MacOS – Can the Dock bar reserve it’s horizontal space even if window is maximized

dockfullscreenmacoswindow-manager

I don't want to have the dock bar auto-hiding/showing, so I have it always enabled.
When I maximize a window, two things happen:

either it goes fullscreen so it hides the dock
or I make it bigger (with any tool like snaptool etc) but it goes behind the dock , so I can't access some parts of windows (like in Chrome pages)

is it possible (is there any app) that makes the dock behave more like a windows taskbar?

Best Answer

If you try to make a window bigger than the size left by the Dock, by dragging the bottom of a window yourself, you will notice that you can't do it. This is because the Dock already behaves like a Windows Taskbar: you can move windows behind it but not resize windows beyond it.

The problem lies with the tool that you are using to resize the window-it is extending the window more than it should do. Try using a different tool to do the resizing or resize the windows yourself.

Related Solutions

App behavior with spaces and minimized window

I am not sure that this is possible, however you could use ctrl+click on the dock icon or long click anbd use the sub menu system to show windows / switch to windows.

Inbox by Gmail – making a small application

You can try Fluid -- it can create one off, WebKit "applications" that look a bit like native applications though are actually single web pages running in a de-decorated WebKit browser window. I've used it successfully in the past for things like Fogbugz.

Fluid may not work though since Inbox requires Chrome and I'm not sure Fluid will identify the browser in a way that'll let Inbox work. It may complain it's not running in Chrome.

If that's the case, here is a shell script that will create a standalone Chrome "app" for you similar to how Fluid works, but with the underlying engine for the app being Chrome. I haven't it used it, but the idea and implementation look sound. You should fork that gist if you're going to use -- gists can disappear. The script, recreated here, for reference is:

#!/bin/sh

echo "What should the Application be called (no spaces allowed e.g. GCal)?"
read inputline
name="$inputline"

echo "What is the url (e.g. https://www.google.com/calendar/render)?"
read inputline
url="$inputline"

echo "What is the full path to the icon (e.g. /Users/username/Desktop/icon.png)?"
read inputline
icon="$inputline"

chromePath="/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
appRoot="/Applications"

# various paths used when creating the app
resourcePath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Resources"
execPath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/MacOS" 
profilePath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Profile"
plistPath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Info.plist"

# make the directories
mkdir -p  "$resourcePath" "$execPath" "$profilePath"

# convert the icon and copy into Resources
if [ -f "$icon" ] ; then
    sips -s format tiff "$icon" --out "$resourcePath/icon.tiff" --resampleHeightWidth 128 128 >& /dev/null
    tiff2icns -noLarge "$resourcePath/icon.tiff" >& /dev/null
fi

# create the executable
cat >"$execPath/$name" <<EOF
#!/bin/sh
exec "$chromePath"  --app="$url" --user-data-dir="$profilePath" "\$@"
EOF
chmod +x "$execPath/$name"

# create the Info.plist 
cat > "$plistPath" <<EOF
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" â€œhttp://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtdâ€>
<plist version=â€1.0â€³>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
<string>$name</string>
<key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
<string>icon</string>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF

Best Answer

Related Solutions

App behavior with spaces and minimized window

Inbox by Gmail – making a small application

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