I downloaded a great program call Blotter 1.2 (Mac App Store $9.99) that puts your calendar on your desktop. I really like this app. I have it set to start up automatically when I log in. I don’t really care to see it on my dock. I would prefer that it hide it self when it runs but unfortunately this is something that is forbidden for apps that you buy from the App Store.
Fortunately the fix for this is really easy if you don’t mind a little Terminal working. I prefer vi for as my editor but you can use any text of plist (XML) editor you choose. Locate the Info.plist file in the Contents folder inside the app itself. Edit this file. It is usually write protected so use sudo to take care of that.
$ cd /Applications/Blotter.app/Contents/ $ sudo vi Info.plist
Add two lines inside the <dict> before the </dict> tag:
<key>NSUIElement</key> <string>1</string>
Save and close the file. The next time Blotter starts up, the dock icon will disappear once the app has finished launching.
If Terminal is not your thing then you can accomplish the same thing using the menus and a mouse. In the Finder go to the Go menu and choose Applications. Find Blotter or the app you want to hide in that folder. Right click (control click) on the application and choose “Show Package Contents”. You will see a new window that contains the contents of the app. Locate the “Contents” folder. Locate the Info.plist file. Right click on that file and choose “Get Info”. At the bottom of this window you will see Sharing & Permissions. You may need to click the padlock to allow you to make changes. Set “everyone” to allow Read & Write. Note what the previous setting was so you can set it back. Right click on the Info.plist file and choose Open With. This should give you a list of program that can edit .plist files. Choose one that lets you edit the text without too much mess. Bare Bones Software’s TextWrangler does an excellent job if you do not already own BBEdit. Add the same two lines of code before the line and save. Don’t forget to revert the permissions back to what they were before.