How To Customize the Dock On Your MacBook

The Dock is a unique and useful feature that you can only find on macOS. It allows you to quickly access your files, folder, or most recently used apps quickly. By default, the Dock appears as a small panel at the bottom of your Mac’s screen. Most MacBook users normally leave this panel as it is. But if the default setting does suit your taste, you can always customize the Dock on your MacBook. This includes adding and removing apps & folders, hiding the dock, resizing it, and moving it to another part of your screen.

In this article, we will guide you on how to do all these customizations step-by-step. Let’s check them out!

Hide Your Mac’s Dock

Like hiding the taskbar on a Windows PC, turning on this feature will make your Dock automatically disappear when it is not in use. This is a good way to reclaim some more screen space on your Mac and make your desktop look cleaner. Doing this will cause the Dock to disappear from your screen when it is not in use. This will also let you reclaim more screen space on your Mac, and make your desktop look cleaner.

To automatically hide the Dock on your Mac, you need to:

Click the Apple icon in the top-left corner of your screen
Select System Preferences.
Select Dock
Check the box next to Automatically hide and show the Dock.

Alternatively, you can right-click on the Dock itself and select Turn Hiding On on the pop-up menu.

To view the Dock again, you can move your cursor to the edge of the screen where your Dock is located. The Dock will pop up after you move your mouse all the way to the edge.

Relocate the Dock on a Mac

Moving the Dock to one side of your screen will provide you with more vertical space. It is extremely useful if you are using your Mac with a widescreen external display. You can relocate the Dock’s position on your screen by doing:

Go to System Preferences
Select Dock
In the Position on Screen section, select either Right, Left, or Bottom depending on where you want to move your Dock.

You can also right-click on the Dock and hover your mouse over Position on Screen. Then select either Left, Right, or Bottom.

Remove Apps from the Dock on a Mac

By removing apps and files that you rarely use, you can make up some space on your Doc for the ones you use more frequently on your Dock. Don’t worry, it won’t uninstall your apps, only the shortcut will be removed from your Dock. You can still find the original app in the Applications folder.

To remove an app, file, or folder from your Dock, drag the icon of the item out of the Dock until you see Remove. Alternatively, you can also right-click ( or Control+click) on an app that is currently on your Dock. Hover your mouse over Options then select Remove From Dock to remove that app.

Add An App or Folder To The Dock

There are 2 different ways to add a frequently-used app to your Dock for quicker access:

Running Applications will have their icons appears on the Dock. If you want to keep the icon on your Dock’s panel to use it as a launcher for the app later, right-click on it and select Options>Keep in Dock.
If you want to add an app that’s not running to the Dock, you can simply drag-and-drop its icon from the Applications folder in the Finder to the left side of (or above) the line that separates the recently used apps.

For adding a folder and file to your Dock, drag and drop the item to the right side of (or below) the other line that separates recently used apps.

The right end of the Dock showing the separator lines preceding and following the recently used apps section.

Customize The Size Of The Dock on a MacBook

You can adjust the size of the Dock by placing the cursor over the line that separates the Dock until a double arrow shows up. Then, drag the Dock to make it the size that you want. You can also change the size in System Preferences > Dock with the slider next to Size.