Personalize Your Dock on your Mac

How to set up your Dock

System Preferences is awesome in that it allows targeted customization of specific features on a Mac.  The Dock is found on the side or bottom of the screen and is the bar that allows for quick access to your favorite applications, files, and folders.  This is one of the first things that you will want to customize on your system by allowing shortcuts and keeping clutter away from the desktop.  These are all just customization preferences, and there will be an explanation of what each one does and how they work.  In the end it is all up to your personal preference.

Opening Dock Preferences

1. Open the "" menu at the top left corner of your screen.
2. Select "System Preferences"



A faster way of opening "System Preferences" or any application is by performing a Spotlight Search

3. Open "Dock."

Size

• You can adjust the size of the applications that appear in the Dock

Magnification

• By enabling Magnification, you can have the Dock magnify the icon when you drag the mouse over it.  You can adjust just how much or little it magnifies.

Positioning

• You can choose whether your Dock appears on the left of the screen, the bottom center, or the right of the screen.  

Minimizing Windows Effect

• Genie vs. Scaled effect is purely aesthetic.  It is seen when you minimize a window to the Dock.  Scale is a little more bland in my opinion, but test them both to see what you prefer.

Other Preferences

• Double click the top of a window to minimize
• Shows whether you want an application to minimize to the dock or the application icon
• Lets you know when an application is open or needs your attention
• Hiding the dock gives extra desktop space
• "Indicator lights" tell which applications are open.  

Dock Organization

• Saving Applications to Dock
• You can either drag-and-drop and application to the Dock, OR if the application is already open, you can Right-click > Options > "Keep In Dock"
• Saving Folders to Dock
• If you want to keep a folder in your Dock, Simply drag-and-drop it to the Dock.  Applications and Folders are separated in the dock by a dividing line, make sure to drag it to the Folder part of the divide (the side with your recycling bin).
• Organization
• To organize your dock so that applications are near each other, just drag-and-drop them to where you want their position to be.
• Removing Items from Dock
• Just Drag the application or folder you want to remove from the Dock to outside the Dock.  Wait for the application to turn transparent and say "Remove."  Then let go of the mouse to remove it form the Dock.
• NOTE:  Doing this will only remove the application from your Dock, not from your computer.  you will still be able to find the removed application in the applications folder.