Productivity
How to Organise Your Mac Apps With Smart Groups
Groups let you organise Mac apps by the work you are doing rather than by first letter, and launch a whole set in one click. Here is how to build them and where they fall down.
Key takeaways
- A Group in ShortcutDock is a named set of apps you build yourself, so your apps are organised by the work you do rather than alphabetically.
- Clicking a group launches every app in it at once, which is the fastest way to get from a cold Mac into a specific piece of work.
- The free tier of ShortcutDock allows one group, eight app shortcuts and five favourites, and removing those limits is a one-time Pro payment rather than a subscription.
- Groups work best at three to six apps each; past that the batch launch takes long enough that you start working before it finishes.
- The same app can sit in as many groups as you like, so a browser can live in both Design and Development without duplicating anything.
A Group is a named set of apps you build yourself, and clicking it launches every app in it at once. It replaces the alphabetical list with something organised around the work you actually do: a Design group, a Writing group, a Monday Morning group. This is how to build them, and where they stop being useful.
What is a Group, exactly?
Groups in ShortcutDock are custom categories that live inside the menu bar panel. They are not folders, nothing moves on disk, and adding an app to a group does not remove it from anywhere else. A group is a saved selection with a name and a launch button.
The difference from the tools macOS gives you matters here. The Dock is one flat row. The Applications folder is one alphabetical list. Neither knows that Figma, Slack and your browser are the same piece of work to you and that Terminal and Xcode are a different one. A group is where you record that.
Groupings that tend to earn their place:
- Browsers: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Arc
- Dev Tools: VS Code, Xcode, Terminal, Docker
- Design: Figma, Sketch, Pixelmator Pro, Preview
- Communication: Slack, Zoom, Messages, Mail
- Writing: Obsidian, Notion, Bear, Pages
- Utilities: Activity Monitor, Disk Utility, Console
How do you create a group?
- Click the ShortcutDock icon in the menu bar, or press your global hotkey, to open the panel.
- Switch to the Groups tab at the top of the panel.
- Click the + button to create a new group.
- Give it a name that describes the work, not the category. "Client invoicing" beats "Finance".
- Add apps to the group from your app list. ShortcutDock has already found your installed apps on first run, so you are choosing from a list rather than hunting through
/Applications. - Drag to reorder within the group so the app you open first sits first.
Two minutes of setup. If you have not installed it yet you can download ShortcutDock and build your first group before the kettle boils.
How many groups do you actually get?
Worth stating plainly rather than burying: the free tier allows one group, along with eight app shortcuts and five favourites. That is enough to find out whether grouped launching suits you, and not enough to run a full setup on. Removing the limits is a one-time Pro payment, not a subscription.
If you are on the free tier, spend your one group on the piece of work you start most often. Usually that is the morning routine rather than the most exciting project.
What does launching a whole group actually do?
Click the launch button on a group and every app in it starts at once. This is the part that changes your day, because the alternative is five separate trips to a launcher, each one an opportunity to get distracted on the way.
Consider a designer's morning: Figma, Slack, a browser, Notion and something playing music. Done one at a time, that is five decisions and five chances to end up reading email instead. As a group, it is one click and then you are already in the work.
The same trick works in the other direction. Launching a group when the apps are already open just brings them all to the front, so it doubles as a way of gathering your work windows back together after you have drifted.
Where grouped launching falls down
Three honest limits.
- Big groups launch slowly. Eight apps starting at once compete for disk and memory. On a Mac with less RAM, or on the first launch after a restart when nothing is cached, you will notice. Three to six apps per group is the range where it still feels instant.
- Apps that need a document are only half launched. Launching your editor gets you the editor, not the file you were working on. Groups open apps, they do not restore a session.
- Apps that ask for permissions interrupt the batch. Anything that wants screen recording, microphone or accessibility access on first run will put a dialog in front of you. Launch a new group once manually before you rely on it.
Groups also are not the right tool if the problem is that you have too many apps rather than badly sorted ones. If your Applications folder is full of things you installed once and never opened, sorting them into groups is organising clutter. Our guide to safely clearing space on a Mac is a better first step.
How do you rename, reorder or delete a group?
All three happen in the same place. Open the panel, go to the Groups tab, and use the edit control on the group you want to change. Renaming does not touch the apps inside it. Deleting a group removes the grouping only: the apps stay installed and stay in your main grid, because a group was never holding them in the first place.
Two failure cases worth knowing before they surprise you:
- An app you moved or uninstalled. If an app is deleted from
/Applicationswhile it is still in a group, its entry stops working. Remove the entry and re-add the app if you reinstalled it somewhere else. - A group that will not accept a ninth app. That is the free tier's eight-shortcut cap, not a bug. It is the most common thing people write to support about.
How should you decide what goes in a group?
By project
One group per client or project, holding the specific tools that project needs. Good when your work is genuinely separated into streams, and it makes context switching a deliberate act rather than an accident.
By time of day
A Morning group with mail, calendar and chat. A Deep Work group with your editor, terminal and documentation and nothing that can interrupt you. A Wind Down group. This one is quietly effective because it puts a boundary between modes, which is most of what reducing context switching comes down to.
By category
Browsers, dev tools, creative apps, utilities. The obvious approach, and the one to fall back on if the other two feel like too much thinking. It is easy to maintain and hard to get wrong.
Groups or Favourites?
They solve different problems and people mix them up constantly.
- The Favourites bar is for apps you open many times a day regardless of what you are doing. Your browser, your terminal, your notes app. It is always visible in the panel, whichever group you are looking at.
- Groups are for sets of apps tied to a mode of work. You do not want them all the time, you want them together when you want them.
If an app is in every group, it is a favourite. Move it. There is more on getting the balance right in our Favourites bar guide.
A few things worth knowing
- An app can live in as many groups as you like. A browser in both Design and Dev Tools is correct, not a mistake.
- Emoji in group names read faster than text at a glance, and they survive being scanned in peripheral vision.
- Put the group you use every morning first. Ordering is free and you will feel it every day.
- Revisit the list after a month. Groups you have never launched are telling you something about how you thought you worked versus how you do.
Once your groups are settled, the rest of the setup tends to follow: a menu bar you can read, a Dock you no longer need, and a launcher that opens work rather than apps. We put the whole thing together in our Mac productivity setup guide, and made the case for the missing Dock in why I hide my Mac Dock.
Frequently asked questions
How many groups can I make in ShortcutDock?
The free tier allows one group, along with eight app shortcuts and five favourites. Pro removes all three limits and is a single one-time payment rather than a subscription. If you are only testing the idea, one group is enough to tell whether grouped launching suits how you work.
What happens if an app in my group is already open when I launch the group?
Nothing bad. macOS brings the already-running app to the front instead of starting a second copy. Launching a group twice in a row is harmless, so you can use it as a way to gather your work apps back together after you have wandered off into other windows.
Can the same app be in more than one group?
Yes, and it should be. An app belongs wherever you would reach for it. A browser typically sits in several groups at once. Adding it to a second group does not remove it from the first and does not create a duplicate on disk.
Why does launching a group feel slow on my Mac?
Every app in the group starts at the same time, so they compete for disk and memory at once. This is most noticeable on Macs with less RAM and on the first launch after a restart, when nothing is cached. Keeping a group to three or four heavy apps rather than eight makes a clear difference.
Related guides
