Making an application invisible to the dock

Not sure if this is where to post this but i am trying to make an application that is ivisiblt to the dock

Is that an AS thing or would that have to bee done in something else

or is it even possible

TIA for any help

Yes, it’s possible to do, as long as your script is saved as an application bundle. Normal script applications don’t have this ability.

Once you’ve saved your script as an application bundle, Ctrl-click it in the Finder and choose ‘Show Package Contents’ to open the bundle. Open the Contents folder and you should see a info.plist file ( /path/to/your.app/Contents/info.plist )

Open this info.plist file in any text editor and add the key:

	<key>LSUIElement</key>
	<true/>

anywhere in the main section. Make sure you maintain the right file ordering - the .plist file is a set of keys followed by the setting for that key. The safest place to add it is immediately before the last line.

Save the .plist.

Make sure you have some mechanism for quitting the script!
Next time you launch the script it will not appear in the dock, and it won’t appear in the Force Quit dialog, either.

Thanks again camelot as always you come through for us

The application would still show up in the process viewer/activity monitor right?

could you switch to that ap by command tabing to it?

could this also be done to other applications (non applescript)
not that i would want to put say i wanted to do that with Microsoft Word ?

Yes, the process will still appear in Process Viewer/Activity Monitor. It’s only hidden from the Dock and the Force Quit dialog.

Command-tab is linked to, and only shows running apps that would normally be shown in the dock, so the app will not appear in the Cmd-Tab window.

As for other apps, yes. The flag itself tells Launch Services how the app behaves. Beware, though, that you’re marking the app as a faceless background app. Strange things may happen if the app tries to interact with the user (such as display a window or a dialog box). If you want your script to interact with the user you’ll need to do it via some other application (e.g. tell application “Finder” to display dialog… )

Hi Folks!

I had the same task here, and used this:

Drop Script Backgrounder

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14932