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 the Terminal application or any similar). All these commands requires to relaunch the Dock. So, for practical purposes, all the commands shown here includes the killall Dock
command. If you feel your Dock configuration is getting messy at any time, you can reset it to the default configuration and start over. The section on Resetting the Dock in this cheat sheet. |
The defaults command
The defaults
command 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. type: $ man defaults
. |
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
|
|
|
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
|
Resetting the Dock
Resetting the Dock to the factory settings |
defaults delete com.apple.dock; killall Dock
|
Applications
Some applications for management or enhancement of the Dock. |
|
References
|
2. man defaults
, macOS 15.2, General Commands Manual. |
|
|
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