Apple Mac Style Dock on a Windows Computer – How To
RK Launcher is another dock that hasn’t seen an update in years, but works well enough to make it onto the list. It’s very similar to many of these docks: you can position it anywhere on the screen; it uses little notification arrows when a docked program is running; you can customize icons and programs. It struggles a bit with responsiveness, but not as much as MobyDock. It does use the Mac split-face icon by default, so if you’re trying to skin Windows XP to look like OS X, this dock might appeal to you.
Circle Dock (Credit: Eric Wong)
Yz Dock–”wise” dock, I’m assuming–feels like the fastest “traditional” dock of the group. Yet another dock that hasn’t seen an update in nearly half a decade, it loads stripped down and ready for you to drag-and-drop your icons onto its translucent pane. It’s got the basics: adjustable placement and customizable icons. You can also choose from several in-use notifiers and dock skins. It froze in the magnified position several times, but it didn’t actually crash and cease functioning. If you want a dock that’s lightweight and fast, this might be what you’re looking for.
The two nonlinear docks that I tested were Circle Dock and Slider Dock. Circle Dock might bother people who are used to the traditional, linear-dock style, and you might miss the animation of icons zooming. If you don’t care about either of those, Circle Dock will run elliptical shapes around other docks. It’s fast, customizable, and can be dragged to wherever you need it on your monitor. The center of the dock is a button that can be configured to open the Start menu, or hide the dock. You can toggle the dock’s visibility with the F1 key or your center mouse button. When you bring it up again, it will appear wherever your mouse is–saving you the extra wrist movement of getting to the dock.
Users can configure the dock behavior so that it’s locked to a position, and you can set the number of icons per circle. Any spillover will create an ever-larger second circle of your files, folders, and programs. If you’re looking for something fresh, Circle Dock is an excellent choice. Slider Dock isn’t bad, either, but it’s a bit weird.
Slider Dock (Credit: Dimitri Roozendaal)
It places your icons on an ellipse, with the nearest icons the largest. It’s even more atypical than Circle Dock, though. When you click on an icon, it orbits the icon around the ellipse until it’s located in the foreground position. From there, you have to click on it again to launch it. You can use your mouse or arrow keys to rotate the icons, but it’s still fairly strange behavior for a dock, because it makes you work more to get your programs running.
Unlike Circle Dock, there’s only one ring of icons. If it gets too cluttered, you can adjust it with sliders in the control panel. It’s smooth and fast, though, so if you can get beyond the unusual behavior it could make for an excellent dock.
If you have a favorite dock that I didn’t mention here, let me know in the comments below.
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Tags: Circle Dock, freeware, MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, RocketDock, Slider Dock, XWindows Dock, Yz Dock
