MacOS – Remove app names in OS X Yosemite Dock

This can be done, but you cannot hide just the dock per app. It will hide both the Dock and the Menu bar per app.

You just have to make a quick, simple edit to the plist file for the application. Check out this article from Mac OS X Hints:

To hack an app so that when it's active, the menubar and dock are hidden, you need to find its info.plist file. Control-click on the program in question, choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu, and then navigate into the Contents folder.

Once there, add the following to the file:

<key>LSUIPresentationMode</key>
<integer>4</integer>

Be sure that it goes in alphabetical order, otherwise it won't work (i.e. LSUIPresentationMode goes after LSMinimumSystemVersion but before NSAppleScriptEnabled). Save the file and enjoy.

You can change the value (in the example, it is 4) to 0 - 4. Apple's documentation has more details:

Value: 0

Normal mode. In this mode, all standard system UI elements are visible. This is the default value.

Value: 1

Content suppressed mode. In this mode, system UI elements in the content area of the screen are hidden. UI elements may show themselves automatically in response to mouse movements or other user activity. For example, the Dock may show itself when the mouse moves into the Dock’s auto-show region.

Value: 2

Content hidden mode. In this mode, system UI elements in the content area of the screen are hidden and do not automatically show themselves in response to mouse movements or user activity.

Value: 3

All hidden mode. In this mode, all UI elements are hidden, including the menu bar. Elements do not automatically show themselves in response to mouse movements or user activity.

Value: 4

All suppressed mode. In this mode, all UI elements are hidden, including the menu bar. UI elements may show themselves automatically in response to mouse movements or other user activity. This option is available only in Mac OS X 10.3 and later.

You're going to need the Developer Tools installed to do this, so that you can open up .plist files in the Property Editor.

You can edit the com.apple.dock.plist file that is stored in /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences to get rid of all names of persistent applications (e.g. icons that stay in the dock even when you've quit out of them). In-depth instructions are here, on the apple developer website.

Note that I tried the "without dev tools" instructions at the above link and the .plist file was full of non-human-readable encoded data, so you may have a harder time if you don't have the Property Editor or Xcode applications installed.