The Dock, that ever-present bar that runs along the edge of your screen, can do more than you might think. It lets you launch applications and access options for currently running ones, as well as keep frequently used files and folders close at hand. You can also modify it to fit the way you work—moving it to one side or making it disappear when you don’t need it. Invest a little time thinking about what you want to keep available in your Dock, and you’ll find the Dock offers one-click access as well as convenient shortcuts ①.
① Delve into the Dock’s Preferences to change where it appears onscreen (at the bottom, left, or right), as well as how it acts. Click and hold a program’s Dock icon to access shortcuts for it. For example, you can return recent calls in FaceTime, as you see here.
Learn the Lay of the Land
By default, the Dock stretches across the bottom of your screen and is divided into two territories. Its left side holds icons for apps Apple installs there, that you’ve placed there yourself, and for currently running apps.
The right side—across the hairline divider—holds folders (including, by default, Downloads), files, minimized windows, and the Trash. If you don’t recognize an icon, hover your pointer over it to see its name.
The icons displayed in the Dock represent aliases, or shortcuts. Apps, for instance, actually live in your Applications folder. (If you’re curious, Command-click a Dock icon to see its original in the Finder.) Because Dock icons are aliases, you can add and remove them as you like—the originals remain unaffected.
Use Dock Icons
To launch or switch to an app, simply click its Dock icon.
To see a Dock icon’s special options, click and hold it to open its Dock menu. For example:
System Preferences: Click and hold this icon and a long list unfurls with the preference panes in alphabetical order. Choose one to jump to it.
FaceTime: Click and hold this icon to see a list of all recent calls. Choose one to call the number back.
iTunes: With iTunes running, click and hold this icon for music controls, including Play Recent, which shows the last few songs played ②.
② Click and hold a running app’s Dock icon to see shortcuts like these iTunes music controls.
Many apps (such as Safari, TextEdit, and Pages) list all currently open windows in their Dock menu—choose one to jump to it. Likewise, most have a Show Recents item that provides a quick shortcut to recently used files.
Every running Dock item’s menu also offers you a quick way to quit the app: Just choose Quit.
For other types of Dock icons, like a folder or minimized window, click the icon to open it.
Add an Item to the Dock
App, file, or folder: Drag the original into the Dock, making sure you drag apps to the left side (top) and other icons to the right (bottom).
Running app: A running app’s icon appears automatically in the Dock, and disappears when you quit the app. Add a running app’s icon to the Dock permanently by clicking and holding its icon and choosing Options > Keep in Dock from the menu.
Window: Click the yellow Minimize button at the top left of the window (Command-M). By default, the window appears in miniature at the right (bottom) of the Dock. (The Dock icon includes a tiny app icon to help you identify what’s what.)
A minimized window’s Dock icon will disappear automatically when you click it or when you quit its program.
Remove a Dock Item
Drag its icon off the Dock until you see the word “Remove” and then release it. The Dock icon vanishes.
Alternatively, click and hold the item and choose Options > Remove from Dock.
Why Not Move Your Dock to the Left or Right?
By default, the Dock lies horizontally across the bottom of the screen, but you can position it to the left or right, too ④. A vertical dock may be best if:
④ Move your Dock to the left of a wide monitor and you might find that suddenly you have so much room!
You have a huge, wide monitor: Why not use all that free space at the side of your screen for the Dock and make room for windows to stretch all the way to the bottom?
You have a tiny laptop: If your screen is small, you may want to preserve precious space at the bottom of the screen.
You read from left to right: Some people find they like the Dock to the left because that’s where they start activities. (Or vice-versa if they read from right to left.)
You want the Dock out of the way: Some people stash the Dock out of the way on the right, because they visit that space less frequently.
Change Your Dock’s Orientation
Control-click the thin divider line and choose Position on Screen to move the Dock to the left or right ⑤—or to move it back to the bottom.
⑤ Control-click the Dock’s thin divider line to see options for changing its position onscreen and more.
Try More Dock Tweaks
To see more options for customizing the Dock, go to System Preferences > Dock ⑥.
⑥ You’ll find options for customizing the Dock in the Dock System Preferences pane.
Here are the most interesting:
Adjust the Dock’s size: Move the Size slider toward Small to shrink the Dock—a handy option if you like the Dock visible, but a little more subtle.
Move the slider toward Large to enlarge the Dock and all its icons. (It’s limited by length of the side it’s on.) This can be helpful for a person with poor eyesight.
Use Magnification: If you want big icons, but don’t need them all to be big, try the next option, Magnification. With this on, when you move your pointer along the Dock the icons you’re pointing to swell.
Control the size of this effect with the slider. This is most useful when your Dock holds a ton of items, since all items shrink to make each additional item fit. When all the icons are teeny and hard to distinguish, Magnification can make it work ⑦. Otherwise, this effect can be disorienting.
⑦ Even if you shrink your Dock’s size, you’ll still be able to tell what’s what if you turn the Magnification setting on.
Hide the Dock: Sometimes the Dock gets in the way, particularly when you’re working in very large windows (or on a particularly small screen). Select the Automatically Hide and Show the Dock checkbox to make the Dock invisible until you need it.
When the time comes, move your pointer to the place the Dock once occupied and it will pop into sight.
Show Indicators for open apps: How can you tell when an app is running? As of 10.10 Yosemite, your clue is a small black dot, directly below the app’s Dock icon. If you don’t like this, turn the dots off here.
Stop the hop: When you launch an app, its Dock icon hops to show you it is opening. If you find this distracting, deselect the Animate Opening Applications checkbox.
Alter minimizing effects: You can choose what effect OS X uses when it minimizes a window. With the default Genie effect, a window swoops down into the Dock like a genie going into a bottle. Pick Scale Effect to eliminate the swoop.
Dash to Your Downloads
The Downloads Dock icon, which appears by default, gives you quick access to files you’ve downloaded.
After you click the Dock icon, you can click the name of a file to open it, or choose Open in Finder to view the Downloads folder in a normal Finder window. The Fan and Grid views offer more options, as I explain ahead.
Setting the Sort Order
Control-click the Downloads Dock icon and choose Name to see downloaded files listed alphabetically; Date Added to see them in the order you downloaded them; or Kind, to see them by file type.
By default, the Downloads folder is sorted by Date Added, so the newest items appear on top.
Displaying as a Stack
By default, the Downloads Dock icon appears as a stack⑨. As you download files of different types, the Dock icon changes to show the icons for the files you’ve downloaded stacking up. What’s on top is decided by how the folder’s contents are sorted. Edges of other files peek out from behind.
⑨ The Downloads folder appears by default as a stack instead of a static folder.
Displaying as a Folder
If you prefer your Downloads Dock icon folder to appear as a static folder icon, Control-click the Dock icon and choose this option.
Viewing the Contents as a Fan
What happens when you click the Dock icon? By default, file icons pop out of it, arrayed as a fan ⑩. You can move a file out of the fan (and thus out of the Downloads folder) by dragging its icon to the Desktop or a folder.
⑩ By default, the Downloads folder’s contents display as an (often unwieldy) fan. To move an item out of the folder, you can drag its icon out of the fan.
If you have a lot of files in your Downloads folder, the fan view can get unwieldy.
Viewing the Contents as a Grid
The Grid view displays the contents of the folder as a grid of file icons arranged according to the Sort By option ⑪. You might choose this, for example, if you often download images, because the grid icons are large and easy to see. As with the Fan view, you can drag and drop items out of the grid to your Desktop or another location.
⑪ The grid view is particularly handy if you have a large group of files and want a good look at their icons.
Viewing the Contents as a List
Choose this option to display the folder in a compact, tidy menu. You can’t drag and drop files out of this view, but it takes up less space ⑫.
⑫ The list view is compact and tidy, but you can’t drag and drop folders out of it.
Letting OS X Decide with Automatic
OS X selects a view based on how many items are in the Downloads folder. (The more items, the more likely the stack will open as a grid.)
Tackle the Trash
Done with a file? Drag it to the Dock’s modern white Trash can. (It starts empty, but appears with wadded up paper in it once you’ve dropped a file there.)
If you change your mind, click the Trash in the Dock to open its folder. Then, drag out the files that you want to keep.
When you’re certain you’re ready to dump everything, click and hold (or Control-click) on the Trash and choose Empty Trash. Alternatively, choose Finder > Empty Trash. As a cute paper-crinkling sound effect plays, the file(s) inside the Trash vanish.
New! Delete a File Immediately
Would you rather skip the whole process of dragging a file to the Trash and then deleting it later? Here’s how to simplify:
Select the file in the Finder and press Command-Option-Delete.
Select the file in the Finder, hold down the Option key, and choose File > Delete Immediately.
If you’re already looking at the contents of the Trash, Control-click on a file and choose Delete Immediately from the menu ⑬.
⑬ Control-click on a file in the Trash window and choose Delete Immediately to get rid it. If you’d rather delete all files in the Trash, click the Empty button (circled).
After any of these actions, you’ll see a warning, even if you’ve turned off Trash warnings as described next ⑭. If you’re sure you want to proceed, click Delete.
⑭ When you choose to delete a file immediately, you’ll see this warning.
Warding off Trash Warnings
Tired of seeing a warning whenever you try to empty the Trash ⑮?
⑮ You can get rid of this annoying warning.
Go to Finder > Preferences > Advanced and deselect the Show Warning before Emptying the Trash checkbox.
New! No More Emptying the Trash Securely
Technically speaking, if your Mac has a conventional hard disk, when you empty the Trash the files are still on the disk. It’s their directory listings that are gone; OS X no longer reserves the space they occupy and new files will be written over them eventually.
But what if you’ve trashed Super Secret files that no one else should ever see? That can be a problem since files deleted from the Trash can still be recovered using data-recovery software (if they haven’t been written over).
In the past, you could choose File > Secure Empty Trash and OS X would take the additional safety measure of overwriting the space. But eventually Apple made the option unavailable for solid state drives (SSDs)—like those used in the MacBook Air and the Mac Pro—because it considered a standard erase secure enough. (See this Apple page for details.) As of El Capitan, the option is gone completely.
If you’re worried about security, you can encrypt your entire disk with OS X’s FileVault: Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault, click the lock icon and log in with an administrator password, and then click Turn On FileVault. As you follow the prompts, be sure to record the password or recovery key you specify.
button at the top left of the window (Command-M). By default, the window appears in miniature at the right (bottom) of the Dock. (The Dock icon includes a tiny app icon to help you identify what’s what.)
icon and log in with an administrator password, and then click Turn On FileVault. As you follow the prompts, be sure to record the password or recovery key you specify.