If your Dock keeps vanishing, however, you may prefer to read How to fix a disappearing Dock on Mac. How to add an app to the Dock. Adding an app to the dock is easy, there are a couple of ways to.
Take a minute to look at the row of icons at the bottom of your display. That row is the Dock, and those individual pictures are known as icons.
Dock icons are a quick way to bring a hidden window or application to the front so that you can work with it again. Dock icons are odd ducks — they’re activated with a single-click. Most icons are selected (highlighted) when you single click and opened when you double-click. So Dock icons are kind of like links on a Web page — you need only a single click to open them.
You can customize your Dock with favorite applications, a document you update daily, or maybe a folder containing your favorite recipes — use the Dock for anything you need quick access to. Here’s how you can add an icon to the Dock or remove a Dock icon you no longer desire.
Adding an icon to the Dock
Adding an application, file, or folder to the Dock is as easy as 1-2-3. First, open a Finder window that contains an application, file, folder, URL, or disk icon that you use frequently. Then follow these steps to add it to the Dock:
1. Click the item you want to add to the Dock.
2. Drag the icon out of the Finder window and onto the Dock, as shown in Figure 1.
3. An icon for this item now appears on the Dock.
Folder, disk, and URL icons must be on the right of the divider line in the Dock; Application icons must be on the left of it.
Figure 1: Drag an icon onto the Dock to add it.
You can add several items at the same time to the Dock by selecting them all and dragging the group to the Dock. However, you can delete only one icon at a time from the Dock.
Removing an icon from the Dock
To remove an item from the Dock, just drag its icon onto the Desktop. It disappears with a cool poof animation, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: To remove an icon, drag it off the Dock and POOF — it’s gone.
By moving an icon out of the Dock, you aren’t moving, deleting, or copying the item itself — you’re just removing its icon from the Dock. The item is unchanged. Think of it like a library catalog card: Just because you remove the card from the card catalog doesn’t mean that the book is gone from the library.
After you figure out which programs you use and don’t use, it’s a good idea to relieve overcrowding by removing the ones you never (or rarely) use.
Knowing what to put in your Dock
Put things on the Dock that you need quick access to and that you use often, or add items that aren’t quickly available from menus or the sidebar. If you like using the Dock better than the Finder window sidebar, for example, add your Documents, Movies, Pictures, Music, or even your hard disk to the Dock.
Consider adding these items to your Dock:
- A word-processing application: Most people use word-processing software more than any other application.
- A project folder: You know, the folder that contains all the documents for your thesis, or the biggest project you have at work, or your massive recipe collection . . . whatever. Add that folder to the Dock, and then you can access it much quicker than if you have to open several folders to find it.
- Don’t forget — if you
press
Show Dock On Mac
- (click but don’t let go) on a folder icon, a handy hierarchical menu of its contents appears.
- A special utility or application: You may want to add your favorite graphics application such as Photoshop, or the game you play every afternoon when you think the boss isn’t watching.
- Your favorite URLs: Save links to sites that you visit every day — ones that you use in your job, your favorite Mac news sites, or your personalized page from an Internet service provider (ISP). Sure, you can make one of these pages your browser’s start page or bookmark it, but the Dock lets you add one or more additional URLs.
- Here’s how to quickly add a URL to the Dock. Open Safari and go to the page with a URL that you want to save on the Dock. Click and drag the small icon that you find at the left of the URL in the Address bar to the right side of the dividing line in the Dock (at the arrow’s head in Figure 3) and then release the mouse button. The icons in the Dock will slide over and make room for your URL. From now on, when you click the URL icon that you moved to your Dock, Safari opens to that page.
Figure 3: To save a URL to your Dock, drag its little icon from the Address bar to the right side of the Dock.
- You can add several URL icons to the Dock, but bear in mind that the Dock and its icons shrink to accommodate added icons, thus making them harder to see. Perhaps the best idea — if you want easy access to several URLs — is to create a folder full of URLs and put that folder on the Dock. Then you can just press and hold your mouse pointer on the folder (or Control-click the folder) to pop up a menu with all your URLs.
Even though you can make the Dock smaller, you’re still limited to one row of icons. The smaller you make the Dock, the larger the crowd of icons you can amass. You have to determine for yourself what’s best for you: having lots of icons available on the Dock (even though they may be difficult to see because they’re so tiny) or having less clutter but fewer icons on your Dock.
The concept of an app launcher or a dock on a Windows desktop might seem redundant to some. This is especially true for Windows 10. Yet, app launchers or MacOS like docks have been quite in demand over the years on Windows. This, in turn, has led many developers to take on the challenge and deliver a good experience to users on Windows. While Mac OS docs don’t offer a lot to the Windows 10 desktop in terms of features, they do add a layer of convenience. Not to mention they look much fancier than a start menu.
A dock also manages to allow you to add many apps folders or files on your desktop without making it look cluttered. There’s also the added functionality that you can access these usually from anywhere without having to minimize currently open windows. There are quite a few docks available on Windows, and some of them are quite good. Good, but if your needs are limited to looks or simply an app launcher that complements the Windows taskbar. Here are two MacOS docs for your Windows 10 PC that should satisfy your needs.
The following 2 Mac OS like docks hugely resembles the one found on Apple’s computers. Try them to easily access your favorite apps. These docks not only look beautiful but are also highly customizable. You should also check out these cool Windows taskbar tips and tricks for a better experience.
Rocket dock – Simple and elegant
Rocket dock has been one of the most popular dock options for Windows. The development on Rocket dock seemingly ceased years ago and there are no new features added. To be honest, it could actually use some more features. But there’s a good side to this apparent lack of features. It makes Rocket dock one of the simplest docks available for Windows. It does still have some of the basic features you might want in your dock. These include the ability to change individual icons, change the position of the dock, place it behind open windows or on top of them, etc. You can also adjust the quality of icons depending upon your hardware.
Apple Mac Dock
I’d suggest not changing a lot in the icon settings though since the default animation and zoom settings are quite ideal. The animations are so smooth with Rocket dock that it often feels like an integrated part of the system. It also has themes and the internet is full of them, the dock being so popular. The best place to find these is the Rocket dock’s official website. You can also extend the functionality using docklets, also available on the website. You can also let minimized windows appear on the dock if you wish to use it like the Mac OS dock. This functionality seems broken and is often not reliable though especially as long as there is a taskbar.
Mac Dock On Windows
Also, Rocket dock will always overlap with open windows. That is, Windows will either slide over or under it, depending on your preferences. Unlike some other docks or the taskbar, Rocket dock cannot allocate a dedicated space for itself.
Winstep Nexus Dock – Feature-packed, not so simple
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There’s a distance between the land and the sky, as you may have noticed. I’m not getting philosophical here, but that’s exactly the distance, or difference between Nexus dock and Rocket dock. Although both of these are essentially docks, Nexus dock is perhaps the best there is for Windows. It has so many features that you’d just skip over many of them even if I did type them all out. As a result, though, it is not the easiest, most user-friendly dock around. Launching apps and adding them to the dock still works pretty much the same as any other dock. There is a bit of a learning curve if you wish to customize the dock to look and behave as you want.
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It has everything Rocket dock has, such as themes and docklets, and in greater numbers even. It also has numerous features and fancy animations that Rocket dock does not have. Appearance settings such as icon reflections, icon launch animations, close animations, delete animations, the duration of these animations, you can micromanage everything. All of this does come at a price though. While there is a free version too, you’d have to shell out a few bucks for the Ultimate version which has all the features. I’ve used Nexus dock for a long long time before Windows 10 came along, and I’ve customized it to my heart’s desire. It even has a start menu button!
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In case you’re wondering, minimizing Windows to the dock is not reliable on this one either but it works sometimes at least. To wrap up, if you wanted to replace the taskbar entirely, you can depend on the Nexus dock. Winstep Nexus is one of the best Mac OS docks for Windows 10 out there.
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