Using the Mac Dock With Only Your Keyboard

While the Dock seems like a strictly graphical interface, you can actually use it with just the keyboard. You can launch apps, access advanced functions, and even rearrange the items in the Dock using keyboard shortcuts.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use the Dock on your Mac with just your keyboard.
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So the Dock seems like a very visual tool. Something you would use mostly with your mouse or trackpad to move the pointer over an icon to launch an app. But, in fact, you have a lot of keyboard control over the Dock and can do just about anything with keyboard shortcuts. 
So the first one I want to show you simply hides the Dock because it takes up a lot of space at the bottom of the screen or even if you use it to the left or the right side. You can Hide the Dock using the keyboard shortcut Option Command D. It hides except that if you then move your pointer to the bottom it will appear. But only while the pointer is along the bottom. So it gets out of the way when you don't need it but when you do need it it will appear without any extra action. Now this keyboard shortcut is found in System Preferences under Keyboard and then Shortcuts. Go to Launchpad & Dock right here and you'll see Turn Dock Hiding On and Off. It's Option Command D and you have to have it checked. So if you change it to something else or turned it off that's why it may not be working. 
How do you actually use the Dock with just the keyboard. After all the main way is to move your pointer down to the bottom and then click on an icon. But you can get to that with a keyboard shortcut that you'll find when you go to Keyboard here and then look for this one, Move focus to the Dock. You can see the default is Control F3. Now that's not always the most convenient one to use.  For one thing Control is at the bottom of your keyboard and F3 is at the top. Another thing is that under Keyboard here if you've got this thing turned Off then using these keys, like for instance the F12, will increase volume as you can see there. So you'd have to turn this On to actually do Control F3 . Otherwise if it is Off you have to find the fn key on your keyboard. Do Control fn and F3. So if you plan on using this a lot you may want to actually go and change this to something else. You can just click here and assign it to something else. Some other keyboard shortcut that you're not using for something else like maybe Command Option D or something like that. 
I'm going to switch this On so I can use this easily with Control F3 here. So with Control F3 it will bring the Dock up if you have it hidden and you see it selects the first item there, Finder. Now I can use the Arrow Keys to move through the items. So I can go to the right or to the left. If I want to launch something like let's say Calendar, I can press return and Calendar launches. But you can do a lot more here as well. Notice that when I use it again it remembers my last position. So it's going to start here at Calendar. Now in addition to moving right and left I can also use the Up Arrow to go into the Menu there. So I can use Open. I can do Show Recent for that app. I can use Options. I'll use right arrow there to go into Options. So it depends on which app I'm using as to what appears there. For instance for Launchpad, if I do that, I get a list of all of the apps there. For Finder I get a list of recent locations and other functions I can use  by using Up Arrow, going to what I want, and then pressing Return. Here you see in System Preferences I can get to any part of System Preferences. Yes, I can use a letter key here, like for instance L to jump to one. As a matter of fact you can use letter keys while in the Dock here. So instead of left or right arrows I can use a letter key like m to get to Messages, the first app that starts with m. Or f to get to the first app that starts with f. Let's say I want to get to something like FaceTime I could type fa and you could see it jumps to that. 
Now when you launch an app like this, like Calendar say, and then you go to do it again and launch another app, like let's say Reminders, it will launch Reminders over the Calendar app there. But let's say I want to Hide all the other apps and just launch one. You can do that using Command and Option. So instead of just Return I'll do Command Option and Return and Notes will come up and all the other apps will be hidden. You could also bring up more Menu items if you use the Option key on the Menus here. So I have several apps shown here. If I do an Up Arrow with Notes selected in the Dock and then I hold the Option key down notice how Hide and Quit change to Hide Others and Force Quit. Of course you should rarely ever have to use Force Quit. But Hide Others is something that can be useful. So I'll go Up to Hide Option and then Return and it will hide everything but Notes. 
Another trick you can use is when you have a Menu like this. If you hold the Option key down and use the Up Arrow it will jump to the first one and then Option Down will jump to the last one. So you can easily make it through here. You can also use letters. For instance I could do O to get to Options, N to get to Notes, and E and it will take me to New Note. 
Another thing you could do is you could go to the location of an item. So, for instance, for Reminders here instead of launching Reminders or unhiding it in this case, if I do Command and then Return it will open a Finder window and take me right to the Reminders app. This isn't so useful for apps themselves but it is useful for items you may have on the right side of the Dock. So I'll do Control F3. I'll go over to the right side of the Dock. Then I'll go to something here like this folder called Current and I'll do Command Return and it will take me right to it. You could even do that for items inside of things like, for instance, here in Downloads I have several items. I can select this one here, do Command Return and it will take me to that item rather than opening it.
Now you may have known all the things I showed you already. But did you know this? You can actually rearrange items in the Dock. So I'm going to go over to the item I want to move, like say the News app here. Hold the Option Key down and then use the left or right arrows to move that item in the list. Of course you can remove something by going Up and then to Options and then there's Remove From Dock right there. How about adding something to the Dock. Well, you can do that as well. So say you're in the Finder here and let's go and find a file that say we want to put in the Dock since the file would be on the right side. There's actually a keyboard shortcut for that. You can find it here under File. You could see Add to Sidebar. But if you hold the Shift key down you can see Add to Sidebar changes to Add to Dock. So Control Shift Command t is the shortcut for adding something to the Dock. So we'll try that here. Control Shift Command t and now when we look at the Dock here you can find that file is there. 
Now one last thing I want to show you is how to get to the Dock Preferences really easily. If you wanted to do that with just the keyboard you could bring up the Dock like that. You could either go to Launchpad or maybe if you have preferences already in the Dock like I do you can go there. I can Up Arrow here. I can go to System Preferences. Bring that up. Search for Dock. Go to Dock Settings and I've gotten here just using the keyboard. But there's an actual shortcut for getting there using the Pointer. Take the Pointer. If you go to the divider there are several things you can do. One is you can resize the Dock by simply clicking on the divider and then dragging up or down and you could change its size. But if you click and hold then it brings up its Menu and you can set some of the preferences right here like turning Hiding Off, turn Magnification On, change the position, change how it Minimizes, or go all the way to Dock Preferences.
So kind of the opposite of keyboard shortcut. A shortcut that works with the pointer to help you get to the Dock settings pretty quickly. So I hope you found all of these Dock shortcuts useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “Using the Mac Dock With Only Your Keyboard”

Jonathan

2 years ago

What is the disadvantage of using a more finger friendly keyboard shortcut to focus on the dock like, Command + D, instead of stretching to the F and/or Fn keys?

Gary Rosenzweig

Jonathan: Whether FN+D is "finger friendly" depends on your keyboard. On my MacBook Air, it is pretty easy. But my extended Mac keyboard on my desk has the FN key at the top right instead. You can change it to what you like, but avoid things that are already well-used by you (Command+D is duplicate in Finder and other apps).

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Using the Mac Dock With Only Your Keyboard

Comments: 2 Responses to “Using the Mac Dock With Only Your Keyboard”

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