Removing Dock Items

[NaomiT]

I would like to remove 4 built in apps on our student Mac docks: FaceTime, AppStore, Email & Messages. When I go to Policies>Dock Items>Configure the only option available is to add dock items that I believe were already added using Casper Administrator. I have also checked Casper Administrator but I did not see an option to remove these built in apps. I read on some of the JAMF Nation forums that dockutil script has been successful for some people to remove apps.

I am using JSS 9.96. Is there an alternative solution outside of scripting to remove these apps? Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

[mpermann · Accepted solution]

@NaomiT go ahead and add it in the Dock payload of the policy and then change the action to uninstall once it's in the payload. That should allow an uninstall.

[thoule]

An alternative to using the JSS dock functionality is to copy the dockutil script to your workstations (package it up in composer and drop it somewhere on user's workstations). https://github.com/kcrawford/dockutil

Then issue the remove command

/path/to/dockutil --remove 'iTunes' --allhomes

[NaomiT]

Thank you @mpermann. I realized that I not only had to first add the items to the dock using Casper Administrator but I had added a few restriction on that same computer so I was not able to "see" certain apps like FaceTime in order to add it in the first place.

So once I removed the restriction from my Mac that had Casper Admin installed I was able to add the dock items, then go to the JSS to access those apps, and add the policy to remove them from the dock on my testing student Mac.

[NaomiT]

Thank you @thoule. If I come across any issues I'll keep that in mind in the future.