MacOS – Hide Parallels’s VM icon from the dock

dockmacosparallels-desktop

Parallels includes a mode called Coherence, where software from the guest OS is launched as if it were a native macOS app. This means their windows are rendered separately, each occupying an icon in the dock. Apart from those, Coherence always displays a dock icon for the VM itself. My use-case is that I'm running the VM for only one program, which I display in Coherence 1 so not to have it rendered with a title bar on top 2. I'd now like to remove the VM icon, as I can do without its functions (shutdown guest OS, open cmd, etc).

Here are the things I've tried:

  1. I've tried the info.plist method best described here, as applied to the info.plist of the VM icon (⌘+click its icon to reach its location). Didn't work.
  2. I've used Dock Dodger. Didn't work. Presumably because it seems to do exactly the same as the above's method.
  3. I've used Ghost Tile. Worked. And here's the problem – the reliance on it. The app is essentially free, but needing it in the first place goes against maintaining a minimal setup, and most importantly it's a fragile solution as the app is prone to disappearance down the years (as it happened with Dock Dodger, which is now distributed via an assortment of non-official hosts).

I've also asked in the Parallels forum. Their response is understandable in that the feature would seemingly break functionality for common users. However, it actually shouldn't affect much at all in the right hands, as you can still control the hidden VM from the terminal, or the main Parallels icon.

I'd like to see a solution that is more future-proof and universal (the info.plist method seems not to work for a lot of apps). After all, Ghost Tile is doing something right, and as far as i can tell, it hasn't been documented openly in the many threads active about hiding dock icons.

Best Answer

It's pretty ridiculous that this slipped both me and Parallels's support to the point that I went through all the effort above, but there it is - if you go to Parallels's preferences, this setting is under General > Virtual Machine icon. Select none.

I believe my question has implications extraneous to this particular case, but since the submission is under the Parallels's title and confers much specificity to the case, I'll close it as it is.

Related Question