ShortcutDock Favourites Bar: The Power User Guide

The Favourites bar is the row at the bottom of the ShortcutDock panel that stays visible whichever group you are browsing. It exists so the four or five apps you open all day are always in the same place: open the panel, click the icon, done. Here is how to choose what goes in it and what it is not for.

What is the ShortcutDock Favourites bar?

ShortcutDock lives in the menu bar. You click the icon, or press a global hotkey you have chosen, and a dark panel drops down with your apps laid out in a grid. That grid changes as you switch between groups. The Favourites bar does not: it is pinned to the bottom of the panel and shows the same apps in the same order every time.

That fixed position is the whole point. Anything in a scrolling or switching view has to be found before it can be clicked. Anything in a fixed row can be clicked from memory, without reading it. Those are different actions, and the second one is much cheaper.

Which apps belong in the Favourites bar?

The test is not "which apps do I like" but "which apps do I open regardless of what I am working on today". A design tool you use every day during a design sprint and not at all the following week is a Groups candidate, not a favourite.

The apps that usually pass the test:

• Your working browser. The one you actually work in, not the second browser you keep for testing or for a client login.
• Your main tool. The editor, spreadsheet or canvas you spend hours inside. There is normally exactly one.
• Where your messages arrive. Slack, Teams, Discord or Messages, whichever your day interrupts you through.
• Terminal, if you are a developer. If you open it reflexively, it belongs here.
• Somewhere to write things down. Notes or whatever you use for quick capture. This one earns its slot precisely because you need it at unpredictable moments.

Two that people add and later regret: Finder, which already has a keyboard route and a permanent Dock position that cannot be removed, and System Settings, which feels useful but gets opened a few times a month. If a slot is scarce, spend it on something you use hourly.

How do you add an app to the Favourites bar?

1. Open the ShortcutDock panel from the menu bar icon, or with your global hotkey.
2. Click the edit button in the Favourites section at the bottom of the panel.
3. Add or remove apps from the list, then close the editor.

The bar updates immediately. If an app you expect is not offered, it is worth remembering that ShortcutDock discovers installed applications automatically on first run, so an app installed since then may need the panel reopened before it shows up.

How many favourites should you actually keep?

Fewer than you think. A row you can take in at a glance is a row you can click without reading, and that stops being true somewhere around eight or nine icons. Past that you are scanning again, which is the thing the bar was supposed to remove.

There is also a hard limit worth stating plainly: the free version of ShortcutDock holds five favourites, alongside eight app shortcuts and one group. Five is genuinely workable for most people, and it forces the discipline described above. If you want more, Pro lifts the caps for a single payment with no subscription attached. Do not buy it on day one. Run the free tier for a week first and find out whether five was actually the constraint.

How is the Favourites bar different from Groups?

They solve different problems and the difference is worth being precise about.

• Favourites are per app. One click launches one thing. Use them for apps whose relevance does not depend on context.
• Groups are per task. A group collects the apps that belong to one kind of work, and ShortcutDock can launch the whole group at once. Use them when starting a task means opening four things in sequence.

The pairing is the useful part. A group called Writing might open your editor, a browser and a reference app together, while your messaging app stays in the Favourites bar because you need it whether you are writing or not. Our guide to organising Mac apps with groups goes deeper into how to draw those boundaries, and the piece on context switching explains why batching the launch matters more than the seconds it saves.

When should you change what is in the bar?

When your work changes, not on a schedule. The honest signal is simple: if you have opened an app through search three times this week, it is a candidate. If a favourite has sat unclicked for a fortnight, it is taking up a slot.

One caution when you swap. The value of the bar comes from muscle memory, and every reshuffle resets it. Changing one icon costs you little. Rebuilding the whole row means a few days of looking at it again before it becomes automatic. Change one thing at a time.

What the Favourites bar does not do

Being straight about the limits saves disappointment:

• It is not faster than a keyboard shortcut you already have. If an app is bound to a hotkey, use the hotkey. The bar is for the apps that are not worth a dedicated shortcut.
• It is not a file launcher. ShortcutDock launches applications. Opening a specific document is a job for Spotlight or Finder.
• It is not a replacement for search. For the long tail of apps you use monthly, type the name into ShortcutDock's app search rather than trying to make everything a favourite.
• It does not help if you use three apps. If your whole workflow is a browser and a mail client, the Dock or Command and Tab already covers you, and no launcher will change that.

Putting it together

A setup worth copying: five to eight favourites you can click blind, two or three groups that map to the kinds of work you actually do, the Dock hidden so the bottom of the screen is yours, and a global hotkey to summon the panel without reaching for the mouse. That combination is what the features page describes, and it is the setup behind our Mac productivity setup for 2026.

If you are still deciding whether a menu bar launcher suits how you work at all, our comparison of the best app launchers for Mac in 2026 is the more useful starting point. Otherwise you can download ShortcutDock, set up five favourites, and see how the week goes.