Omgbull

The Dock in macOS is more flexible than you may realize. Change the size, location, color and more to fit your personal preferences.

• Mac Os Mojave App Store
• Mac Os Mojave Compatibility
• Mac Os Mojave Dock Recent Apps Download
• Mac Os Mojave Dock Recent Apps Free
• Mac Os Mojave Reviews

Jul 10, 2018  MacOS Mojave displays last three recently used apps in the dock of your Mac. If you don't like this feature, this video explains how to disable it.

The Dock is one of Apple’s most iconic features. It showcases the intuitive nature of their design while remaining highly customizable!

Anyone can change what app shortcuts are available on the Dock. But what you may not realize is that you can also customize the Dock’s size, color, location, and more.

Contents

• 9 Extra Effects

Related Posts:

Change the Size

The dock automatically resizes depending on how many apps it holds.However, you can also resize the icons themselves, making the Dock much larger or smaller.

There are two ways to do this: with the mouse or through the System Preferences.

Using the mouse is quickest. Simply hover it over one of the vertical dividers on the Dock and drag up or down to make the Dock bigger or smaller. If that wasn’t easy enough, open the System Preferences and click the Dock button. The slider at the top of the window adjusts your Dock size.

Turn On Magnification

Magnification enlarges icons on the Dock as you hover your mouse over them. This is great for if you’ve got lots of icons, a small Dock, or a sight impairment.

Turn on Magnification by going to the Dock menu of System Preferences and ticking the Magnification checkbox. The slider to the right allows you to alter the amount of magnification to your personal taste.

Change the Location

By default, the Dock sits at the bottom of the screen. However, if you prefer you could move it to the left or right edge instead. Depending on how you use your Mac, this might make it easier to access the Dock when you need it.

Change the location of the Dock by holding shift while you click and drag one of the vertical dividers. Pull your mouse to a different edge of the screen to see the Dock relocate to that position.

Alternatively, in the Dock System Preferences, you can choose where you want the Dock to be positioned by selecting one of three options: Left, Bottom, or Right.

Hide the Dock

Free up some Desktop real estate by hiding your Dock when you don’t need it.

This handy feature allows more space for multitasking while keeping the Dock within easy reach off the screen. When you want the Dock to reappear, move your mouse to the screen’s edge and it will pop out — just like in fullscreen mode.

You can hide or show the Dock at any time by pressing cmd+alt+D. Or go to the Dock options in System Preferences and tick ‘Automatically hide and show the Dock’.

Change the Color

With Dark Mode on, the Dock, menu bar, Notification Centre, Finder windows, Spotlight search, and more will be dark grey or black giving a sleek new look to macOS.

Turn on Dark Mode by going into the General menu of your System Preferences. Two boxes of the top give the options of Light or Dark color schemes.

Favorite Apps

The largest part of the Dock holds shortcuts to your favorite apps. They’re easy to add, remove, or reorder by clicking and dragging the icons.

To remove an app, drag it off of the Dock or into the Trash — don’t worry, it’ll still be available to in Spotlight or Finder.

Alternately drag apps onto the Dock from the Finder window to add them to your favorites. You could also drag apps from the recent applications section of the Dock into your favorites to create permanent shortcuts.

Recent Applications

This new section of the Dock sits between favorite apps and the stack and files. It updates automatically with whatever apps are currently running or to show three recently used applications.

You can turn this feature on or off in the System Preferences. Under the Dock menu, check or uncheck the box labeled ‘Show recent applications in Dock’.

Stacks and Files

The farthest right section of the Dock is used to store stacks, files, and the Trash.

Stacks and files can be added to the Dock by dragging any files or folders from the Finder. Keeping them here makes them easily accessible and is useful if you use certain items frequently.

Stacks work just like folders: click to open and see all the files inside. By control-clicking a stack, you can customize how it opens: fan grid or list. You can also choose to view it as a traditional folder icon.

Extra Effects

Open Indicators

The little round dots that appear beneath icons on the Dock indicate whether that application is running or not. You can turn this effect on or off using the Systems Preferences checkbox labeled ‘Show indicators for open applications’.

Opening Animations

The System Preferences checkbox labeled ‘Animate opening applications’ determines whether or not icons bounce up and down upon opening. Some users have suggested that turning this feature off improves performance in macOS, although for most users the difference appears to be negligible at best.

Minimize Effect

The Minimize effect allows you to move an application’s window to the Dock when you aren’t using it. This is a great organization method and can help to clear multiple windows when working.

Through the System Preferences, you can choose to store minimized windows within the app’s icon or to keep them in a row alongside your Stacks and Files. You can also choose to have a window minimize when you double-click its title bar.

We hope that gives you some insight into how to customize the Dock on macOS. Experiment to find your favorite settings and let us know them in the comments!

Dan is a freelance writer based in South West England.

He spent two years supervising repairs as a Genius Admin for Apple Retail and uses that knowledge to keep our troubleshooting guides up to date.

Long before that, Dan turned to Apple products from a musical background. Having owned iPods for years, he bought a MacBook to learn sound recording and production. It was using those skills that he gained a first-class Bachelor of Science in Sound Technology.

Getting quick access to recent items is something every Mac user desires as it immediately lets them get back to their previously unfinished work. You may want to continue reading the PDF file that someone sent you yesterday, or maybe you want to finish off the story that you left unfinished last night.

Mac Os Mojave App Store

Unless you keep all of these files on your desktop, you really can’t access them with a few clicks. Even if you decide to store these files on the desktop, there’s a limited amount of space beyond which you can’t go.

Mac Os Mojave Compatibility

If you’re troubled by these limitations, there’s a hidden feature in the Dock of your Mac that will help you out. This feature helps add frequently accessed items to the Dock for you to quickly access them.

Add The Recent Items Stack To The Dock

There are already a number of apps sitting in the Dock of your Mac. If you bring your cursor to the bottom of your screen, you’ll reveal the Dock with everything it has in it.

The Dock isn’t limited to what it shows by default. One of its hidden features is the ability to add your custom items to the list. This way you can add a custom stack to the Dock that shows recent items on your Mac.

Once the stack is added, it’s then just a matter of clicking on it to bring up your recent files. Here’s how you do it using the Terminal:

A new stack will be added to the Dock and you can click on it to open it.

Mac Os Mojave Dock Recent Apps Download

By default, the stack will show the recently accessed applications on your Mac. You can keep it if you want, or you can customize it to show something else instead.

Replace Recent Apps With Other File Types

If recent apps isn’t what you’re looking for and you’d rather prefer quick access to your recent documents, for example, you can change the stack in the Dock to show those items accordingly.

Customizing the newly added stack is as easy as clicking on it and choosing an option. You don’t even need to run any commands this time to get the stack to show your chosen items in the list.

Find the newly added stack in the Dock, right-click on the stack, and choose any of the options shown at the top of the menu. These options include Recent Applications, Recent Documents, Recent Servers, Recent Volumes, and Recent Items.

Depending on what you choose, the stack will show your items accordingly.

You can play around with other options as well until it meets your needs.

Mac Os Mojave Dock Recent Apps Free

Add Additional Custom Stacks To The Dock

If you need access to recent items that are of various types, one stack wouldn’t be sufficient for you. You’re going to need to add additional stacks each with its own file type to your Mac’s Dock.

The following is how you add it:

Fire up the Terminal app and run the following command in it.

When a new stack appears in the Dock, right-click on the stack and choose the file types you want it to show.

You can run the above command as many times as you want. It’ll add one stack each time. You can then customize what each of these stacks shows in the Dock of your Mac.

Add Custom Recent Items Stack To The Dock

If you’ve noticed, the default stack only lets you access certain recent file types. If you want more than that, there’s no option in the context menu to do it. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t add custom recent items to your Dock.

Mac has another useful feature called Smart Folders. These are actually saved searches that help you quickly find whatever files and file types you’re looking for on your Mac. Once you’ve created a Smart Folder, you can actually pin it to the Dock and access it from there.

This gives you more options and control as to what you can access from the Dock. Here’s how you do it:

Create a custom Smart Folder of your choice on your Mac. Maybe a folder that shows the recently opened PDF files on your Mac. Your screen should look something like the following.

Click on Save, enter a name for your Smart Folder, and save the folder on your desktop.

Once you see the folder on your desktop, drag and drop it onto the Dock. It’ll then sit there.

The Fan layout may not be suitable for PDF files. So right-click on the stack in the Dock and select Grid. It should look much better now.

Show More Recent Items In The Dock

By default, a stack will only show up to 10 recent items in a list. If you need more than that, you need to change a value on your Mac as shown below.

Click on the Apple logo at the top-left corner and select System Preferences.

Select General on the following screen. You’ll then find an option saying Recent Items. Use the dropdown menu next to the option to choose the number of items you want in the stack list.

Mac Os Mojave Reviews

You can show a maximum of 50 items in a stack pinned on the Dock.

Delete Recent Items Stack From The Dock

If you no longer need a recent items stack, you can have it removed by clicking on an option in the Dock.

Find the stack you want to remove, right-click on the stack, and select Remove from Dock.

The stack will no longer appear in your Dock.