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CHALLENGE: Quit an app by dragging out of dock??

M

marmalito

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2012
19
7
I use Launchpad to open programs, and the Dock only to see what programs are running. As you can imagine, it would be extremely nice if there were a way to drag an icon off the dock using three fingers on my trackpad and have it quit the running program.

I'm not yet super-knowledgeable about the inner workings of OS X, but am getting comfortable with terminal. I have no clue how to go about this. Any takers?
 
marmalito said:
I use Launchpad to open programs, and the Dock only to see what programs are running. As you can imagine, it would be extremely nice if there were a way to drag an icon off the dock using three fingers on my trackpad and have it quit the running program.

I'm not yet super-knowledgeable about the inner workings of OS X, but am getting comfortable with terminal. I have no clue how to go about this. Any takers?
Click to expand...
No, dragging an icon off the Dock doesn't quit an app. That's used to remove a non-running app's icon from the Dock. To quit an app, either use Command-Q or select quit from the app's Menu Bar menu, or right-click on the Dock icon and select Quit.

Helpful Information for Any Mac User
 
Thanks. I understand that, but would LIKE the ability to quit an app by dragging it right off the dock. Maybe I'm in the wrong forum, but I'm hoping there's a way to do this with a little hackery.

Edit: I should mention, I have no app aliases residing in my dock other than Finder. It is used exclusively to be able to see which apps are running.
 
marmalito said:
Thanks. I understand that, but would LIKE the ability to quit an app by dragging it right off the dock. Maybe I'm in the wrong forum, but I'm hoping there's a way to do this with a little hackery.
Click to expand...
I doubt it, but I can say that I've seen dozens of threads over the years from people who tried customizing/hacking/re-engineering their dock, desktop, menu bar, etc., only to have serious problems as a result. It's your Mac, so you can do what you like, but I would recommend you learn to use Mac OS X the way it was designed, rather than attempting to "fix" something that isn't broken. You could end up really breaking something.
marmalito said:
Edit: I should mention, I have no app aliases residing in my dock other than Finder. It is used exclusively to be able to see which apps are running.
Click to expand...
Then you're missing the point of having the dock, which is partially to have quick access to launch frequently-used apps. Also, there are apps that run that never appear in the dock even when they're running, so if you're expecting the dock to be an inventory of all running apps, it won't work.
 
Thanks, again. I also understand that there are apps that won't show up in the Dock. I'm ok with that. Personally, I find that it is quicker to invoke Launchpad and open an app from there.

Every one uses their computer differently, right? In my case, I'm all about efficiency, and don't like having redundant shortcut icons all over the place. Plus, it certainly makes it easier to tell which major programs I've opened and left running without having to enable those tacky blue lights. Sometimes it's nice to be able to do something that the OS designers didn't program.
 
I don't know much about the inner workings of OSX either.

Maybe you could monitor calls to the little "trash" icon that occurs when you pull a running app off the dock?

There is a book by Big Nerd Ranch called Advanced OSX that might have more insight into how to poke about the innards of OSX, but once again, I'm not sure.

It looks like a nifty idea, not one that I would use because the Tab-Q combo works well, but it could be nifty.
 
Thanks for the tip. If I'm able to figure it out I'll post my results... So far, I've scoured the net to no avail. There are all sorts of other Dock tweaks, obviously, but not this one. It seemed like a simple enough concept, (just add to the command that deletes an alias a command to kill the running app *Edit*: Finder should probably be excluded*) but I'm beginning to think it may not be entirely feasible. That's why I'm here.
 
marmalito said:
Thanks for the tip. If I'm able to figure it out I'll post my results... So far, I've scoured the net to no avail. There are all sorts of other Dock tweaks, obviously, but not this one. It seemed like a simple enough concept, (just add to the command that deletes an alias a command to kill the running app *Edit*: Finder should probably be excluded*) but I'm beginning to think it may not be entirely feasible. That's why I'm here.
Click to expand...

That would be impossible to do since each running process including applications that is opened and running has it own generated unique PID number.
 
Well, I've settled on this...

I've had HyperDock installed for quite a while, and was rummaging through the settings when I found that I can customize a shortcut whereby I scroll up on the trackpad with two fingers and the app closes... There is no fancy animation or poof of smoke, but it serves my purpose... And is 33% more efficient than using three fingers I suppose.
 
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