Mac Basics: Using the Dock

The Dock is one of the most basic tools you'll need to learn to use a Mac. You can use it to launch apps and you can customize it to contain the apps you need. You can also put files and folders in the Dock and change how it works in System Preferences.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at the basics of using the Dock on your Mac.
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So the Dock is the strip of icons you'll find at the bottom of your Mac's screen. The Dock is divided up into three sections, divided by these lines that you'll see here. The left most section contains apps. It's the easiest way to launch an app on your Mac. To launch an app just click its icon. So here I've got the Reminders app. I click that and the Reminders app launches. Notice that when an app is running it has a dot underneath it in the Dock. 
You can customize the Dock to add the apps that you want. The easiest way to do that is in the Finder create a New Finder Window and go to your Applications folder. Then from there find the app that you want to add to the Dock and simply drag it from the Applications folder to the Dock. I'll drag Infinity Photo here and place it in the Dock. I'll also drag Acorn and place that in the Dock. You could rearrange the apps in the Dock by clicking and dragging right or left and placing them where you want. To Remove an app from the Dock drag it up and when you get far enough up you'll see Remove appear and you can drop it there and the app is gone. 
Now it's very important to understand a basic concept of the Dock which is nothing is actually in the Dock. What you see there are shortcuts or aliases to the actual items. So those apps I didn't move from the Applications folder and put them in the Dock. I simply created a shortcut to launching the app. The app is still in the Applications folder. All those apps you see in your Dock are in the Applications folder. Not in the Dock. It's just a shortcut to launch it. So removing an app from the Dock does not uninstall it or delete it from your Mac. It simply removes the shortcut. When you install a new app on your Mac it won't automatically appear in the Dock. It will be in your Applications folder. You can add it to the Dock. 
Now when you run an app that isn't in your Dock it will appear in the second section of the Dock. So I'm going to launch Pixelmator and you could see that appears here in the second section of the Dock. The second section contains apps that you're currently running or at least three icons. The ones that you most recently accessed. So you can see Pixelmator Pro is now here in that section. If I were to quit Pixelmator Pro it remains there but the dot is gone. But Pixelmator will disappear after I've run some other apps. It will drop off this list which just contains three items.
I can permanently add an icon to the Dock by dragging it from the second section to the first. So I'll just drag it to the left and add it here. Now it will stay in the Dock.   
Another reason to have apps in the Dock is not just to launch them but to also drag files onto them. For instance, take the three apps I've added, Acorn, Pixelmator Pro, and Infinity Photo. They all handle images. If I were to double click on an image it would actually launch Preview as the default app. But sometimes I want to open it in one of those three apps. I can use the Dock to drag a photo to one of those apps to open it in that app. 
The third section in the Dock, on the right, contains files and folders. You can add them there just like you added applications. So let's create a new Finder window here and let's say I want to add this file to the Dock. I could add it here but only to the right side. You can't add files or folders to the left side. I could also add a folder and it would appear there. Now the idea behind adding any file is that I could simply click it in the Dock and it will open that file in its default app. A folder, however, does something different. You click it and it displays the contents of that folder. Then I could click on one of the items there to open it up. But you have lots of options. If you Control click on it, or two-finger click on a trackpad, or right click on a Mouse, you get all of the options here. You could choose, for instance, to display the Icon as a stack of the items in there or as a folder, like that. You could also choose how the content is used. A Fan will make it look like that. A Grid will make it look like this and a List will make it look like this, even giving you access to subfolders. Automatic will choose one based on how many files are in the folder. You can also Sort the list in different ways and go directly to the folder just by using Open. Files and folders can be moved around just the like applications can or removed by dragging them up. 
Remember just like with applications, the files and folders aren't actually in the Dock. These are just shortcuts to access them. The files and folders exist in their current location on your hard drive, in your Documents folder, or wherever they are. 
The left and right sides of the Dock have special items in them. On the left side you'll have the Finder. If you ever want to bring the Finder to the front, if you click on the Finder icon it will do that. On the right side you have the Trash. This is the temporary holding place you put files before you delete them. So you can click in there and it will reveal a trash folder with all the items that are currently in your trash. You can also use this to drag items to the trash. So if you want to delete something you could drag it to the trash and drop it there. Which is the equivalent to using File, Move to Trash or Command and the Delete key. 
One more thing you use the Dock for and that's when you minimize a window. So if you click the yellow button here, or use Window Minimize, it will put that window in the Dock along with your Files and Folders on the right. Then you could click it to bring it out of the Dock and return it to its position on your Desktop. 
Now I have a lot of options when it comes to how the Dock works. Go to System Preferences and then Dock & Menu Bar. Here you set the size for the Dock. So you can make it smaller to make the icons smaller or larger. You could see it won't go above the size needed to fit all the icons. Magnification allows each icon to magnify as you move over it. You could use Left or Right to move the Dock to the left side of the screen or the right side of the screen. When you minimize a window, instead of minimizing to the right side here, it can minimize into the icon for the app. Notice when you click and hold on an app you get a variety of different options. Like, for instance, an image editing app will show you recently opened documents. You can turn on Automatically Hide and Show Dock. So if I turn that on you could see the Dock goes away. But if I move my cursor to the bottom of the screen it appears. So I don't really loose any functionality since I need to move the pointer to the bottom of the screen anyway in order to use the Dock. But it gives me a little extra space and a little less distraction. If you don't want the dots to appear under the apps that are running you could turn that off. If you want to get rid of this middle section that shows recent applications the apps that you're currently running that aren't normally in the Dock will appear on the left side, just before the divider on the right. But you won't have recently running applications. So if I quit TextEdit you could see it goes away completely. 
So there's a look at the basics of how to use the Dock on your Mac. I hope you found this useful.
Mac Basics: Using the Dock

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