Cheatography
https://cheatography.com
The Dock is a prominent feature of the graphical user interface of macOS. It is used to launch applications and to switch between running applications.
This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.
The Dock
The Dock is a prominent feature of the graphical user interface of macOS. It is used to launch applications and to switch between running applications. |
Keyboard shortcuts and actions
Keypress |
Action |
⌃ + fn + F3 |
Show or Focus on the Dock |
⌃ + F3 |
Show or Focus on the Dock when Fn
keys are locked |
⌥ + ⌘ + D |
Show/hide the Dock |
⟵ |
Select left application |
⟶ |
Select right application |
Enter |
Switch to the selected application |
Managing the Dock through defaults
Additionally to System Settings, the Dock can be adjusted using the defaults
command (from the command line using Terminal or a similar application). All these commands requires to relaunch the Dock. So, for practical purposes all the commands shown here includes the killall Dock
command. |
The defaults command
defaults
allows users to read, write, and delete macOS user defaults from a command-line shell. |
defaults actions
Action |
Description |
|
Prints all of the user's defaults, for every domain, to standard output. |
|
Writes value as the value for key in domain. value must be a property list, and must be enclosed in single quotes. |
|
Removes all default information for domain or a key ion a domain |
Domains, keys and values
A default belong to a domain, a domain name of the form com.companyname.appname
, which typically correspond to individual applications. Each domain has a dictionary of keys and values representing its defaults; for example, "Default Font" = "Helvetica". Keys are always strings, but values can be complex data structures comprising arrays, dictionaries, strings, and binary data. These data structures are stored as XML property lists. |
Flag |
Type |
|
Default value type if no flag type is provided. Allows the user to specify a string as the value for the given preference key. |
|
Allows the user to specify an integer as the value for the given preference key. |
|
Allows the user to specify a floating point number as the value for the given preference key. |
|
Allows the user to specify a boolean as the value for the given preference key. Value must be TRUE, FALSE, YES, or NO |
| |
For more information on other flags, consult the online help in the command line via Terminal or similar applications ( e.g. man defaults
). |
References
|
2. man defaults
, macOS 15.2, General Commands Manual. |
|
Reaction time
Time to show or to hide |
defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0.4; killall Dock
|
Animation time to show or to hide the Dock |
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 1; killall Dock
|
Spaces, size and effects
Adding an space between the icons in the Dock |
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}'; killall Dock
|
Size of the Dock |
defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -float 48; killall Dock
|
Magnification size |
defaults write com.apple.dock largesize -int 128; killall Dock
|
Applications
To show all windows of an application doing an scroll action on the icon |
defaults write com.apple.dock scroll-to-open -bool TRUE; killall Dock
|
To keep only the active applications |
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool TRUE; killall Dock
|
To highlight hidden (⌘ + H) applications |
defaults write com.apple.dock showhidden -bool TRUE; killall Dock
|
Resetting the Dock
Resetting the Dock to the factory settings |
defaults delete com.apple.dock; killall Dock
|
|
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