catalinadockmacos
I have multiple Google Chrome windows open at a tune. How can I see the number of open windows in the Dock?
I'd like to add something like a second indicator under the app's Dock icon.
Also, I'd like to be able to choose the window when I click the icon and not use a long click to be able to chose the window to open.
The Dock settings doesn't provide any way to configure this.
You can kludge something together with some AppleScript and some clever icon image pasting. Here's how you'd do it for iTerm/iTerm2.
Open the AppleScript Editor and paste in the following AppleScript:
set myapp to "iTerm"
on appIsRunning(appName)
tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
if appIsRunning(myapp) then
# What you do here will depend on the program. This works for
# iTerm but you'll need to look up the actions for other programs
# since this bit is iTerm-specific.
tell application "iTerm"
set myterm to (make new terminal)
tell myterm
launch session "Default"
end tell
end tell
else
tell application myapp
activate
end tell
end if
You can use the Run button in the editor to test that it works. If you want a different profile opened change "Default" on line 12 to the name of the profile you want opened.
Now save this AppleScript. In the Save dialog under "File Format" at the bottom select "Application" from the list.
I saved mine as "New iTerm.app" to my Desktop.
Now every time I click on "New iTerm.app" on my Desktop I get a new iTerm window. I can drag "New iTerm.app" to my Dock and it'll be a Dock icon I can click on any time I want to get a new iTerm window open. But the icon is the generic AppleScript icon.
Let's change it to the iTerm icon. Select "New iTerm.app" on the Desktop and click Cmd-I to bring up the properties screen for the application.
Now navigate to /Applications in a Finder window, find iTerm in the list of installed applications, select it and click Cmd-I to open the properties screen for the iTerm application.
Click the icon in the iTerm info window so it gets a soft blue shadow around it. Press Cmd-C to copy the icon to the clipboard.
Now click the icon in the "New iTerm.app" info window and press Cmd-V to paste the iTerm icon on to the "New iTerm.app" application.
It should now have an iTerm icon.
You can move the "New iTerm.app" to your /Applications folder if you like. Drag it from the folder you decide to keep it in, back to your dock, and you can now click on it in the Dock to open up a new iTerm window with every click.
If you wanted to be able to distinguish it from the running iTerm.app Dock icon you could consider pasting the icon in to an image editor like Pixelmator and adding a big red + to it so it's clearly identified as the icon to press for a new iTerm window instead of the icon to press to see the exiting, open iTerm application.
Here are some more scripts for some other applications to get you started customizing things:
set myapp to "Google Chrome"
on appIsRunning(appName)
tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
if appIsRunning(myapp) then
tell application "Google Chrome"
make new window
end tell
else
tell application myapp
activate
end tell
end if
set myapp to "Google Chrome"
on appIsRunning(appName)
tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
if appIsRunning(myapp) then
tell application "Google Chrome"
make new tab at end of tabs of window 1
end tell
else
tell application myapp
activate
end tell
end if
Unfortunately ST2 doesn't seem to have an AppleScript accessible extensions. You can always take a look at the OS X command line tool that ST2 ships with. You can call that from a simple script in the Dock to open a new window in ST2. So:
set myapp to "Sublime Text 2"
on appIsRunning(appName)
tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
if appIsRunning(myapp) then
# Assumes you've installed the subl command line tool for ST2
# in to /usr/local/bin. Adjust accordingly.
do shell script "/usr/local/bin/subl --new-window"
else
tell application myapp
activate
end tell
end if
I've confirmed this behavior as well on 10.10.4 on a MacBook Air. Drove me nuts until I came across this post confirming others are experiencing the same behavior.
Fortunately there is a workaround.
If Activity Monitor has been minimized to the Dock and you need to un-minimize it, click its Dock icon to bring the app to the foreground. Then, to actually reveal the Activity Monitor window, press Command-1. Command-1 is a keyboard shortcut listed in AM's "Window" menu purposed to give focus to the "Activity Monitor" window.
Alternatively, instead of minimizing AM to the Dock, you could hide it with Command-h. Unhiding by clicking AM's icon in the Dock doesn't appear to be an issue.
Best Answer
Apple doesn’t inject code into a running app to provide this count (basically it’s up to the app to manage badges, not the OS). One solution would be to choose apps that have code added to display their window count as a badge (like they do in the window menu and other parts of the app). This is trivial to program as a sample app, but making changes to a large program like Chrome is typically far from trivial. If this feature is important, I think the browser team could make the effort to do it.
Like the mail app counts messages unread and read, it can display arbitrary information in a badge.
Have you seen if this is a feature hidden or made a request to the chrome development team?
Although since chrome was created to remove chrome like that, they might see this as more clutter. Hard to guess without engaging them, perhaps.