Customizing the Dock

Introduction: Now let’s take a look at how we can customize the Dock, including how we can resize it, position it in a different area on the screen, and other options. Let’s go to my Mac. We know that our Dock is located down at the bottom. What will happen by default is as I add new applications to the Dock, it will get smaller because it has to add more applications. If I remove applications from the Dock, the icons will become larger.

Resize: We can manually resize the Dock. To do that, all we have to do is go to where one of these spaces are, these vertical lines here, and you’re going to see that the cursor changes. Now all I need to do is just drag this up and down, drag my cursor up and down, and you’re going to see the Dock resizes.

Dock Preferences:I can also access this from our system preferences, and we have a lot more options when we go to the Dock system preferences. Now let’s open up our system preferences. I have it in my Dock here. I’m going to click on it. Now what I’m going to do is I’m going to go to Dock. Our first option is for the size. We already saw how we could do this, but we can also just drag this slider to the left or right, and if we look at the Dock, you’re going to see it gets larger and smaller. Again, we can also just do that by clicking on the line here and dragging it up and down.

Magnification: Our next option here is for magnification. What does this mean? Let’s say we have our Dock at a smaller size here, but what I’d like to do is I would like to have the icons get larger as I move my cursor over the top of the icon. This is what magnification is. I’m going to go and turn this on. You’re going to see that my magnification is set to maximum. When I move my cursor over the top of an icon in the Dock, it’s going to increase in magnification. Let’s see what I mean. I’m going to go to photos here. Now watch what happens when I move my cursor over the top of it. It increases in size. I go over to calendar here; it increases in size. We can adjust the size of this magnification.

Let’s say I wanted to make this magnification a little smaller, I just drag the slider here in our preferences to the left, and now when I go back over to my icons, you can see they’re a little smaller. What you can do with this is you can actually make your Dock really small, I’m just going to drag this over to the left, but then when you move your cursor over top of an icon, the icon gets larger. I’m going to make this a little bit larger here, just so we can see the Dock as we’re going through this tutorial. I’m going to go and turn magnification off.

Dock Position: Our next option is for the position on the screen. We can position it on the left side of the screen, the right side of the screen, or at the bottom. What I’m going to do is I’m going to position this on the right side of the screen. Now we can see my Dock is on the right side of the screen. I turned magnification off, so when I move my cursor over the top of any one of the icons, it is not going to magnify. If you move it over to one of the screen’s sides, what you may want to do is turn magnification on, and now, when I move my cursor over there, it magnifies. I’m going to turn the magnification back off and then put it back down on the bottom.

Minimizing a Window into the Dock: Our next option is for minimizing windows. Remember how we can minimize a window? To minimize a window, we just click on the yellow dot here. What it’ll do is it’ll minimize it into the Dock. The way that it minimizes it is through, by default, the genie effect, so it’s going to look like a genie going into the Dock. Let’s click on this and see what I mean. Watch the window as it goes down in the Dock. It’s like a little genie, and then when I click on it again, it’s like a genie, it opens back up. What we can do is we can change it to scale effect. When I click on it, it’s just going to scale down into the Dock. I click on it again, it’s going to scale back open. I’m going to leave it at genie.

Tabs: Our next option is for tabs. We’ll talk about tabs later on in this tutorial, but what we can do is we can actually open up windows into separate tabs, so then it’s almost like we’re having a window within a new window. How do you want the Dock or the finder to prefer tabs? Right now it is set for in full screen only. Now when I open a window in full screen, let’s go ahead and open up a finder window. Now I’m going to open it up in full screen. We have it in full screen. If I go and open up a new window, how do we do that? Command N. What it does is it open it up in a new tab. I have this one tab here, and then I also have this one tab here. Now when I go and close this, I will make it back to a normal window, and now let’s open up a new window again, command N, what it’s going to do it’s just going to open up a new window because I have this set to open up in tabs in full screen only. Again, we’ll take a closer look at tabs in another lesson.

More Options: We have a few more options here. What do we want it to do when we double click a window in the title bar? Do we want it to zoom, or do we want it to minimize into the Dock? What does this mean? I set it for minimizing into the Dock. Now let’s go and open up a window. I’m going to open up a finder window. When I double click on this title bar, now what it’s going to do is it’s going to minimize into the Dock. I double click, it minimizes into the Dock. I click on it to open it back up. If I change this to zoom, what it’s going to do is it’s going to zoom the window or make the window larger. I’m going to close the window here.

We can also minimize windows into the application icon. What does this mean? Well, let’s go and open up our finder window again. Right now, if I minimize this, it just goes over to the right side of the Dock. When I minimize it into an application, what it’s going to do is it’s going to minimize into the finder. Now let’s go and check this, and now when I minimize it, I’m going to click on the yellow Dock. We can see it wind down into the finder.

How do we open this window back up? Well, what we need to do is we need to click and hold, and then you’re going to see recents. I select it, and there’s my window. I prefer to have it go into the Dock as a separate window. Then I can easily just click on it and open it up.

Animate Application Opening: We can also animate opening applications. When I open up an application, let’s go down to calendar here. When I click on this, you’re going to see the icon bounce in the Dock. This is the animation. Click on it, and you can see it bounce. If I do not want it to bounce, I just go and turn this off. I’m going to close this window in the back here again.

Automatically Hide and Show the Dock: We can also automatically hide and show the Dock. Right now, the Dock is always showing. When I select this, the Dock is no longer there. How do we get back to our Dock? We just move our cursor down, and the Dock shows. Move my cursor away, and the Dock disappears. If we prefer to have the Dock show when you need it, what you may want to do is just go and hide the Dock. All you have to do is bring the cursor down to show the Dock, move the cursor away, and have more room your display. I’m going to leave it to where it always shows.

Showing when an App is Open in the Dock: Now, I mentioned earlier that we have indicators that show which apps are open. This is the black dot below the icon. If you do not want to have that indicator show which app is open, then what you do is you just deselect this, and now you’re not going to be able to see which apps are open. I prefer to see which apps are open, so I’m going to leave this on.

Then we also have show recent applications in the Dock. This is a new one, Mac iOS Mojave. We have our recent applications here. If I do not want to have these recent applications in the Dock, what it’s going to do is it’s going to behave like the older versions of Mac iOS, what I do is I deselect this, and now we no longer have our recent applications here. I’m going to leave this on. Again, this is new in Mac iOS Mojave.

That’s how we customize our Dock, as well as customize our window behavior for the Dock in Mac OS Mojave.