Icons for Facetime and the App Store keep re-appearing in my dock after a restart. How can I get rid of them?

I’m running Mac OS X 10.6.8. I like my dock to contain only running apps, so I’ve removed all other icons from there (by clicking and dragging them out of the dock).

However, every time I restart my computer, the icons for Facetime and the App Store re-appear in the dock, even though the apps aren’t running.

How can I remove them from the dock permanently?

Solution 1:

Go to /Library/Preferences (root library, not ~) and locate the file com.apple.dockfixup.plist. Open the file with an application like Dashcode or Textwrangler. Locate the following part under the 10.6.6 section:

    <array>
            <dict>
                    <key>path</key>
                    <string>/Applications/App Store.app</string>
                    <key>after</key>
                    <string>begin</string>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                    <key>after</key>
                    <string>/Applications/Safari.app</string>
                    <key>path</key>
                    <string>/Applications/FaceTime.app</string>
            </dict>
    </array>

Delete that section and then save the file (make sure you keep a backup of the original), then either log out and back in, or try killall Dock.

Solution 2:

Do other apps remain in the dock after being removed and restarted? Does this behavior also occur when you log out and back in?

I'll assume yes on both until more information is supplied:

Barring some extraneous application modifying the dock .plist (which is unlikely that you're unaware of) it might be locked or otherwise unwritable for you. Check the permissions on your ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist file, making sure you have Read/Write.

If you want, you can modify the file directly to see if you have the rights to do so, but theres a whole lot that can go wrong with that. Instead, modify your dock and see if the file's date modified changes. If it doesn't, your dock isn't writing the plist correctly.

If it's not a big issue, you can simply back-up and delete the com.apple.plist file and reconfigure the dock to your liking.