A prominent feature of the graphical user-interface of the macOS, the Dock is used to quickly launch applications and switch between running applications.
It is located at the bottom of Mac’s screen, loaded with the applications. By default, it has display applications installed on the system. But did you know, you can adjust the size of the Dock and its icons? Moreover, You can change the Dock location on the screen among other things.
In this article, we have discussed how to use the preference pane to customize the Dock.
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Locate Preferences Pane For Dock
- To locate Preferences pane, click on System Preferences from Apple menu at the top-left of the screen
Note: It can also be located at the bottom of your Dock.
- Click the ‘Dock’ icon in the Personal section of the System Preferences window.
Now the Dock preferences pane is open, you can try to customize it accordingly.
Personalize The Dock
- Size
It is used to set the Dock’s overall size. The size would be enhanced or decreased according to the number of icons in the Dock. The changes made would be highlighted in real-time, scroll it and check what happens.
- Magnification
Magnification expands the icon on which your mouse is hovering over in the Dock along with the few other icons on each side of it. Checkmark the box beside Magnification slider to enable magnification. It is useful if you have a lot of applications and folders in the Dock and the icons are small.
- Position On Screen
You can change the position of the Dock from the given options: Left, Bottom, and Right.Try all three locations to see which one suits you best.
- Minimize Using
Minimize using has a drop down menu with options to select one of the two effects: Genie Effect or Scale Effect. These are visual effects that occur when you minimize a window using the yellow button at the top left corner of the window. The Genie Effect makes the window shrink down the Dock as if it’s been sucked into a genie’s lamp. The Whereas, in Scale Effect the window collapses until it fits within the Dock. Try them to check what is your favorite effect.
Prefer Tabs When Opening Documents: When you open a folder in the Finder, usually the current contents of the window are replaced by the folder’s contents. If you want, you can open a folder in a new tab or window. You can use Prefer Tabs When Opening Documents option. It provides you with three options – Always, Full Screen and Manually. Choose whichever you like.
Double-click A Window’s Title Bar To
To maximize the Window opened, generally, you have to hit OS X’s green button in the top left of the window. What if you just want to zoom the content without maximizing the window. You can do that by selecting Zoom from the drop down menu. Zoom expands the window to fit the space between the Dock and the menu bar. The other option Minimize shrinks the window to an icon on the far right end of the Dock.
- Minimize Windows Into Application Icon.
Usually, when you minimize an application, it is placed as an icon at the far right end of the Dock. You can declutter the Dock of Mac OS X by making the opened applications minimize into their own Dock icon, just checkmark the box beside minimize windows into application icon.
- Animate Opening Applications
If you check mark beside this option, an application’s icon when clicked from the Dock will bounce. This will confirm that you have clicked a certain app, it is best to leave this feature enabled.
- Automatically Hide And Show The Dock
If you don’t want Dock to appear all the time, you can use this setting. Once check marked, whenever you hover your mouse at the bottom of the display, the Dock will appear.
- Show Indicators For Open Applications
You want to know what applications are open, you can checkmark beside this setting. Once enabled, whenever you open an application, a small blue dot will appear at the bottom of an app indicating the app is open.
These are the options provided to customize dock and now that you know, which settings does what, you can set them according to your preferences.
