If you don’t like this setting, you can reverse it at any time. Use a keystroke to hide and minimize everythingĬommand+H is probably the easiest for most users to remember, turning the icons into something like the ones shown below:.

Option+Click on the desktop, or Option+Click to another application, to hide the current app.

Hit Command+H to hide the current application.

There are several easy ways to quickly hide an app to test this out, here are three: Testing that Hidden Apps Show as Transparent in Dock Regardless of which command you used, you can now hide an application to see the effect. This will apply going forward to every hidden application in Mac OS X that is would appear in the Dock.Īs a quick sidenote, you can combine those two commands into a single string for the Terminal as so:ĭefaults write showhidden -bool YES killall Dock

Again hit return to refresh the Dock for changes to take effectĪll hidden apps and their respective icons will show in the Dock but as the translucent version.

Next up you need to kill the Dock, which forces it to reload and have the change take effect:.

Hit return to execute the defaults command.

Launch Terminal (found in Launchpad, Spotlight, or the /Applications/Utilities folder) and enter the following command string exactly:ĭefaults write showhidden -bool YES.

To make Dock icons transparent when the associated app is hidden, you’ll need to use the command line: How to Enable Translucent Dock Icons for Hidden Mac OS X Apps

If you hide apps with any regularity you will probably want to turn this on yourself, it only takes a moment. This tutorial will show you how you can make hidden apps show in the Dock as translucent icons to indicate their hidden status.Įnabling translucent icons of hidden apps is a great feature for Mac users who hide apps to clear off their desktop, as it makes it very easy to identify what apps are hidden and which aren’t, just by looking at the icons to see if they are transparent or not.

Transparent icons for mac folders