Dock Keep 0.1.2

A way in, a way out, and a language switch that tells the truth.

Settings without the shortcut

The settings window existed from 0.1.1 but only answered to ⌘, and a menu
item, which is a poor way to find something you do not yet know is there. A
gear now sits at the bottom of the window.

Credits behind the question mark

The question mark used to open the website directly. That was a guess between
three places somebody might actually want, so it now opens a sheet holding all
of them — the site, the source code, and a way to support the work — along with
the version, the build number, and who wrote it.

The language setting

Two faults, both worth naming.

The restart notice appeared one step late: choosing English showed nothing at
all, and only coming back to French announced that a restart was needed. The
setting was being written after the screen had already redrawn itself, so the
notice was always describing the previous choice.

And it asked for a restart when nothing would change. On a French Mac, moving
from "System" to "Français" leaves the app exactly as it was, so the request
was simply wrong. It now compares the languages that would actually be drawn
rather than the settings that were stored.

Requirements

macOS 14 or later. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it
opens without a Gatekeeper detour.

Built for macOS 14 and later, but only tested on macOS 26 — if you run it on 14
or 15, a bug report would genuinely help.

Dock Keep 0.1.1

Settings, and a way to leave.

Settings — ⌘,

Language. System, English or Français, without changing the language of the
whole Mac. macOS reads an app's language once, before the app runs, so the
choice applies at the next start — the screen says so and offers to restart,
rather than pretending the switch was instant.

Updates. A switch, the date of the last check, and a button. Sparkle asks
once at first launch whether it may check at all and never brings it up again,
so until now that single answer was final: no way back for anyone who declined
and changed their mind, or agreed without meaning to.

Backups. Keep 5, 10 or 20 instead of always 10. Lowering it applies
straight away, and the order things are given up in is unchanged — automatic
snapshots first, and never one you named before one you did not.

Uninstalling. A single "Unlock and erase everything", because deleting an
app runs no code and therefore does not unlock your Dock. It unlocks first,
then deletes the backups and its own settings, then reads the Dock back to
check the unlock actually took before telling you what to drag to the Trash.

Fixed

The three panels were wider than the window they drop from, so they hung over
both sides with the window showing underneath — it looked like two windows
stacked by mistake.

The welcome title was cut off in French, and the rescue command was cut off at
any window width. That second one is the string that has to stay readable when
everything else has gone wrong.

Two backups saved inside the same second silently overwrote each other.
Restoring takes its own snapshot first, so this could happen at the exact
moment somebody was trying to undo something.

A backup could carry two different identities depending on how it had been
read, which stopped the arrangement you had just saved from becoming the
selected one.

Requirements

macOS 14 or later. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it
opens without a Gatekeeper detour.

Built for macOS 14 and later, but only tested on macOS 26 — if you run it on 14
or 15, a bug report would genuinely help.

Dock Keep 0.1.0

The first release.

Dock Keep locks the icons in your Dock so that dragging one out by accident
stops removing it. Free, open source, no account, no tracking.

It is never the only way out

That rule is the whole design. Anything Dock Keep does, one line in Terminal
undoes — whether the app is installed, running, or long gone:

defaults delete com.apple.dock contents-immutable && killall Dock

Worth knowing: deleting the app does not unlock your Dock. Deleting an app
runs no code. Unlock first, or paste the line above afterwards.

What it does

• Locks and unlocks your Dock's contents.
• Saves arrangements you can restore later — up to ten, with names you choose.
• Says so when the lock was set by something other than Dock Keep, and when the
  stored value is one of the odd ones that the usual Terminal advice cannot
  clear.
• Checks that a restore actually took effect, and tells you if it did not,
  instead of reporting a success nobody verified.

What it is not

It asks for no administrator password, so it is not parental control: anyone
curious enough to search the web undoes it in a minute. It guards against
accidents, not against intent. Nothing is drawn over Apple's Dock, no events are
intercepted, and it never asks for accessibility or screen recording permission.

Requirements

macOS 14 or later. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it
opens without a Gatekeeper detour.

Built for macOS 14 and later, but only tested on macOS 26 — if you run it on 14
or 15, a bug report would genuinely help.

Install

Open the .dmg and drag Dock Keep to Applications.

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The app can check for updates through Sparkle, and asks your permission the
first time before it reaches the network at all. No hardware profile is ever
attached to those checks.