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WillMak

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 29, 2005
957
0
I have a pretty large load of icons on my dock sofar...what happens if I keep adding more? will they just keep on shrinking?
 
Apparently so. I kept creating a bunch of (Safari) windows and minimizing them and I gave up before the dock. That leads me to assume that it can hold a virtually infinite number of icons/minimized windows. There could be a set limit, but I don't know.
 
I got to 144 before the icons were unreadable.

I'm guessing the dock is finite, though. :)

Someone care to find it?
 

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I just tried a bunch of safari windows also. I have so many open, it is unreal. Stil, the dock made room for them. It probably is an infinite number.
 
An infinate number is unlikely. If there is some sort of counter involved (and there most likely is) there can be a total of 255, 65535 (etc.) or so icons in the dock. If it doesn't count, then... well, you'll run out of RAM eventually. Then out of diskspace. X_x;
Infinity cannot exist!
 
katie ta achoo said:
I got to 144 before the icons were unreadable.

I'm guessing the dock is finite, though. :)

Someone care to find it?


wow, that’s a lot of icons, I had about 50 in my dock and they were very readable...but I guess it can go on forever depending on your display size.
 
Here are 256 (I like that number) opened Safari windows + 8 others, so 264 icons alltogether. Right now my Mac is so darn laggy...
 

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Kaioshin said:
Here are 256 (I like that number) opened Safari windows + 8 others, so 264 icons alltogether. Right now my Mac is so darn laggy...

is that a pixel art?? lol
 
Shouldn't the limit be reached when the icons are small enough to fill out exactly one pixel on the screen?
 
WillMak said:
Shouldn't the limit be reached when the icons are small enough to fill out exactly one pixel on the screen?
Yeah, but it could do sub-pixel aliasing, so that wouldn't necessarily be the limit, though the icons would no longer be distinguishable from each other to click on, making it completely useless. I'm a little surprised it wasn't 256, but I suppose they let it go way the heck up just in case someobdy has a huge mess of windows open and accidentally minimizes all of them.

In practical terms, the limit will vary based on the size of your screen, but there's only so many icons before it's useless just because of sheer number to sort through.
 
Have fun - do a spotlight search for all files and then drag them all to the Dock. If that doesn't make your Mac explode into a cloud of silicon I don't know what will. :)
 
I have all of my important icons in my dock: FF, QT, Preview, TextEdit, the iLife programs etc. But everything else I keep in a folder that kinda looks like the Windows start menu when you right click on it. I created aliases of some of the programs I occasionally use and put it into a folder, then dragged it into the dock next to the trash along with my network server drive shortcut. The apps folder works like that too. That way I don't have to fill up my dock with stuff I almost never use.

We'll have to ask iGary to see how many he can fit on his dual 30"s and quad G5 with a ton of RAM so it won't choke.
 
grabberslasher said:
Have fun - do a spotlight search for all files and then drag them all to the Dock. If that doesn't make your Mac explode into a cloud of silicon I don't know what will. :)

Doing a search for all files, selecting them all, right clicking and chosing "Open"?
 
Here is more than 1,000 icons in the doc. There are over 200 firefox windows, itunes, Adium, and some 800 TextEdit windows.

At this point, it took about 10 minimized windows to notice a visual difference in the dock, 1 pixel at most. I also noticed the application's side of the dock began being overlapped.

This took quite a bit of my time, and I am not willing to go for more :p
 

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Jiddick ExRex said:
Which would mean 1280 icons on a macbook :)
that is not smart. there also is at least a 1-pixel border at each side. plus, the space between the icons and trashcan/minimized windows
so I'd count around 1276-1278 icons on a macbook.
 
This is what mine looked like, and I had NO speed issues whatsoever. I could have gone further, but it got boring after awhile.
 

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Hmmmmm what about expose? How small can you guys make you expose windows?
 
There's a thread around here somewhere with people's maxed-out Exposéd shots.
Look for it before we rehash the same old, same old.
 
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