Get the Most From the Mac Dock With Dock Menus

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you a very useful feature of macOS that's right in front of you but a lot of people don't know about. 

So I'm sure you know about and use the Dock all the time. You probably use it to launch apps or maybe switch to an app that is already running, maybe even dragging and dropping files into an icon on the Dock to bring that file into an app. But do you use Dock Menus? Dock Menus are  maybe something you've encountered every once in a while but you should be using them actually all the time because they are very useful. 

So, for instance, here I've got a whole bunch of apps with different windows open. I've got my Dock along the bottom of the screen. Of course to jump to any app, even one that's not currently running, I would just click on one of those icons. But if instead I click and hold for a second I get a Menu. This is called a Dock Menu. A menu that springs from one of the icons in the Dock. It gives you all sorts of useful things. If you actually click and hold and as soon as it appears you release it will stay there and then you can move your pointer up to any of these items. You can also click and hold and then move up and then release over an item to activate it. If you don't want that one second delay for it to appear instead hold the Control Key down to activate it like a Context Menu. So Control and Click makes it appear immediately. You can also use right click on a mouse or two-finger click on a trackpad with your default mouse and trackpad settings. So, two-fingers on my trackpad brings it right up with no delay. 

Now this gives you access to a lot of things going on in that app. Right here in this section you'll see all of the open windows. So even though I can't see any of the windows of Pages right now, they're behind other things, I can see its got three windows open. I can see the title of each one of those windows and I can select it to jump to that window, like that. It's easy to spot these because it has this little window icon to the left of it. One of the great things about this is it works even if a window is minimized. So let's minimize this window here and it's going to jump to the next window in Pages. If I now bring up the Dock Menu for Pages I'll see the same three windows and there's a little diamond next to the one that is minimized. I can unminimize it show it just as easily as I can view the others right from the Dock Menu. In fact once you get used to that you can go to System Settings and then go to Desktop & Dock and turn On Minimize Windows Into Application Icon. Once you do that if you minimize a window it goes into the app icon there and doesn't take up more space on your Dock. You'll see it in the list here. This is how you would get it back. 

This happens in a variety of different apps. So, for instance, here in Numbers I can see two windows open there. If I go to Mail here you can see I've got my Main Mail window open and also a New Message Composition Window open. In Safari here you can see I've got two Safari windows open. I can jump right to the one I want. 

But there's also another aspect to this. That's Recent Documents. You'll see this in apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, and others that use Documents. If I bring up the Dock Menu you can see right here these are all my recent Documents here including the three I currently have open and others as well. So I can jump right to one of these. It will open it up right from the Dock. 

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Now I showed you if you minimize a window it still appears in the Dock Menu. But if you hide the entire app, like I'll hide Pages here, you can use Command H for that or you can use the Menu here, and now Pages is hidden. The Dock Menu now behaves differently. You don't see any windows because the entire app is hidden. But you do see Recents which includes the windows that are actually open but hidden. So to unhide the entire app and bring a specific window open you can select that item there in Recents. 

You also have here the option to Hide the app from the Dock Menu. When I select that and then I go back to the Dock Menu you can see Hide changes to Show. So you can Hide and Show an app from the Dock. Useful if you prefer using your mouse or trackpad over keyboard shortcuts for that. You also have Quit here. So another option for quitting in addition to going to the app's Menu. In fact there is a hidden function here. If you hold the Option Key down, Quit changes to Force Quit, a way to force quit an app that is misbehaving. Notice that the Option Key also changes Hide to Hide Others.  Hide all the other applications leaving only this one. You also notice Show All Windows here. Now you would thing that would unminimize all windows or unhide the entire app. What it actually does is it brings up App Exposé. So now you can see App Exposé with the three open windows here, Recent documents here, and you're in App Exposé Mode. So you can even use the Tab key to go to the next app. 

App Exposé is a whole other subject that I've covered in other videos. 

You also have other items under Options. If you want the app to stay in the Dock even though it is not usually there you can check Keep In Dock and you can also uncheck it here and then it will disappear from the Dock except for when it's actually running. You can set the app to open up automatically when you log into your account. You can find the application file in the Finder if you want. If you're using Mission Control to have multiple desktops spaces you can assign this app to specifically appear on a Desktop. You have to have multiple desktop spaces open in order to even see this. So you may not see it until you open up a second desktop space in Mission Control. 

Now some apps have special commands in the Dock Menu. For instance for Pages you'll see New Document which is just like choosing File New. You'll see that for a lot of other apps as well. For instance here's New Spreadsheet for Numbers. Typically an app needs to be running in order to see these. So Keynote here isn't going to give me a New Document option. I will see Recent Documents here. So I can launch Keynote and Open one of these recent documents at the same time. But I have to launch Keynote before I'll see New Presentation. 

Other apps have other things. For instance, in Mail I've got Get New Mail, New Viewer Window, and Compose New Message. Music has a ton. You can set somethings like Repeat & Shuffle. You can Start Playing. If I actually Start Music Playing you'll see even more here. You can Favorite a song. You can Show in iTunes Store. You can Pause, jump to the next track, jump back to the previous track. All from the Dock Menu without even having to bring the app up. I can have the Music App hidden and just playing in the background and I still have access to these things. Finder also has a lot here. You can Jump to one of the most recent folders here. Create a New Finder Window. New Smart Folder. You can start a Find. Go to Folder, Shift Command G that a lot of us like. Connect to a Server as well. 

Settings & Launchpad have lists that appear. If you bring up the Dock Menu for Settings you'll see all the major sections here. You can jump right to one. You can also do it for Launchpad in macOS Sequoia and before. It shows all of your apps alphabetically. Launchpad is going away in macOS Tahoe so maybe we'll get the same list here in the Spotlight item that appears in place of Launchpad. 

Here's some more tips. If you bring up one of these menus you can use the keyboard to jump to something. So, for instance, the first menu item here that starts with A is one of the recent documents. If I tap A on my keyboard you can see it jumps right to it. If I tap N you can see it jumps right to that. Then you can just use Return and it will act the same as clicking a menu item. 

You can use all of this with only the keyboard. The trick is to activate the Dock with fn or the Globe Key on the keyboard and the letter A. You can see how that activated the Finder item there. I can use my right and left arrow keys to move around. Then the Up arrow key brings up the Dock Menu. I can continue to go Up and down and then press Return at the item that I want. 

Notice that when I use fn or the Globe Key and A again it remembers where I left off. So here I am at Pages and I can move over say to Numbers. I can also use letters. So, for instance, if I tap F it jumps to Finder. If I type N it jumps to Numbers. If I want to get to Notes I can type NO very quickly together and it will jump to Notes. 

You also get Dock Menus with the items on the right. So say if you've got a folder there you can Control Click it, right click or two-finger click on that to bring up lots of different options. That's what you get mostly here. With the Trash you can empty the trash or you can Open it to see what is inside. But there's one more thing that you can bring up a Dock Menu for and it's not obvious. It's this line here. The separator line. You can Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on that and it brings up a Menu with many of the same options you'll find in System Settings for the Dock. So you can turn Hiding On or Off. Magnification. You can change position on the screen. You can change how it minimizes and you can jump to the rest of Dock Settings from here. Also if you click and drag up or down on the line it allows you to resize the icons in the Dock. 

So try using the Dock for things like jumping to a specific window or opening a recent file in a specific app and see if it improves your workflow. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.