How to Customize the Dock

The Dock pane within System Preferences provides options to change many aspects of the Dock’s appearance and behavior. For example, you can adjust its size, edge position (left, bottom, right) and magnification level when you hover the cursor over icons. Additionally, there are two minimization effects to choose from, and settings for toggling the app-launch bounce, Dock auto-hide, and active application indicators.

But System Preferences doesn’t tell the whole story, because Apple hides a number of extra options from the user interface. Even so, you can access them by using Terminal, found in /Applications/Utilities. This command-line tool enables you to write to the Dock’s preferences file, turning on (or off) hidden preferences, and further changing the nature of your Dock. Terminal is one of those apps that tends to scare newcomers, but playing around with the Dock is a good introduction to using the tool. 

You should find any apprehension disappear as you successfully enter a command or two and see the changes to your Dock. If you don’t like what you end up with, the process is also entirely reversible. You can merely turn off everything you’ve turned on, but a quicker way to revert the Dock is to replace its preferences file with a back-up, which we’ll also show you how to do in this tutorial.

Backup Your Dock First

1. Copy the Preferences

Before editing your Dock, make a copy of its preferences file. In Finder, hold Option and click Go in the top bar. From the drop-down menu, select Library to open the hidden user Library folder. Within, open the Preferences folder and find com.apple.dock.plist. Now hold Option and drag the file to the Desktop, thereby making a copy of it. Store this in a folder elsewhere that also includes the date the copy was made.

2. Restore Preferences

To restore your backed-up preferences, copy the file you saved out in Step 1 to your Library’s Preferences folder. For Mountain Lion, entering killall Dock in Terminal restarts old settings. Mavericks has more aggressive caching, so type defaults read in Terminal and drag the file com.apple.dock.plist from the Library to it. Hit Enter, then killall Dock to restart the Dock with your settings.

3. Go Nuclear

Reverting the Dock to default depends on the OS that you are running on your Mac. In Mountain Lion, simply trash com.apple.dock.plist from the Preferences folder and use killall Dock in Terminal. For Mavericks, delete the file using Terminal: type defaults delete com.apple.dock; killall Dock. Or, reset the Dock to run apps with defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool true; killall Dock.

How to Redesign Your Dock

1. Pin the Dock

The Dock can be pinned to a corner. Type defaults write com.apple.dock pinning start; killall Dock and it moves to the left or top. Use end instead of start to move the Dock to the right/bottom; middle is the default.

2. Adjust Dock Transparency

Bring back Mountain Lion’s transparency by typing defaults write com.apple.dock hide-mirror -bool true; killall Dock into Terminal. To make hidden apps’ icons semi-transparent, use defaults write com.apple.dock showhidden -bool true; killall Dock. In both cases, switching true for false reverts to default settings.

3. Activate Single-app Mode

OS X has a single-app mode, which means if you click a Dock icon, every other app is hidden. Activate using defaults write com.apple.dock single-app -bool true; killall Dock. Again, replacing true with false reverts this setting to OS X’s default.

4. Change the Hiding Delay

Remove the show/hide animation by typing defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -int 0; killall Dock. Revert by using defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 1; killall Dock, or adjust “1” to experiment with different animation speeds — for example, 0.5 is faster (half the time) and 2 is slower (twice the time).

5. Add App Spacers

Invisible spacers can be added to group apps. Each time you use this command, a new spacer is added: defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'; killall Dock. Replace persistent-apps with persistent-others to place a spacer on the right-hand side of the Dock. To get rid of one, right-click it and select Remove from Dock, or simply drag it out of the Dock onto your desktop.

6. Define Custom Dock Stacks

Stacks are folders added to the right side of the Dock. OS X has hidden custom stacks for recent items. Each time you input defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{"tile-data" = {"list-type" = 1;}; "tile-type" = "recents-tile";}'; killall Dock, a stack is added. Right-click to show documents, servers, or favorite volumes/items.

7. Take a Shortcut

The idea of this tutorial is to update the Dock while learning a bit about the Terminal. However, if you want Dock changes but don’t fancy doing any of that pesky typing, you can install TinkerTool (http://bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html) and use the various options found within its Dock section. Should you later decide you want to revert all changes, TinkerTool has a Reset option (to pre-TinkerTool state or defaults), but you should also follow the back-up advice before using the app, just in case.