DockMod for 10.9 is currently in beta testing.

[82asmdf203]

Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions. Maybe DockMod is overriding it, but I glanced in the DockMod plist file and didn't see anything obvious. Perhaps that method just doesn't work anymore, although it seems like it should.

Well, I've only been using Mac for about a year so I'm no expert. I did check the DockMod plist file, but same as you didn't see anything obvious. I requested the text labels be removed (or option-able) from DockMod to the developer, so I'll report what he says as soon as I receive a reply.

Gotta say though, this is the functionality for the Dock that we have all been waiting for with Mavericks! $8 bucks is pretty cheap compared to other apps and I actually did receive confirmation from the creator that all plans are that it would continue to be supported (and FREE) with future versions of OS X. Thanks for your hard work and contribution to the Mac community Bryan!

 

[unsanity77]

Sure wish I'd have stumbled across this thread sooner, as I see there's a few frustrated people in here. I am the developer of DockMod, and I would first like to say that I make myself quickly available via email and the contact form on my website, spyresoft.com.

To clear up the DockMod "Free Mode" text, you simply have to disable the free mode. "Free Mode" is only there for people who do not wish to purchase a license and are OK with the (admittedly, slightly nagging) text on the dock. However, if you've purchased a license, then you should not be in "Free Mode". Just disable free mode, make your own black theme and apply it, and you'll be set.

You can find an exact replica of this theme from the attached file. Just download it to your desktop, then in DockMod go to Themes->Import... and choose this file. You should then see a theme called "Black".

I won't visit here much, but want to stress again that I am always available to people via email at support@spyresoft.com and the contact form on my website. Thanks so much for your support and your interest. That alone is what will keep this product alive.

EDIT: You have to unzip the attached file first, in case your browser does not automatically do it for you.

 

[z06gal]

****! You beat me to it and used the ADW.Elegant icons. I was going to try the same thing. Sital's are very nice though and deserve merit because he made them from scratch. Sital, you really should make an icon pack that includes system/folder/dock/devices/etc... that is applicable with LiteIcon so that everyone can enjoy it.

I agree. I would love to have Sital's icons. I love the fluent squarish shape of all of them. I am in the process of trying to learn how to make my own as well

----------

Sure wish I'd have stumbled across this thread sooner, as I see there's a few frustrated people in here. I am the developer of DockMod, and I would first like to say that I make myself quickly available via email and the contact form on my website, spyresoft.com.

To clear up the DockMod "Free Mode" text, you simply have to disable the free mode. "Free Mode" is only there for people who do not wish to purchase a license and are OK with the (admittedly, slightly nagging) text on the dock. However, if you've purchased a license, then you should not be in "Free Mode". Just disable free mode, make your own black theme and apply it, and you'll be set.

You can find an exact replica of this theme from the attached file. Just download it to your desktop, then in DockMod go to Themes->Import... and choose this file. You should then see a theme called "Black".

I won't visit here much, but want to stress again that I am always available to people via email at support@spyresoft.com and the contact form on my website. Thanks so much for your support and your interest. That alone is what will keep this product alive.

Thank you for your work! I was elated to find it available for Mavericks

 

[Sital]

I agree. I would love to have Sital's icons. I love the fluent squarish shape of all of them. I am in the process of trying to learn how to make my own as well

I made them in Photoshop Elements. Basically I started with a 1024x1024 solid color, then used the rounded square cookie cutter to make the icon shape. I picked a gray color I liked and them applied a spotlight lighting effect. I think that was it for the background.

The foreground is just a matter of finding an image that you want to represent the app, convert it to black and then apply it as another layer on top of the background. For this layer I did also put on a bevel which isn't very noticeable unless you're looking for it, but I think it just gives it a bit more of a polished look.

If you want the background template I used, just let me know. At that point I may create a new thread in UI customizations which would be a more appropriate place to share them.

 

[fisherking]

Sure wish I'd have stumbled across this thread sooner, as I see there's a few frustrated people in here. I am the developer of DockMod, and I would first like to say that I make myself quickly available via email and the contact form on my website, spyresoft.com.

To clear up the DockMod "Free Mode" text, you simply have to disable the free mode. "Free Mode" is only there for people who do not wish to purchase a license and are OK with the (admittedly, slightly nagging) text on the dock. However, if you've purchased a license, then you should not be in "Free Mode". Just disable free mode, make your own black theme and apply it, and you'll be set.

You can find an exact replica of this theme from the attached file. Just download it to your desktop, then in DockMod go to Themes->Import... and choose this file. You should then see a theme called "Black".

I won't visit here much, but want to stress again that I am always available to people via email at support@spyresoft.com and the contact form on my website. Thanks so much for your support and your interest. That alone is what will keep this product alive.

EDIT: You have to unzip the attached file first, in case your browser does not automatically do it for you.

seriously, very cool app, and grateful you've updated it for mavericks.

 

[z06gal]

I made them in Photoshop Elements. Basically I started with a 1024x1024 solid color, then used the rounded square cookie cutter to make the icon shape. I picked a gray color I liked and them applied a spotlight lighting effect. I think that was it for the background.

The foreground is just a matter of finding an image that you want to represent the app, convert it to black and then apply it as another layer on top of the background. For this layer I did also put on a bevel which isn't very noticeable unless you're looking for it, but I think it just gives it a bit more of a polished look.

If you want the background template I used, just let me know. At that point I may create a new thread in UI customizations which would be a more appropriate place to share them.

I would LOVE to have the template Sital. I am using Pixelmator and haven't figured out how to round the corners yet. Thanks

 

[TheBacklash]

To clear up the DockMod "Free Mode" text, you simply have to disable the free mode. "Free Mode" is only there for people who do not wish to purchase a license and are OK with the (admittedly, slightly nagging) text on the dock.

For the vast majority of people that ONLY want the black dock.. this is beyond annoying.
paying a license for a single tweak on EVERY mac we own is stupid.

Remember, Dockmod was always free for black. then you decided to charge for the other colors. Fine. But the added text is BS. Seeing the text does not inspire me to shell out money for the mod... it makes me search for a torrent/other option. the exact opposite of your intent.
If you search around, others have said the same thing..

Someone else already figured out how to remove the text.. but isn't telling people. It's only a matter of time before someone else does explain how.

 

[fisherking]

For the vast majority of people that ONLY want the black dock.. this is beyond annoying.
paying a license for a single tweak on EVERY mac we own is stupid.

Remember, Dockmod was always free for black. then you decided to charge for the other colors. Fine. But the added text is BS. Seeing the text does not inspire me to shell out money for the mod... it makes me search for a torrent/other option. the exact opposite of your intent.
If you search around, others have said the same thing..

Someone else already figured out how to remove the text.. but isn't telling people. It's only a matter of time before someone else does explain how.

i never get this...why are developers obligated to create free apps? why shouldn't they get paid for their work? don't we ALL expect to get paid for our work? apps that are free...great. apps that cost $...buy them if you want them.

you want the black dock, and no added text? BUY.

 

[TheBacklash]

Send me the $40 to do so...
I dont have a single mac to install a single TWEAK on.

He can charge the money for the app, that's fine. But the FREE version of the app has the added text.

All I'm saying is the free version should NOT have the text added to every damn icon on the dock. Remove that and it's all good. He only added the text when he decided to sell the app.

Not buying a tweak to remove text that shouldn't be there.

 

[Sital]

I would LOVE to have the template Sital. I am using Pixelmator and haven't figured out how to round the corners yet. Thanks

New thread here.

 

[unsanity77]

Send me the $40 to do so...
I dont have a single mac to install a single TWEAK on.

He can charge the money for the app, that's fine. But the FREE version of the app has the added text.

All I'm saying is the free version should NOT have the text added to every damn icon on the dock. Remove that and it's all good. He only added the text when he decided to sell the app.

Not buying a tweak to remove text that shouldn't be there.

You are confused on the definition of "free". Free means that you don't have to pay money for it. Is the free version not free?

Also, again, some people can attest to the fact that I'm incredibly willing to work with my customers. I have given coupons for free licenses for those that work closely with me to help squish bugs. I have discounted a customer who had seven macs he wanted licenses for. I liked his polite approach when he contacted me via email, so I did what I could for him.

Also, the "Free Mode" text is not necessary for those who have paid for a license. The other people who have black docks and no "Free Mode" text are those who have paid for a license.

Good luck finding a torrent for the app

 

[TheBacklash]

Where did you notify the user that you will be placing text on every icon, and the only way to remove it is to pay you? Only after it's installed does the user learn of the text added to their icons.
THIS is what ticks people off.
Also it's why people switched to Nocturne after you inserted the text.. (and just uninstalled the rest of the UI) Even worked all the way up to the final release of 10.9, all the betas worked.. the Retail version broke Nocturne.

And like I said, someone already figured on another mac forum how to bypass the free mode text that you added. Only a matter of time until others do as well.

Finding a torrent will be hard, since dock mod isn't exactly in demand.. very small percentage of users even use it.

 

[unsanity77]

Where did you notify the user that you will be placing text on every icon, and the only way to remove it is to pay you?

http://spyresoft.com/faq/

 

[fisherking]

Where did you notify the user that you will be placing text on every icon, and the only way to remove it is to pay you? Only after it's installed does the user learn of the text added to their icons.
THIS is what ticks people off.
Also it's why people switched to Nocturne after you inserted the text.. (and just uninstalled the rest of the UI) Even worked all the way up to the final release of 10.9, all the betas worked.. the Retail version broke Nocturne.

And like I said, someone already figured on another mac forum how to bypass the free mode text that you added. Only a matter of time until others do as well.

Finding a torrent will be hard, since dock mod isn't exactly in demand.. very small percentage of users even use it.

lots of apps run in 'demo' mode, with periodic reminders to buy, or their run for a limited time. this developer lets you AT LEAST use the app for free.

so...grow up. PAY for the app. how simple is this? you want the 'free mode' text gone, then DO THE RIGHT THING and buy the app.

 

[daonesteven]

Where did you notify the user that you will be placing text on every icon, and the only way to remove it is to pay you? Only after it's installed does the user learn of the text added to their icons.
THIS is what ticks people off.
Also it's why people switched to Nocturne after you inserted the text.. (and just uninstalled the rest of the UI) Even worked all the way up to the final release of 10.9, all the betas worked.. the Retail version broke Nocturne.

And like I said, someone already figured on another mac forum how to bypass the free mode text that you added. Only a matter of time until others do as well.

Finding a torrent will be hard, since dock mod isn't exactly in demand.. very small percentage of users even use it.

So you became pissed when you found out that a FREE version had text with their icons and the only alternative is for you to actually pay someone for their work or wait to get your hands on a version that someone hacked. "But **** that, I deserve to have a FREE version to be exactly the way I had envisioned it to look, and that's without text on every damn icon!"

Just quit while you can bro.

 

[TheBacklash]

I actually just re-read the dockmod thread unsanity started last year...

"In the end, what this means is that I will be releasing a paid version of the app. I will continue to support the dockmod that is on this forum and release updates to it free of charge, but the new features I'm adding will be an entirely separate product for which I will charge a very modest fee. But, you will still be able to change your dock to black for free, forever."

THIS is all we want.
He can charge all he wants for the "separate" app. Where is the update to the free app he promised?

Oh incorporated into the paid app, and now adds text.
Which is not what he said...

So yeah, I look for other options. Many of us just went Nocturne.

 

[unsanity77]

I reread that forum thread myself. It was quite fun. I had high aspirations back then. But to be honest, it's much too hard to maintain separate versions, and I accomplish the modding of the dock in a much much different way than I did in that thread.

I had to make some decisions. Already for this app, I must spend time updating it for every MINOR OS update to insure compatibility. I do this because people have paid for it, and my ethics demand that I give people what they pay for. I am a college student, junior year of Electrical Engineering degree. This places a lot of demands on my time. My whole goal for DockMod was to pay for my books, and I have accomplished this with very little to spare. It was, and still is, a hobby project of mine. I made the decision to charge for it because, and this is complete honesty, if I left it completely free, I would have likely abandoned it shortly thereafter.

Some people might wonder why I don't then open-source it? Well, this is because to even write the app, you must understand exactly how the Dock accomplishes what it does, on a source-code level, and then you have to rewrite it. When Apple updates the Dock app, which they do pretty frequently, this means reverse-engineering the new binary and deciding how it affects DockMod, and then determining the ways that you can get compatibility again. Oftentimes, this means abandoning certain functions and patching new ones. The degree of skill and knowledge this takes is pretty high. So having an open-source app does no good if there's not somebody who can reverse-engineer the Dock.app binary and find the compatibility, and if there's someone who can do that, then they wouldn't even need DockMod to be open-source: they'd have all the tools they need to write their own DockMod.

Many people think this is "just a tweak", and yes, it does seem like it's a very simple app. I took great care to make it look that way. But it's incredibly complicated and takes a lot of time and skill to implement. And of course every update requires compatibility tests and code tweaks, not to mention customer support and email support, and researching/testing/implementing new features, etc. And consider that once a license is purchased, you get all these updates for free. Pay once, enjoy for life.

As an example, when DockMod is installed, it is responsible for drawing the dock. DockMod draws the dock entirely by itself. I had to reverse engineer the whole algorithm responsible for the drawing and rewrite it myself. Took several weeks, I have to tell you that, to go from floating-point x86_64 assembly instructions to error-free C code.

My wife did the math today, and so far I have been making less than minimum wage developing this app. Sixteen hour days for weeks on end went into the development of this app, but here's a secret: I enjoyed every minute of it, so it didn't feel like work. I'd love to continue providing it, and I will, because I'm proud of it.

I know that there's a desire for people to mod their Docks, and the way that I can provide that is by charging what I hope is a modest fee, enough of a fee so that I can continue to justify working on it, even with my hands full at school. I don't expect to get rich off of this app... it's only a tweak after all. I just expect that other people find this app useful enough to pay for it so that I can continue providing it to the community. That's how I started when I released the black-only version for Mountain Lion, as you can still get in the post the TheBacklash linked. In that same thread, you can see that even though I released complete instructions on how I accomplished the black dock, nobody has been able to find a way to continue that trend past when that terminal program was no longer supported. It's just that difficult to do. So essentially, I saw that there was a desire for this feature, so I stepped up and will continue supporting it.

Of course, some people aren't going to like the way I do things. I have accepted this, though it makes me sad. But I get a lot of emails from people who are satisfied with the app and I know that the number of people who support DockMod far far outweigh those that don't.

 

[TiBook550]

Well said! Please don't let the cheap (seriously, people? It's only $8!!) vocal minority distract you from those of us who appreciate the time and effort you've put into this tweak over the months.

Sincerely, a happy licensee.

 

[TheBacklash]

Well said! Please don't let the cheap (seriously, people? It's only $8!!) vocal minority distract you from those of us who appreciate the time and effort you've put into this tweak over the months.

Sincerely, a happy licensee.

$8x6 FYI. If it were 1 license... I'd not care. Nor if the promise was actually kept.

@unsanity I'm not home so your post TLDR.
I'll read later.

 

[unsanity77]

Again, I sincerely wish that people would redirect these kinds of issues to the support@spyresoft.com email, or use the form on my website. It is only by chance that I came across this post here, and I was quite saddened to see a few disappointed people. I am pretty easy to speak with, and I pride myself on great customer support. I do understand that $50 (total) for a "cosmetic tweak" in multiple Mac households is a bit steep. Again, I'd be more than happy to work with you via email until we can come to a resolution we're both happy with.

In my house alone, my wife and I both have a Mac laptop and a computer, and my daughter has an iMac. So I know that my licensing scheme doesn't really take that into account, and I'm happy to work with the people who reach out to me.

 

[82asmdf203]

Again, I sincerely wish that people would redirect these kinds of issues to the support@spyresoft.com email, or use the form on my website. It is only by chance that I came across this post here, and I was quite saddened to see a few disappointed people. I am pretty easy to speak with, and I pride myself on great customer support. I do understand that $50 (total) for a "cosmetic tweak" in multiple Mac households is a bit steep. Again, I'd be more than happy to work with you via email until we can come to a resolution we're both happy with.

In my house alone, my wife and I both have a Mac laptop and a computer, and my daughter has an iMac. So I know that my licensing scheme doesn't really take that into account, and I'm happy to work with the people who reach out to me.

***BUMP***

Well I hope you are willing to reach out to more folks as I have continued to support and encourage your application to everyone I possibly can. I think people are concerned it's only the Beta phase and not a real workaround to the real Dock problem which concerns not only the bottom app but the sides as well...

 

[unsanity77]

Thank you, 82asmdf203.

Just an update, the next version of DockMod includes support for modding the dock for the horizontal and vertical positions, and also allows you to change the indicator lights (just the color for now). It will also be removed from BETA status.

It is possible to change the image as well, but the biggest issue I have with that is that it seems that for the bottom dock, the images need to be made a specific way so that they don't overlap over the edge of the 3D dock. Also, it is possible to change the separator image as well, but I run into the same issue: the bottom dock separator needs to have a specific slant. If anyone has experience with swapping images for these two things in pre-ML days, please let me know.

 

[z06gal]

Thank you, 82asmdf203.

Just an update, the next version of DockMod includes support for modding the dock for the horizontal and vertical positions, and also allows you to change the indicator lights (just the color for now). It will also be removed from BETA status.

It is possible to change the image as well, but the biggest issue I have with that is that it seems that for the bottom dock, the images need to be made a specific way so that they don't overlap over the edge of the 3D dock. Also, it is possible to change the separator image as well, but I run into the same issue: the bottom dock separator needs to have a specific slant. If anyone has experience with swapping images for these two things in pre-ML days, please let me know.

Excellent! Thanks for your work on this!

 

[Sital]

Thank you, 82asmdf203.

Just an update, the next version of DockMod includes support for modding the dock for the horizontal and vertical positions, and also allows you to change the indicator lights (just the color for now). It will also be removed from BETA status.

It is possible to change the image as well, but the biggest issue I have with that is that it seems that for the bottom dock, the images need to be made a specific way so that they don't overlap over the edge of the 3D dock. Also, it is possible to change the separator image as well, but I run into the same issue: the bottom dock separator needs to have a specific slant. If anyone has experience with swapping images for these two things in pre-ML days, please let me know.

Thanks for the update. Can you give us an estimate on the release date for the next version?

 

[unsanity77]

I probably could... but I won't. Too many variables. It really should be soon, though the holidays are coming up and my family thinks I've been attached to my computer too long now. I've finished the backend stuff and am now redesigning the interface to accommodate the changes necessary to customize different dock orientations. Also, I have plans to implement easier theme sharing and so I want the new interface to work with that when it comes.

Some ideas I have for the theme sharing is something similar to an online marketplace, where users can share their themes with others, and browse other user themes, right from inside DockMod. I want the UI to be flexible enough to include that when it comes as well.