How to Hide Mac Dock (And Fix Hiding Problems)

Press Option, Command and D. The Dock slides off screen and stays there until you push the pointer against the bottom edge. That is the whole answer for most people. The rest of this guide is about making the Dock stop appearing when you did not ask, and fixing the cases where it refuses to hide at all.

The fastest way to hide the Dock

Three routes to the same switch:

• Option, Command and D. Works from any app, toggles instantly, and toggles back.
• System Settings, then Desktop and Dock, then turn on Automatically hide and show the Dock.
• Right-click the Dock divider, the thin line between your pinned apps and the folder stacks, and choose Turn Hiding On.

If you would rather set it from a script or a setup file, the equivalent command is defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true; killall Dock, and -bool false reverses it.

Nothing is lost when you hide the Dock. Your pinned apps, stacks and icon size are all still configured; they are simply not drawn until you ask for them.

How do you stop the Dock popping up when you did not ask?

This is the real complaint people have with auto-hide. By default the Dock appears the moment the pointer touches the bottom edge, which happens constantly by accident: reaching for a button low in a window, overshooting a scroll, dragging a file. The Dock slides up, covers what you were aiming at, and you wait for it to go away again.

Add a delay so the Dock only appears when you deliberately hold the pointer there:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 2; killall Dock

Two seconds is a good starting point. Use 1 if that feels sluggish, or 5 if you want the Dock effectively out of your life. The change does not take effect until the Dock restarts, which is what the killall Dock half does: you will see the Dock blink out and back, and after that a brush past the bottom edge does nothing.

To undo it: defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay; killall Dock

How do you make it appear instantly when you do want it?

Once a delay is in place, the slide-up animation is just more waiting. Remove it:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0; killall Dock

The Dock now snaps into position. If zero feels abrupt, 0.15 keeps a hint of motion. Undo with defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier; killall Dock.

These two settings are designed to be used together. A long delay stops accidents; an instant reveal means the Dock still responds the moment you genuinely want it. Setting one without the other gives you the worse half of each.

Why will my Dock not hide?

Five causes cover nearly every case, in the order worth checking them:

1. An app is demanding attention. A bouncing icon or a modal dialog holds the Dock open until you deal with it. Click the app and clear the alert.
2. The pointer is inside the Dock strip. The Dock stays visible while the pointer is over it, and the strip is slightly taller than it looks. Move away from the bottom edge and wait a moment.
3. Auto-hide got turned off by accident. Option, Command and D is easy to hit while reaching for other shortcuts. Check the toggle in System Settings under Desktop and Dock.
4. The Dock moved to another display. With more than one screen, the Dock follows whichever display you hold the pointer against the bottom edge of. It is hiding correctly; it is just not where you are looking.
5. The Dock process is stuck. Run killall Dock in Terminal. It restarts in about a second, keeps all your settings, and clears most rendering faults.

If the Dock is still wrong after a restart of the process, the next step is clearing its preferences entirely, which our guide to resetting the Mac Dock to default walks through along with the hot corner settings it takes with it.

How does hiding work with more than one display?

Worth being explicit, because it is the source of most confusion. macOS keeps one Dock, not one per screen. It appears on whichever display you push the pointer to the bottom edge of, and it stays there until you do the same on another. Auto-hide applies to that single Dock wherever it currently lives.

If you have a laptop display below an external monitor, the effect is that the Dock is prone to appearing on the laptop screen while you work on the big one. A reveal delay fixes this better than anything else, because the accidental edge contacts stop triggering it.

Should you move the Dock instead of hiding it?

Try this before you commit to hiding. On a widescreen display, vertical space is scarce and horizontal space is not, so a Dock on the left or right edge costs you far less than one along the bottom:

defaults write com.apple.dock orientation left; killall Dock

Accepted values are left, right and bottom, and the same choice exists in System Settings as Position on screen. A side Dock is also further from the places you click by accident, so it interrupts you less even without a delay. The trade-off is that folder stacks open as lists rather than fans, and long app names get truncated.

How do you undo everything?

Press Option, Command and D to bring the Dock back, then clear the two Terminal settings:

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay; defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier; killall Dock

If you also changed the position or the icon size, the complete reset is defaults delete com.apple.dock; killall Dock, which returns everything in that domain to factory settings. Note that this takes your hot corners with it.

What to use once the Dock is out of the way

Hiding the Dock only works if opening apps is still easy. Spotlight covers it with Command and Space if you are happy typing names. If you would rather see icons, a menu bar launcher uses space that is already occupied by the menu bar, so it costs you nothing on screen.

That is what ShortcutDock does: click the menu bar icon or press a global hotkey you choose, and a dark panel drops down with your apps in a grid. Groups let you launch a whole set at once, and the Favourites bar keeps the handful you use hourly in a fixed row. It needs macOS 13 Ventura or later, uses under 20MB of RAM, and runs entirely offline with no account. The free version holds eight app shortcuts, five favourites and one group; Pro removes those caps for a single payment rather than a subscription.

If you want the reasoning rather than the instructions, we wrote about why we hide the Mac Dock. For the full version of this guide, including emptying the Dock entirely, see how to completely remove the macOS Dock. And if you are weighing up launchers rather than settings, Mac Dock replacements compared is the place to start, or you can download ShortcutDock and judge it directly.