📖Plank Advanced Customization

Make it look & feel as you wish

If you are not satisfied with the appearance of your Dock, you can try advanced customization of its look & feel.

Plank Customization Example

With advanced customization, you can change:

• The roundness of the corners

• The thickness of lines

• The color and translucency

• The padding on the Dock edges

• The size of item indicators

• The size of the icon-shadow

• The time for click animations

• and many more aspects

For example, you can change the color in the bottom (light) and at the top (dark, or vice versa), and the roundness of the top corners, so that your Dock would look as if imitating a shelf.

Opening and editing dock.theme files requires administrator rights.

See how you can open files as administrator.

To create and apply your personal customization, you need administrative privileges and some knowledge of editing configuration files:

1. Create a dock.theme file in the following directory (open Files as admin):

/usr/share/plank/themes/<your-theme-name>/dock.theme

The catalogue /usr/share/plank/themes contains already existing themes, so you can copy the content of any existing theme files, save under a new name and edit as you wish.

Plank dock.theme content example

#This file auto-generated by Plank. #2018-08-11T01:15:57+0000

[PlankTheme]

#The roundness of the top corners.

TopRoundness=50

#The roundness of the bottom corners.

BottomRoundness=0

#The thickness (in pixels) of lines drawn.

LineWidth=0

#The color (RGBA) of the outer stroke.

OuterStrokeColor=22;;22;;22;;255

#The starting color (RGBA) of the fill gradient.

FillStartColor=50;;50;;50;;10

#The ending color (RGBA) of the fill gradient.

FillEndColor=100;;100;;100;;250

#The color (RGBA) of the inner stroke.

InnerStrokeColor=45;;45;;45;;255

[PlankDockTheme]

#The padding on the left/right dock edges, in tenths of a percent of IconSize.

HorizPadding=3

#The padding on the top dock edge, in tenths of a percent of IconSize.

TopPadding=-5

#The padding on the bottom dock edge, in tenths of a percent of IconSize.

BottomPadding=1.7

#The padding between items on the dock, in tenths of a percent of IconSize.

ItemPadding=3

#The size of item indicators, in tenths of a percent of IconSize.

IndicatorSize=7

#The size of the icon-shadow behind every item, in tenths of a percent of IconSize.

IconShadowSize=1.5

#The height (in percent of IconSize) to bounce an icon when the application sets urgent.

UrgentBounceHeight=1.6666666666666667

#The height (in percent of IconSize) to bounce an icon when launching an application.

LaunchBounceHeight=0.625

#The opacity value (0 to 1) to fade the dock to when hiding it. F

adeOpacity=1

#The amount of time (in ms) for click animations.

ClickTime=300

#The amount of time (in ms) to bounce an urgent icon.

UrgentBounceTime=600

#The amount of time (in ms) to bounce an icon when launching an application.

LaunchBounceTime=600

#The amount of time (in ms) for active window indicator animations.

ActiveTime=200

#The amount of time (in ms) to slide icons into/out of the dock.

SlideTime=200

#The time (in ms) to fade the dock in/out on a hide (if FadeOpacity is < 1).

FadeTime=250

#The time (in ms) to slide the dock in/out on a hide (if FadeOpacity is 1).

HideTime=250

#The size of the urgent glow (shown when dock is hidden), in tenths of a percent of IconSize.

GlowSize=30

#The total time (in ms) to show the hidden-dock urgent glow.

GlowTime=10000

#The time (in ms) of each pulse of the hidden-dock urgent glow.

GlowPulseTime=1000

#The hue-shift (-180 to 180) of the urgent indicator color.

UrgentHueShift=150

#The time (in ms) to move an item to its new position or its addition/removal to/from the dock.

ItemMoveTime=150

#Whether background and icons will unhide/hide with different speeds. The top-border of both will leave/hit the screen-edge at the same time.

CascadeHide=true

2. Open the Dock preferences, and select your new theme.

3. Open your dock.theme file as admin in Code, and start editing.

4. Change the settings by changing their values.

5. View Dock changes in real time right when changing the values.

6. When satisfied with the settings, save changes and close your dock.theme file.

You can create as many themes as you wish. Feel free to experiment.

Here, you can find some ready made Plank themes.

Here, you can find the videoguide on how to add Zoom Effect in Plank.