RocketDock-a Mac Dock clone for Windows

Filed under: OS Updates, Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

RocketDock-a Mac Dock clone for Windows

by Ryan Carter Aug 20th 2006

RocketDock by Punk Software is a great Mac OS X dock clone for Windows. It is bouncy when you mouseover, allows you to drag and drop new shortcuts to the bar, and lets you customize all the settings, including the icon height, opacity, and even edge offset. I really like this clone, because it ships with many skins to further integrate your computing experience. It offers a myriad of options which makes it fairly versatile.

Besides being nifty, usable and having a small memory footprint, RocketDock is apparently also is a big hit with wired three-year-olds. Mine just asked to "do the rocket things", meaning he wanted to run the mouse over RocketBar and watch the icons jump up and down. Talk about a selling point.

More screenshots after the jump...

This is the general settings screen. Here you can set many options

The icons settings screen. You can set things like icon image quality, size, zoom, width, and duration.

Next is the position screen, which is helpful for setting the edge offset to bring RocketDock up above your Windows taskbar. This works for any side of your screen, which you can also set here.

And last is the style screen. Here you choose the skin (yes, all those skins pictured here come preloaded, and then some), opacity, and other style options.

Tags: freeware, punksoftware, rocketdock, toolbar

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Adam said 8:55AM on 8-20-2006

I hate to contradict a source that I have so much respect for, but IMHO, ObjectDock is a much better program for emulating the Mac's dock. Most of the features of the Plus version can easily be attained through "docklets" (downloadable modules), of which WinCustomize.com has thousands. The only downside is that there's a bit too much downloading, unzipping into directories, and such.

http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/

http://www.wincustomize.com/Skins.aspx?LibID=29

Josh said 9:15AM on 8-20-2006

ObjectDock is a very good program, only problem is that if you are on a computer with some memory issues, it kills your system.

I personally prefer RKLauncher which gives most of the functions of ObjectDock including support for pretty much all the docklets that OD or the old Y'z Dock had to offer.

jean-christophe said 9:18AM on 8-20-2006

Would be really cool to give a link to the software :( (or am i the only one not seeing it?)

Angus said 9:20AM on 8-20-2006

I dunno, this seems pretty decent and unlike objectdock it's free. Quite a plus.

phil said 9:35AM on 8-20-2006

talking of small memory footprint, i would recommend using the old yz-dock: memory use < 1mb. works great on my old machine...

Adam said 10:49AM on 8-20-2006

wow, and i thought ObjectDock was gd. I love how u can position the dock in any particular place. Its reali nice and doesent slow down my computer. Love the different styles. Im sure this will stay loaded on my desktop, unlike ObjectDock which seems to try too hard. :)

Ryan Carter said 11:04AM on 8-20-2006

The read link is at the end of the "continued" section (after all the screenshots). I did not put it in the text of the post though, sorry about that. Here it is as well: http://www.punksoftware.com

Enjoy!

Franklin said 12:39PM on 8-20-2006

I used the free version of ObjectDock for several weeks, but never found the general concept of a dockable icon tray to be that useful under Windows. In fact, it proved to be a hindrance for me, even when I laid things out similar to OS X (e.g., moving the Start bar to the top of the screen). So I un-installed it. Maybe it is just me and my personal preference.

Qingshuo said 1:39PM on 8-20-2006

I agree, from a useability standpoint the dock was never that great of an idea compared to the classic taskbar+startmenu. Docks look cool when you have lots of pixel real estate (and kids who love to play with it) but I've never found them to improve my productivity.

Angel said 1:55PM on 8-20-2006

RocketDock is just fantastic! I've been using it for months and I just love it. And the guys behind it, Skunkie and PolyVector are very cool. They always respond to questions in their forumgs and accept all sorts of suggestions, while keeping in mind that they want to keep the program simple and don't want it to become a kitchen-sink-memory-hog.

They also make another program which I like even more. It is called UberIcon (http://www.punksoftware.com/ubericon) which is pure eye candy but really awesome. It makes cool effects when you double click on any icon in your desktop or in windows explorer or in RocketDock itself. It is worth a try. If you are into "eye candy" you'll love it!

Angel said 1:57PM on 8-20-2006

Jeff said 2:40PM on 8-20-2006

I agree with several people above. The dock alone is not the greatest multi-tasking solution. However, Expose in Mac OS X more than makes up for the dock's shortcomings in multi-tasking. I feel that a dock imitation on Windows would have to be coupled with an Expose imitation for it to be useful.

Bill said 3:20PM on 8-20-2006

Ok, Rocketdock + http://www.winplosion.com/ it is.

Erzengel said 3:54PM on 8-20-2006

I use RKLauncher, and works marvels for me. Rite now it only uses 8mb of RAM, its quite easy to customize, drag and drop and everything. I discovered this lil gem when i tried the Flyakite pack. In the end i uninstalled the mac looking app, but i fall in love with RKLauncher. I have it docked in top of my screen, using it to hold all the shortcuts i used to have in my desktop. Now i have a very clean desktop, very nice and eye appealing. My start button and taskbar are still down there where they use to, so i guess i just made the perfect combo, using the always unused spaces over windows tittle bar.

carib said 4:42PM on 8-20-2006

Not to be a party pooper, but whats the PRODUCTIVITY advantage of this over the Quick Launch Bar?

Julio Ojeda-Zapata said 6:15PM on 8-20-2006

RocketDock would be a lot more useful if it duplicated certain features in the Mac OS X dock, such as automatically populating itself with icons for apps as these are opened (and having those icons vanish once more when the apps are closed down, unless the user specifies otherwise). It's just a glorified Quick Launch toolbar in its current form, not a substitute for the Start menu and the Windows toolbars (which I detest after a lifetime of Mac as well as Windows use).

Dylan said 8:00AM on 8-21-2006

Now, if only there was a rocketdock-for-linux.

Richie said 12:42AM on 8-22-2006

Sounds good,I'll give it a try

Steve said 11:17AM on 8-22-2006

You can go here and grab some really nice icons for your rocketdock:
http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/icons/dock/?order=9&alltime=yes

Aukon said 12:23PM on 10-20-2006

RocketDock is fantastic for a dock on Windows, it works well.

But I use RK Launcher, seems to be alot more appealing how it works and looks.

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