Many of you already use the Dock Separators. There are three variants available. Grey, white and black. You can choose between vertical and horizontal dividers to add to the Dock.

For anyone who just likes to download the Separators:

• Blueglow
  
• Terminal
  
• Crossroad
  
• Complete Package

Since Leopard was released those Separators don’t fit into the GUI changes anymore. Today i am going to show you how to build your own Dock Dividers.

1. Create Icons

At first you have to create your custom Icons. You can use GIMP (1, 2) for this (I love this piece of software!) or you can use a more Pixel oriented painting program like Pixen

My icons were created like this (those of you which don’t like to build their own can skip this part):

• First i took a screenshot from the dot below a running program. (⇧+⌘+4)
• I opened the picture with GIMP and used the “color picker” to pick up the blue color. Double-click the color in the color palette. Choose the right top blue color. (Now you should have this “Macintosh blue color”)
• Create a new picture with measurements “128×128″ (with transparent background)
• Create a rectangle selection in the middle, width about 8 pixel. Use the “Gradient tool” to fill the selection. Please make sure to use “Bi-linear”, the cursor needs to be in the middle.
• Select the “pencil tool” with a sice of 1 to round the edges. (Select each color graduation (press control do have a temporary color picker…)) Do your best in this step. No rules…just paint. ;-)
• Copy the edge, paste, flip it by 180º degress and move it downwards.
• Save as .PNG
• Done!

Sure, you don’t have to create your own icons first. Search through these icon sites and look for something useful: (German readers: keep in mind that this is a enhanced list since i posted the german version of this tutorial)

• InterfaceLIFT
• Iconbulk
• Pixelgirl Presents

2. Assign your icons to a folder

Now create a new folder and assign your .PNG to this folder. I used Quicksilver because it can bulk assign the icons (⌘+⎋, “Set Icon”, move to icon folder, ↩)
I’m sure there is some similar action for ⌘+V but it’s untested…
The good thing using Quicksilver for this is…well see point 3 for this…

Rename folder

The folder from the previous step should now be renamed to “something.app” (Sure you can use anything before the “.app” i’ll explain later…)

Use “empty spaces” to create dividers without showing a name. (Dock.app ignores the extension .app) The result is that the Dock doesn’t show a name…
Create new Folder by duplicating this folder and rename it to something like ” .app” (double empty space before .app extension).

Another idea would be to rename your folder to something like “audio apps are on the right side from this”. Audio Apps >>>

In the Dock:

Let your creativity flow like these two following examples will show.

Foldername: Audio Apps

Foldername: ” “

Download

For everyone who just likes to download the “Dock Separators: Blueglow” click here!
The Separators should work on every version of Mac OS X!

Thanks for reading.
Zettt :zettt: