Add the Applications Folder to the Dock

In this video, I will show you how you add your Applications folder to the Dock and why you may want to add your Applications folder to the Dock. Let’s go to my Mac.

If I wanted to open up an application, there are a few different ways to get to my Applications folder. One way is by going up to Go in the menu bar, and then we go down to Applications. When I select this, a new Finder window opens, and then I can select the application that I want to open. Another way is by going to a new Finder window or any Finder window. Click on it. We have a Finder window, and then we go over to Applications, and I can select from my applications again. But with both of those ways, I have to do a few different things. I have to open up a new Finder window or select a Finder window, or I have to go up to the menu bar and then open up the Applications folder.

Now, by default, you’re also going to have the Launchpad in your Dock. When you click on this, it will open up a Launchpad, which gives us another way to open up our applications, more iOS-like, but I don’t care for this view either. They’re not sorted. So applications are relatively hard to find. I know I can sort them, but that’s a lot of work to go through and sort these; I like to have them in alphabetical order.

I can do with my Launchpad here if I click and hold, then I get a list of all of my applications. Now we’re getting somewhere. We can see that I have my list here, and they’re in alphabetical order. But the problem with this is you have to click and hold. So again, I just click and hold, and then it shows up. So you have to wait a couple of seconds, and then the list shows up.

That’s not a bad way to do it, but my favorite way is to add the Applications folder to the Dock itself. Then we no longer have to click and hold. So how do we do that? Well, we first have to go to our Applications folder. Now what I’m going to do is go up to Go in the menu bar, and then we go over to Applications. From here, what I need to do is I need to grab my folder here. You’re going to see; I have the folder on the left side of the name. I grab this folder and move it to my Dock. I have to move it to the right side of my Dock. So now I just take this icon here, I click and drag, and I add it to the right side of my Dock. So it’s going to add this folder to my Dock, the Applications folder. I’m going to close my window.

Now, what I like to do is I like to make sure that this is in a grid format. So how do we do that? We just control-click on this, hold down the control key and click. And you’re going to see Grid. I also like to make sure that it is sorted by name; it should be by default, but control-click, and we can see it assorted by name.

Now watch what happens when I click on this; I don’t have to click and hold; all I have to do is just click on it. I click, there are my applications. And I can see the icons nice and large. So I can just swipe up to find the application that I want, and they are in alphabetical order. Now all I have to do to open up any application is just go down to my Applications folder, I click, I do not have to click and hold, I just click, and then I swipe up to find the application that I want.

So that is how you add the Applications folder to the Dock and why you may want to add the Applications folder to the Dock. When you do this, it gives you easy access to your applications. You can access it from within any app. All you have to do is go to the Dock, and then also you just click on it, and it shows all of your applications instantaneously. To add your Applications folder to the Dock, you just go to your Applications folder and drag that folder down into the Dock on the Dock’s right side. If you control-click, you can make sure that it’s going to open up in a grid format and it is sorted by name.

So that’s how you can add your Applications folder to the Dock and why you may want to add the Applications folder to the Dock on the Mac.