Find the location of the Dock programmatically?

Question

Is there a way in code to find out if the Dock on a Mac is located on the bottom, left, or right side of the user's monitor?

I am working on an app that will dock itself to the bottom or the side of the screen, but only if the current Mac dock isn't there already. — Michael Wildermuth, Oct 10 '11 at 20:45

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 10 '11 at 19:29

8

NSScreen has visibleFrame method, wich returns a rect that doesn't include the area currently occupied by the dock and menu bar. You can compare this rect with the full screen rect(- (NSRect) [NSScreen* frame]) and determine the dock location.

answered Oct 10 '11 at 19:29

VenoMKO

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Cool that is what I was originally thinking. I was hoping there was some method that I didn't know of that would return it for me. Thanks again. – Michael Wildermuth Oct 10 '11 at 20:52

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 20 '12 at 21:21

6

This is probably simpler…

defaults read com.apple.dock "orientation"

bottom

You can also find out.. autohide (i.e. 1), large size (i.e. "65.48148") and magnification (i.e. 1), etc.

answered Jan 20 '12 at 21:21

Alex Gray

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How do I call "defaults read com.apple.dock orientation" from a cocoa app? – Michael Wildermuth Feb 28 '12 at 18:50
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`NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]; NSString *dockParameterYouWant = [[defaults persistentDomainForName:@"com.apple.dock"] valueForKey:@"thatParameterYouWant"];` – Alex Gray Feb 28 '12 at 19:59
Thanks, this helps with a different issue of mine – Michael Wildermuth Feb 28 '12 at 20:58
Sorry about that, I didn't mean to click it. I'm still using the other answer currently. – Michael Wildermuth Mar 06 '12 at 18:20
does this also work for sandboxed apps? Also any idea on how to get the dock's size? Or a notification when the user hovered it (or an icon in it)? – cocoa coder Nov 03 '12 at 14:08
i have no idea if you can access defaults in the sandbox... haven't been able to find a definitive answer anywhere. if you do, let me know. – Alex Gray Nov 03 '12 at 15:03
Note that when the dock's position hasn't been set yet, there could be no entry for "orientation". So remember to fall back to a default "bottom" value – AlexPera Dec 27 '22 at 08:48

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 05 '13 at 19:01

private discovered API used by prefs panel

typedef enum {
  kCoreDockOrientationTop = 1,
  kCoreDockOrientationBottom = 2,
  kCoreDockOrientationLeft = 3,
  kCoreDockOrientationRight = 4
} CoreDockOrientation;

extern void CoreDockGetOrientationAndPinning(CoreDockOrientation *outOrientation, CoreDockPinning *outPinning);
// If you only want to set one, use 0 for the other.
extern void CoreDockSetOrientationAndPinning(CoreDockOrientation orientation, CoreDockPinning pinning);

Find the location of the Dock programmatically?

3 Answers3