Hiding the dock for fun and profit

OS X doesn't need the honking great dock that you get with a stock install. Kill it

One thing I hate about OS X is the dock.

I see no use for it whatsoever and the default positioning of it wastes so much screen space.

Every application I need is a few keypresses away with Alfred (or even Spotlight, which is built into OS X), likewise with access to my Downloads folder or anything else I could want easy path to.

The one time I do use the dock is if I have hidden a window by mistake and want to bring it back without killing and reopening the program. Right now the fastest way I know to do this is to click on the program in the dock and the hidden window will appear again.

You can’t just remove the dock so what I opt to do is hide it from view until I need it, I change three things about the setup in order to allow me to do this.

  • I move the dock onto the left hand side of my left-most screen
  • I have the dock set to hidden by default
  • I have it set to the smallest size possible and magnify up any icon I hover over when in the dock

All of these settings are available from the Dock pane of System Preferences.

Try it

If you are on OS X, please give it a try and let me know what you think. I think your extra screen space will more than make up for how jarring it feels to not have it for the first while.


Recent posts View all

Freelancing

Why we have ads

We run ads on the site, this article talks about how we try and make them not terrible and why we monetise in the first place

Accessibility

Writing accessible hashtags

Write accessible hashtags by camel casing them. Because ThisReadsBetter thanthisdoes.