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I was feeling clever for using AppleScript to quit the Dock and temporarily disable Dashboard, but there was a better way available.

I recently came across this old tip at MacOSXHints.com which describes various options that you can add the the hidden Dock menu (click on the subtle divider near the Trash icon). One of the commands that you can add to the menu is "Relaunch Dock."

That's much nicer than having to run a special program to quit and relaunch the Dock, don't you think?

Anyway, here's how to do it...

The Dock resides in /System/Library/CoreServices. Right-click on it and select Show Package Contents from the contextual menu. Then navigate down through /Contents/Resources/English.lproj to find the DockMenus.plist file.

Drag the DockMenus.plist file to your Desktop. This will make a copy of the file for you to work on (unless you're logged in as root -- don't log in as root). Make an additional copy of this file and store it somewhere as a backup in case you screw something up.

Open your copy of the DockMenus.plist file in TextEdit and add this code just below where it says <array>...

<dict>
<key>command</key>
<integer>1025</integer>
<key>name</key>
<string>Relaunch Dock</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>separator</key>
<true/>
<key>command</key>
<integer>2000</integer>
</dict>

Now, drag your modified file back into the English.lproj folder in the Dock.app (you'll have to authenticate it with an admin password).

The next time that you log in, there will be an additional item at the top of your Dock menu. If you're in a hurry, you can quit the Dock with the Activity Monitor or using AppleScript.