How to change the dock to 2D

Mac OS X doesn't offer much scope for customising the Dock beyond changing its size, position and what happens when you move a mouse over an icon, but there is a hack to change the 3D Dock into 2D - the same style that's used if you reposition it to appear on the left or right of the Desktop.

Open a Terminal window and type:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean TRUE

Press Return, then type:

killall Dock

The Dock will close and re-open with a flat, translucent style that lacks the usual reflection. You can revert back to the original style typing:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean FALSE