Leopard Dock: Can't Right Click or Remove Items

[pyr0sphere]

I don't know what happened but for some reason, I can no longer right click or remove any items from my Dock

I have Onyx installed which has an option to lock the dock, however that is off. I am certain that my dock isn't locked because I am able to move items around the dock, and also add new items

I don't know when this started but it may have been because I was changing the dock's appearance by replacing some of the pictures in the system files (frontline.png, separator.png etc.)

I've restarted my Macbook a couple of times and have also done killall Dock in the terminal but everytime, I still have these two problems

Also, when booting up my Macbook now, the dock takes much longer to load. Before, it would usually be one of the quicker things to bootup but now it is always the last (before Quicksilver was usually the last program to load for me)

I also used a Terminal command to add a "Recent Applications" stack by following instructions posted here:
http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/terminal-commands-for-hidden-settings-in-leopard.html

I've since removed this Stack but the problem still occurs. Don't know whether or not this had an impact or not

 

[ddonofrio]

same thing

I am having the same problem. Leopard is very cool, but this is an issue. Thoughts?

 

[gvg45]

I dont have any problems right clicking icons in my dock with Leopard.

If you have not already, you may want to make sure your mouse options have not somehow reset and changed your mouse back to default as a single click mouse.

You do know that you can just drag the icon you dont want in the dock out on the desktop and it will disappear?

 

[teacamper]

Similar problem

I have a similar problem; my dock is all kinds of screwed up.

I cannot add or remove icons from the dock. I also have invisible dock icons -- meaning that there are holes in my dock where an application should be, and when I click on the hole, that application will launch. The icon is simply invisible for Finder, Dashboard, and MS Word.

I've relaunched the dock in every way I can think to do so. I also created a new user only to find that the new user's dock is just as screwy.

Any help would be hot.

 

[ltldrummerboy]

Try opening Terminal and typing "killall Dock". No quotes.

 

[teacamper]

Threw in the ol OS X disk and reinstalled the OS. It fixed the problem and kept my files, apps, and prefs. I'm now content, the whole reinstall thing took 2.5 hours.

Good luck to the others with the problem.

 

[kolax]

This is the Terminal command to lock and unlock the Dock, just incase Oynx has screwed something.


To LOCK the Dock use:

defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true
killall Dock

To UNLOCK use:

defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool false
killall Dock

Try opening Terminal and typing "killall Dock". No quotes.

You blind?

 

[ltldrummerboy]

I've restarted my Macbook a couple of times and have also done killall Dock in the terminal but everytime, I still have these two problems

You blind?

Yikes, it appears that I am.

What about deleting the com.apple.dock.plist file that's found in Macintosh HD/Users/Username/Library/Preferences? Back it up before you delete it in case it doesn't work.

 

[dopefish]

I experienced this issue as well on my iMac with Snow Leopard and found that there can be various causes. Many outlined in some manner already throughout this thread as well as others.

-Verify that you have administrative privileges on the system.

-Verify that parental controls are not enabled on your account or that those prohibiting 'dock changes' have been disabled.

After these two checks have been performed, if you cannot drag the icon off of the dock or send it to the trash bin, click and hold the icon you wish to remove. You should get a context window with options specific to the application/item, including 'remove from dock'.

This solved it for me.

If you have continuing issues, it may be related to a fault in the configs and performing the terminal functions to clear the dock/user preferences and kill the process may be necessary.