ActiveDockĪctiveDock is a lot like the Windows taskbar, featuring a “Start Menu” that’s relatively well-featured but feels a little clunky. Their paid version is $4 on the App Store and removes this limitation. TabLauncher has a lite version with all of the features shown above but is limited to three tabs. However, you can make TabLauncher even faster by setting it to open right when your pointer touches the edge. There’s also a bit of closing delay when you move off, which you can turn down as well. It’s also positioned on the right side of the screen by default and doesn’t appear to have any options to change it in the settings, but you’re able to move it by dragging it around (even positioning it at an offset, or in a corner).īy default, there’s a delay for opening it, because it’s configured to open when the pointer “rests” at the edge of the screen, which is how the default dock works. The default theme looks a bit out of place on newer versions of macOS, so changing to the “Simple” theme along with a light gray color makes it blend in a little better: It shows previews of windows before you open them, too, which is a nice feature.

It’s fast-often faster to open and close than the default dock-and it separates icons into different tabs, all of which are configurable.

TabLauncher is at the top of our list for packing the most features into a usable dock. If for some reason you want the default dock to show again, you can always press Option+Command+D to open it manually.Īnd now that you know how to get the built-in dock out of the way let’s talk about those third-party replacements. This will make your dock take 15 minutes to open, which means it won’t accidentally pop up when you hover over it. To get standard dock functionality back, use this command to return it to the default settings: defaults delete autohide-delay killall Dock

To do so, fire up the Terminal and use this command: defaults write autohide-delay -float 1000 killall Dock

Instead of disabling it, though, you can turn up the autohide delay to 1000 seconds so that it doesn’t get in your way. This is because the dock app is responsible for things under the hood other than just running the dock in fact, Finder won’t even run with the dock disabled. However, there’s no option in the settings to turn it off, and no way to remove it completely. If you intend to replace the dock with a third party program, you’ll probably want to disable the default dock so it doesn’t get in the way.

Ubar dock replacement