Dock has long been a productivity-defining macOS feature. It is fully customizable and allows you to keep your frequently-used apps handy so that you can launch them right away. What’s more, it also shows all of your open apps to ensure you can switch between them with utmost ease – without needing to hop from one end to the other. But did you know that could show only open apps in Mac Dock? If you are fond of Dock, chances are pretty high that you may wish to unravel this pretty nifty Mac hack. Let me show you how it works!
Customize Mac Dock to Show Only Open Apps
It’s worth pointing out that in this guide we will be using the Terminal command to force the Mac Dock to show only the apps that are currently open. Even if you are not good at using Terminal commands, you shouldn’t worry as it’s dead simple. Oh yes, you can also revert to the original state without any pain if you ever want to go back to the default route.
Force Your Mac Dock to Show Only Open Apps
Step 1. To get started, open the Terminal app on your Mac. Bring up the Spotlight search (CMD+Space keyboard shortcut) on your Mac -> search for the Terminal app and open it. Alternately, navigate to the Finder -> Go menu -> Utilities folder -> Terminal app.
Step 2. Now, copy and paste the following command in Terminal and hit enter/return.
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool true; killall Dock
Voila! The change will come into effect straight away. Your Dock will refresh and begin to show only the currently open apps. Have a look at my Mac’s Dock as it displays the apps that are open!
Read more: What is Live Captions on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and How It Works
Force Your Mac Dock to Go Back to the Default State
As stated above, you can revert the change at any time you want to go back to the original Dock. To do so, all you need to do is just open Terminal and paste the command given below, and hit enter/return.
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool false; killall Dock
Wrapping up…
That’s pretty much done! So, that’s how you can customize the Dock on your Mac to display the apps that you are currently working on. Have you found this helpful? If yes, feel free to send in your invaluable feedback.
Also read: How to Screenshot an Entire Webpage on Mac
