Add New App to the Mac Dock. Click on Applications in the sidebar. Scroll down to where you can see your new app. Drag the app down to your dock and release it once you have placed it where you want. Repeat for all apps you desire to have on your dock. Therefore, after entering each command, type the following and press Return to quickly restart the Dock: killall Dock. The Dock will disappear briefly and then reload with the changes now visible. Enable 2D Dock Mode. For the first few years of its life, the OS X dock was a 2D row of icons that displayed applications, utilities, and folders.
This article explains how you can fix when your Mac’s Dock stops working. Sometimes the Dock may act bizarre, for example, the Dock may:
- Freeze
- become glitchy
- have Apps with wrong, generic icons
- include items with questions marks
- not display open applications
- not add or remove items on the Dock.
The Dock offers a convenient place to access apps and features. So when it stops running, you may want to fix it quickly. This article includes common problems and their solutions. Here is how you can address various Mac Dock problems:
Before we start, make sure that your Mac’s OS is up to date.
1. Restart your Mac: Restarting your Mac may fix your Dock problems. To restart your Mac, click the Apple menu and select Restart.
2. Restart the Dock: Restarting your Dock may fix your freezing Dock problem. You can do so by using the Terminal app. Here is how:
- Open the Terminal app (applications/utilities) and hit the following code and then hit enter:
- The Dock will restart.
3. Reset the Dock. If you are still having your problem, you may want to reset your Dock to its default settings. Again we will use Terminal again. Here is how:
- Open the Terminal app
- Enter the following code and hit enter
- This will reset your Dock to its default settings.
4. Dock not showing up? We previously wrote about this. Please read that article. Further, you may use the Command(⌘)+Option+D shortcut to toggle the Dock to show or hide. Also, check your Dock settings by going to the Apple menu > System Preferences > Dock. This is where you can adjust your Dock settings. For example, if you check the “Automatically hide and show the Dock” box, the Dock will appear or disappear automatically. If you uncheck this box then the Dock will show all the time.
5. You have an icon with a question mark in the Dock? This is probably you deleted an app but its icon is still in the Dock. Simply drag the icon to the Trash to get rid of it.
6. Restart your Mac in safe mode. Here is how:
Mac App Icons Won't Attach To Dock On Ipad
- Turn off your Mac
- Turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold the Shift key until you see the login window
- Login (you may have to log in more than once)
- Now your computer is in safe mode. Does your problem occur in safe mode?
- Now restart your Mac normally (do not press the Shift key)
7. If your Dock does not include open apps or you are unable to add or remove apps then you may want to remove the Dock preferences as it has probably been corrupted. Here is how:
Create Icon On The Dock
- Go to Finder
- Click Go and Go To Folder
- Enter the following locations and click go
- ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
- What you want to do is, first copy this file to your desktop (as a backup) and then delete this file (not the backup) by dragging it to the Trash.
- Now restart your Mac
- The good thing is that if you are unhappy with the result, you can always restore your file by putting back your back up file.
8. Is your Dock showing wrong, generic icons for some or all apps or documents? Then this fix will help you. Follow the steps below:
- Open Finder
- Click Go and Go To Folder
- And enter the following and click go
- ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.finder/Cache.db
- Drag this file to the Tras
- Then restart your Mac.
See also: How To Turn Off Catalina Update Notifications (Prompts & Badges)
Take a minute to look at the row of icons at the bottom of your display. That row is the Dock, and those individual pictures are known as icons.
Dock icons are a quick way to bring a hidden window or application to the front so that you can work with it again. Dock icons are odd ducks — they’re activated with a single-click. Most icons are selected (highlighted) when you single click and opened when you double-click. So Dock icons are kind of like links on a Web page — you need only a single click to open them.
You can customize your Dock with favorite applications, a document you update daily, or maybe a folder containing your favorite recipes — use the Dock for anything you need quick access to. Here’s how you can add an icon to the Dock or remove a Dock icon you no longer desire.
Adding an icon to the Dock
Adding an application, file, or folder to the Dock is as easy as 1-2-3. First, open a Finder window that contains an application, file, folder, URL, or disk icon that you use frequently. Then follow these steps to add it to the Dock:
1. Click the item you want to add to the Dock.
2. Drag the icon out of the Finder window and onto the Dock, as shown in Figure 1.
3. An icon for this item now appears on the Dock.
Folder, disk, and URL icons must be on the right of the divider line in the Dock; Application icons must be on the left of it.
Figure 1: Drag an icon onto the Dock to add it.
You can add several items at the same time to the Dock by selecting them all and dragging the group to the Dock. However, you can delete only one icon at a time from the Dock.
Removing an icon from the Dock
To remove an item from the Dock, just drag its icon onto the Desktop. It disappears with a cool poof animation, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: To remove an icon, drag it off the Dock and POOF — it’s gone.
By moving an icon out of the Dock, you aren’t moving, deleting, or copying the item itself — you’re just removing its icon from the Dock. The item is unchanged. Think of it like a library catalog card: Just because you remove the card from the card catalog doesn’t mean that the book is gone from the library.
After you figure out which programs you use and don’t use, it’s a good idea to relieve overcrowding by removing the ones you never (or rarely) use.
Knowing what to put in your Dock
Put things on the Dock that you need quick access to and that you use often, or add items that aren’t quickly available from menus or the sidebar. If you like using the Dock better than the Finder window sidebar, for example, add your Documents, Movies, Pictures, Music, or even your hard disk to the Dock.
Consider adding these items to your Dock:
- A word-processing application: Most people use word-processing software more than any other application.
- A project folder: You know, the folder that contains all the documents for your thesis, or the biggest project you have at work, or your massive recipe collection . . . whatever. Add that folder to the Dock, and then you can access it much quicker than if you have to open several folders to find it.
- Don’t forget — if you
![Mac App Icons Won Mac App Icons Won](/uploads/1/2/6/3/126390505/623305803.jpg)
press
- (click but don’t let go) on a folder icon, a handy hierarchical menu of its contents appears.
- A special utility or application: You may want to add your favorite graphics application such as Photoshop, or the game you play every afternoon when you think the boss isn’t watching.
- Your favorite URLs: Save links to sites that you visit every day — ones that you use in your job, your favorite Mac news sites, or your personalized page from an Internet service provider (ISP). Sure, you can make one of these pages your browser’s start page or bookmark it, but the Dock lets you add one or more additional URLs.
Change Mac Dock Icons
- Here’s how to quickly add a URL to the Dock. Open Safari and go to the page with a URL that you want to save on the Dock. Click and drag the small icon that you find at the left of the URL in the Address bar to the right side of the dividing line in the Dock (at the arrow’s head in Figure 3) and then release the mouse button. The icons in the Dock will slide over and make room for your URL. From now on, when you click the URL icon that you moved to your Dock, Safari opens to that page.
Figure 3: To save a URL to your Dock, drag its little icon from the Address bar to the right side of the Dock.
- You can add several URL icons to the Dock, but bear in mind that the Dock and its icons shrink to accommodate added icons, thus making them harder to see. Perhaps the best idea — if you want easy access to several URLs — is to create a folder full of URLs and put that folder on the Dock. Then you can just press and hold your mouse pointer on the folder (or Control-click the folder) to pop up a menu with all your URLs.
Even though you can make the Dock smaller, you’re still limited to one row of icons. The smaller you make the Dock, the larger the crowd of icons you can amass. You have to determine for yourself what’s best for you: having lots of icons available on the Dock (even though they may be difficult to see because they’re so tiny) or having less clutter but fewer icons on your Dock.