How to customise the Mac’s Dock (Part 1)

How to customise the Mac’s Dock (Part 1)
Mac Tip #423, 10 February 2010

Is the Dock in your way? Too big? Too small? Too ‘bouncy’? Here’s how to make it behave as you want it to.

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The Dock holds icons for applications, folders and files

Dock System Preference pane.

The Dock is the strip of icons across the bottom of any new Mac. It allows you quick access to applications, files and folders.

The Dock has two parts

The Dock has two parts:

• Applications on the left
• Files, Folders and Trash on the right.

The two parts are divided by a faint stripey gray line.

If you move the Dock to the left or right of your screen the Trash is always at the bottom, and the Finder at the top.

Make the Dock look and behave how you want it to

Control the appearance and behaviour of the Dock from the Dock item in System Preferences. Quickly access the Preferences from the Dock submenu under the Apple menu.

Another way to quickly access the settings is to hold down the Control (⌃) key and click on the stripey divider line between the left and right hand sides of the Dock. This brings up a contextual menu with several of the possible settings.

Set Size and Magnification

The Dock can fill the width (or height) of your screen, or it can be quite tiny. Control its size with the Size slider.

As you hover over any icon in the Dock it enlarges, or magnifies. This can be a bit visually disturbing.

Turn off magnification altogether by unchecking the setting, or reduce the amount of magnification by moving the slider to the left. A bit of experimentation may be necessary to get it just how you like it.

Position the Dock on Screen

Position the Dock on Screen: bottom, left or right. You may need to experiment with this, as the Dock may cause windows to shift out of its way, or if you normally have it hidden you may find it becomes visible and gets in the way of scrolling or clicking on other items.

I suggest experimenting with various positions and sizes until you find what works best on your Mac.

Change the animation when opening Applications

When you open an application its icon bounces in the Dock. If that bothers you turn it off in this System Preference.

Minimize window effects

When you click the orange button in the top left corner of most WIndows on your Mac that window shrinks down into the Dock, or minimises. It minimises by distorting, shrinking and sliding, using the Genie effect.

It can be animated differently though, with the Scale effect. In that case the window becomes uniformly smaller and sliding into position in the Dock.

Choose the effect you enjoy.

Use the Shift key to make your Mac look slow

This is an old trick but a fun one. Make a window minimise extraordinarily slowly by holding down the Shift (⇧) key as you click the orange button. Try it and see.

Future Tips will explain how to add items to the Dock and remove them; how to shuffle the order; how to use the Dock to open documents, and some other features.

Share your experiences with the Mac’s Dock below.