already set or not: "defaults read com.apple.dock | grep stack". My result is empty, which means this one has not been set yet.



By the way, I have a tip on Link to New Tab for Safari's by using defaults command.

orz.marvin 

Nice ; )

Simon G 

Wow!!! Thanks for this great function...i love it when you post daily tricks like that...things that make it look even better!!!  Thanks again!!!

Aziz Light 

Weird, that doesn't work for me...

Freddie 

It didn't work for me either :(

David Chu 

Fro the cases that it would not work for some people, my guess is that your account may not have privilege to make changes to default settings. If you know admin's password, you may try to go to supper user first by typing:



 su



Then you will be prompt to enter password. If you can get in, try above commands again as admin. As in my above comments, you may try to verify default settings first.

Chris M 

It did not work for me either and I have the admin role. I've also verified that the setting did get properly updated:

defaults read com.apple.dock |grep use-new
    "use-new-list-stack" = 1;

As you can see, the value is set correctly but the behavior is not changed.

Mackid 

I tried this, but my dock disappeared, and the computer won't start up. I hope nothing bad happened...

Mackid 

I pressed the power button on my computer, and the apple logo shows up, but no spinning wheel thingy. I booted from the install cd, repaired disk and disk permissions, and rebooted. Still stuck with just an apple logo... At least I made a backup.

Brandon 

Chris M,

Did you ever get the behavior to change?  I have had the same results as you.

Chris M 

Sadly, no. I was never able to get the behavior to work as described. I've rebooted, I've even set the value to FALSE, effectively rolling back the changes, and reset the value to TRUE once again, but nothing seems to work. 

Too bad, it looks like it would have been a very attractive feature.

Jose 

Does this only Works for Snow Leopard ?

Chris M 

I found the problem, well, not actually a problem but the reason as to why we don't see a change in behavior. If you right click on the folder that is on you Dock, you will see the System menu that will give you the options to: 

View Content as:



Fan
Grid
List
Automatic

 The Automatic seems to be the default behavior and will usually give you the Grid view or the Fan view depending upon the number of files to display. But you can change the behavior to any of the others and get the desired effect describe in this article. List is the behavior described above.



I hope this helps others left scratching their heads about this feature.

Penny 

hey!!! where to put or write this command??????

Chris M 

Go to your /Applications/Utilities folder and launch the Terminal application. Once open, enter the following command:



defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES && killall Dock



This will enable the new list stack feature and restart the dock. Once the dock restart you will have the options, listed above.




If you right click on the folder that is on you Dock, you will see the System menu that will give you the options to: 

View Content as: 



Fan


Grid


List


Automatic

Claudio 

It rocks!! thanks!

Pongping 

Does this work on leopard?

Joey 

I was wondering the same.
Does this work on leopard?

eRicK 

This doesn't worked on Snow Leopard :(

beep 

It works in Snow leopard :)

justin Shulman 

just fond out a solution 
step # one enter in defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES && killall Dock
sttep # two enter in defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilite-stack -boolean yes && killall Dock

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