The Dock

Saturday, February 21, 2009

The dock of the Mac OS is a really useful tool. Learn to customize it yourself!

Open your System Preferences and click Dock under Personal.

It is pretty self-explanatory from there. Whatever change you make, your dock will show it. Customize it so you are satisfied with it.

A blue dot beneath your application on the dock means you are running this application.

If you have opened an application that isn't normally on your dock, it will still show up, but to the far right (before the line between that and the recycling bin). Once you quit the application (Command-Q), it will disappear from your dock.

Now. What if there are lots of applications that you don't use often in your dock and you wanted to remove them? Simply drag the application into the recycling bin OR right click "Remove from dock".

If you want to add an application to your dock, just drag the icon from the Applications folder.

One thing that I absolutely adore about the dock is the downloads / documents folder. It allows you to easily access either. For instance, I have set all of my Firefox (the sole browser I use) downloads to go to the download folder so I can easily access them.

I hope you have fun and a easy time customizing and playing with your dock. Here is an example of mine: