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As you all know, Dock icons can be removed by simply clicking them and dragging them out of the Dock. As soon as the “poof” animation appears, you can release the mouse button to remove the icon.

enter image description here

It seems like in Mountain Lion there is a bit of a delay plus a minimum distance required between when you start dragging and when the “poof” animation appears, i.e. when you can release the mouse button to remove the icon. If you release the mouse button before the “poof” animation appears, the icon won’t be deleted from the Dock. If you don’t drag the icon far enough away from the Dock, the “poof” animation won’t appear at all, and again the icon won’t be deleted from the Dock when you release the mouse button.

Is there a hidden setting (defaults write-style) or some other way to disable this delay and/or minimum distance setting?

Mathias Bynens
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    Honest question: how often do you drag things away from your Dock? Will this really impact your daily computer usage? – jtbandes Jul 27 '12 at 05:24
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    @jtbandes It mostly impacts how long it takes me to set up my Mac after a clean OS X install. So no, it doesn’t really impact my daily computer usage — but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to revert to the old behavior. – Mathias Bynens Jul 27 '12 at 13:16
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    I didn't find anything with gdb, and strings cannot be used with Dock's executable. Even if there was a preference for it, it's unlikely to be discovered unless there's some other ways to search for hidden preferences that have been overlooked. – Lri Jul 30 '12 at 12:55
  • @Lri If there’s still no answer in six days, would you mind posting your comment as an answer? – Mathias Bynens Jul 30 '12 at 13:42
  • @MathiasBynens I don't usually post non-answers like that, but sure. – Lri Jul 30 '12 at 14:23
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    I was able to get Dock strings by using strings Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock, but nothing useful there. Also, here's a very comprehensive list of defaults commands: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.osx but I couldn't find anything related to your question there. – Ricardo Sanchez-Saez Jul 30 '12 at 18:24
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    @rsanchezsaez Hah, that’s my collection you just linked to :) – Mathias Bynens Jul 31 '12 at 06:13
  • Oops, didn't realize your name on the GitHub account! Nice collection you got there. ;-) – Ricardo Sanchez-Saez Jul 31 '12 at 10:25
  • @Lri Now would be a good time to post that answer. – Mathias Bynens Aug 03 '12 at 08:21
  • @MathiasBynens I think you should update your collection for ML anyway. The iTunes notification thingy doesn't seem to work anymore. – nohillside Aug 03 '12 at 15:36
  • Shot in the dark here, hoping to find a way to do just the opposite of this. Have a user who frequently removes items from the dock accidentally (10.7) and requires assistance in re-adding them. Would love to find the hidden preference that controls this and modify it to be a bit more like ML's delay/distance preference. – Mr Rabbit Sep 19 '13 at 16:41

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Even if there was a hidden preference for it, at least I wasn't able to find one. If someone knows other ways to search for hidden preferences, post a reply to How to explore more defaults write tweaks on OS X?.

strings cannot be used with the binaries of a few applications like Dock, Finder, Safari, or Transmit. According to an answer to Why does the Dock executable not yield any useful strings, unlike other OS X apps?, they might be encrypted by Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext.

I didn't find anything with gdb or by running strings on framework binaries either. Others might still give both of those a shot though.

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Lri
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