"puff of virtual smoke"

Hello all !

I need a help.

Before my girlfriend made a mess,

A application i’d like to remove, i drag it out of the Dock.

Release the mouse button, and the item will vanish in a puff of virtual smoke.

Now it´s impossible release the mouse button, and the item will vanish in a puff of virtual smoke.

Only click with left button and close the apllication.

trying to drag it out of the Dock, the application return to the dock.

How can i turn on the effect "puff of virtual smoke" again?

Thank´s

If I understand you correctly, you are observing an icon returning to the dock when you try to remove it from the dock. If this is the case, the most obvious and common cause is that the application is still in fact running. Is there a blue dot under the application you are trying to remove?

also dragging it off the dock does not remove the application, only it's representation on the dock. If it's running, btw, it will do exactly what you're talking about.

Thank´s for your answer,

I start the computer and have a lot of icon in the dock.

I want to to reduce the number of applications from the Dock, so i drag it out of the Dock.

Release the mouse button, and wait to the item will vanish in a puff of virtual smoke.

It´s not happen.

The effect "puff of virtual smoke" is not working anymore.

Thank´s

that's because your running the application. Quit it. It should disappear off the dock. Then go remove them from your login items.

Right click the Dock Icon alias / shortcut and quit / close the application first.

Right click = Two fingers on the trackpad click or two finger tap depending on how you have the option set up in System preferences. Control click also = right click.

open terminal,

type in:

you need the capital letter on Dock
then as it reloads try again!!

I believe you'd need
killall Dock


but if the apps running, that'll put it in the exact same spot

Thank´s, solveld!

Zigdog, thank !

i follow your instruction and everything is fine now.

Thank´s for everybody that try to help me.

Dysfunction said:

I believe you'd need
killall Dock


but if the apps running, that'll put it in the exact same spot

Click to expand...

You could use kill if you wanted but you'd have to get the PID first using something like "ps ux | grep Dock" or looking in the PID column for Dock in Activity Monitor. That's unnecessary for this though and just adds another step.

To others (I know you don't need this Dysfunction), see here if you're interested in ps. The command they use includes using awk which adds complexity for people new to *nix.

Yea, but it's so much more elegant than something like...

for i in $(ps -ef | grep Dock | awk 'NR==1{print $2}'); do kill $i; done

You win. You've out "*nix'd" me.

yea, but all I do is read/write, or otherwise use scripts all day