dock

Search dock

Hide and Show the Dock in Mac OS X

Dec 10, 2010 - 12 Comments

The Dock is one of those staple features of Mac OS X, containing all running apps and also serving as a quick launch bar for opening applications and managing multitasking. The Dock is popular and intuitive enough for it to be a core user interface element beyond the Mac, included as a major component in … Read More

Get Windows 7 style window previews on your Mac Dock

Oct 18, 2010 - 5 Comments

One of the features of Windows 7 that gets pretty good reviews is the window preview, you access these by hovering over items in the Windows task/start bar and a little preview of the minimized window is shown as a pop-up. With a little utility called HyperDock, you can get this same functionality on your … Read More

Play Recent Songs Directly from iTunes Dock Icon in Mac OS X

Jul 19, 2010 - 4 Comments

You may have known that you can navigate around music, skip songs, go backward to prior songs, pause, and mute music, all from the iTunes Dock icon, but did you know that the iTunes dock item in OS X also includes a list of the ten most recently played songs? To access the recent songs … Read More

Make Hidden Application Icons Translucent in the Dock of Mac OS X

Jun 22, 2010 - 19 Comments
Finder icon on the Mac

One of the more interesting little known Dock modifications on the Mac is the ability to make hidden app icons appear as translucent and muted in the Dock to indicate their hidden status. If you look carefully at the screenshots of the Mac Dock in this article you’ll see the effect, as some of the … Read More

How to Make Applications Minimize Into Their Dock Icon in Mac OS X

May 11, 2010 - 5 Comments

You can make save a lot of clutter from showing in the Dock of Mac OS X by making applications minimize into their own Dock icon. What this means is that if you minimize an app, rather than having the little thumbnail stay on the right side of the Mac Dock, it will minimize directly … Read More

Dock.prefPane error loading in Snow Leopard

Apr 1, 2010 - 2 Comments

Dock.prefPane “The document ‘Dock.prefPane’ could not be opened. System Preferences cannot open files in the ‘Mac OS X Preference Pane’ format.” Oh that makes perfect sense, a default preference pane can’t be opened by the System Preferences? What?? Maybe this is an April Fools joke from System Preferences… but a reboot fixed it.

Minimize App Windows Into Dock Icons with a defaults String in OS X

Mar 2, 2010 - 8 Comments

If you’re tired of having your Mac Dock full of thumbnailed versions of minimized windows, you can change the Dock’s minimize behavior with a simple Terminal command that will minimize windows into the parent applications Dock icon. You can then tell which windows are minimized by looking for the diamond next to the window name … Read More

Disable Dock Bouncing in Mac OS X

Feb 19, 2010 - 8 Comments

The bouncing Dock icons are a nice GUI feature that let you know an app is launching on the Mac, but for some people those little bouncing icons are just really annoying. Additionally, Dock icons will bounce to notify you that an alert is active in the app, or the app needs your attention. If … Read More

Lock the Dock in Mac OS X

Feb 8, 2010 - 11 Comments

If you need to prevent the Dock icons from changing or being modified on a Mac, you can use defaults command strings to lock down the OS X Dock and prevent any adjustments or changes to how it appears on screen.

Change the Dock item click-and-hold behavior in Snow Leopard

Jan 13, 2010 - 6 Comments

Snow Leopard changed the way the Dock behaves when a Dock item has been clicked on and held down, since 10.6 it launches Expose for that specific application. You may recall how Leopard handled the click-and-hold though, which was to launch the contextual menu (the same one you get when you right-click in 10.6). Using … Read More

Quickly execute new Terminal command from the Dock

Nov 10, 2009 - 4 Comments
Terminal icon in OS X

If you have the Terminal application stored in your Dock on Mac OS X, you can quickly execute any new command by right-clicking (or control clicking) on the Dock icon and navigating up to “New Command” in the popup menu. This will prompt you for a command to run, which then launches into a terminal … Read More

Magnify Dock Icons Instantly in Mac OS X

Nov 5, 2009 - 5 Comments
Magnifying Dock icon animation in OS X

Even if you have the Mac Dock icon magnification turned off in your system preferences of Mac OS X, you can still force Dock icons to magnify on the fly by using a simple keystroke. This can be a helpful trick if a Mac Dock is set to be small and you want a better … Read More

How to Stop Dock Icons from Animating in Mac OS X via defaults Command

Nov 3, 2009 - 2 Comments

The Mac OS X Dock becomes animated when an app is launching, with a continuous bouncing animation, and also when an app wants to get your attention, with a less consistent and more urgent animated bounce. Both of these can be effect alert methods, but they can also annoy some users. Regardless, you can make … Read More

How to Enable a Hidden Stacks List View in OS X

Sep 30, 2009 - 9 Comments

Stacks are what list items and folders turn into when pulled into the Dock of OS X. There are several views for Stacks, like a grid, or a fan, or a list in modern OS X versions. But with a little secret defaults string, a list view can be enabled in prior releases of OS … Read More

Highlight Stack Items on Hover in Mac OS X Dock

Jan 7, 2008 - 28 Comments
A mouse hover effect in Dock Stack of OS X

A little known hidden trick allows for a nice cursor hover effect to follow your mouse as it goes over an application, folder, or item within an opened Dock stack of Mac OS X. This makes navigating within Dock folder items a whole lot easier on the Mac and only takes a moment to turn … Read More

Have Multiple Docks in Mac OS X with DockFun

Nov 29, 2006 - 10 Comments
Finder

Ever wished you could have multiple Mac OS X Docks at the same time? Maybe you want one at the left and right and bottom of your screen? Then DockFun is for you for those of you who’ve wished you could have more than one Dock in Mac OS X. The other day I became … Read More

Subscribe to OSXDaily

Subscribe to RSS Subscribe to Twitter Feed Follow on Facebook Subscribe to eMail Updates

Tips & Tricks

News

iPhone / iPad

Mac

Troubleshooting

Shop on Amazon to help support this site