How to Customise the Mac Dock (Size, Position, Folders, and More)

macOS gives you a handful of dock settings - size, magnification, position, and auto-hide - but that's roughly where Apple's customisation ends. If you want folders, per-monitor docks, smaller icon spacing, or a dock that doesn't take 30 seconds of mouse-hunting to navigate, you'll need to go further than System Settings.

What you can change in System Settings alone

Open System Settings → Desktop & Dock and you'll find these native controls:

• Size - a slider from small to large (no exact pixel value exposed)
• Magnification - icons grow on hover; set the magnified size independently
• Position on screen - Left, Bottom, or Right
• Minimise windows using - Genie effect or Scale effect
• Automatically hide and show the Dock - hides the dock until you move the cursor to the screen edge
• Show suggested and recent items - turn this off to stop the dock filling up with apps you opened once
• Animate opening applications - the bouncing icon on launch

These are genuinely useful settings that most people never dig into. Turning off "Show suggested and recent items" alone can clean up a cluttered dock significantly.

How to add spacers to the Mac dock

The dock has no built-in divider or spacer UI, but you can add invisible spacers via Terminal. Open Terminal (Applications → Utilities → Terminal) and run:

bash defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}' killall Dock

This adds a blank draggable tile to the right end of your dock. Run the command multiple times to add more. Drag spacers wherever you want them - between app groups, before the divider line, anywhere. To remove one, drag it off the dock like any other icon.

For a small tile (half-width spacer), swap spacer-tile for small-spacer-tile in the command above.

This works on any macOS version, requires no extra software, and is fully reversible.

Why the dock only shows on one monitor - and what to do about it

By default on macOS, the dock appears on whichever monitor your cursor is currently on - but only when you hover near that screen's bottom edge, and only if "Displays have separate Spaces" is enabled in System Settings → Desktop & Dock. In practice, this means the dock vanishes to your main display when you're working on a secondary monitor and isn't available until you mouse all the way to the edge.

The native behaviour is not a true multi-monitor dock. There's no way to pin a dock permanently to a specific external monitor, and you can't have different icons on different displays.

If your workflow involves two or three monitors and the constant mouse-trip to summon the dock is slowing you down, this is the clearest gap in macOS's built-in dock.

How to get a proper dock on every monitor

This is where third-party dock apps earn their place. Dockish is a dock replacement for macOS 14 (Sonoma) and later that solves the multi-monitor problem directly. You get a full dock on every connected display - either mirrored (same apps everywhere) or independent (different icons per screen). When you plug in or unplug a monitor, it detects the change automatically.

Beyond multi-monitor support, Dockish adds several things that System Settings simply can't:

iPhone-style folders. Drag one app icon onto another and they merge into a folder with a 2×2 preview grid, similar to how iOS folders work. If your dock has 30 apps and you can't find anything, grouping them into folders - Creative, Dev Tools, Communication - makes a significant difference. The dock autostarts naming based on the apps inside.

Exact icon sizing. Instead of Apple's vague slider, you set icon size in pixels: anywhere from 24px to 96px. Spacing and magnification amounts are also precise numbers, not approximate slider positions.

Themes. Glass (matches the native dock look), dark, light, or a custom tint colour. The dock can sit at the bottom, left, or right edge, same as the native dock.

Smart window handling. Clicking an icon for a minimised app actually brings it back, without the native dock's habit of doing nothing or opening a new window instead.

Dockish is a one-time purchase at $6.99 with a 7-day free trial - no subscription, no recurring charge, lifetime updates.

How to change dock icon size precisely

If you want more control than the System Settings slider offers but don't want a full replacement, you can set the dock tile size directly with a Terminal command:

bash defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 48 killall Dock

Replace 48 with any value from roughly 16 to 128. The sweet spot for most displays is between 40 and 64. This changes the same value the slider controls, just with a precise number instead of a visual estimate.

To reset to the system default:

bash defaults delete com.apple.dock tilesize killall Dock

How to hide the macOS dock entirely

Auto-hide (System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Automatically hide and show the Dock) is the built-in option - the dock slides off screen and returns when you hover the edge. You can adjust how fast it hides and appears by tuning the animation delay in Terminal:

bash defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0 defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.3 killall Dock

The first command removes the hover delay before the dock starts appearing. The second sets the animation duration in seconds - 0.3 is noticeably snappier than the default without feeling abrupt. Adjust both values to taste.

If you switch to Dockish, there's a one-click "Hide macOS Dock" button in its settings - fully reversible, no Terminal needed - so you're running only the Dockish dock without the system one sitting underneath it.

What dock customisation apps are available for Mac

Quick summary of the main options in 2026:

| App | Price | What it adds | |---|---|---| | Dockish | $6.99 one-time | Multi-monitor docks, folders, exact sizing, themes, smart window handling | | uBar | ~$30 | Taskbar-style replacement (more like Windows than a Mac dock - different philosophy) | | HyperDock | Dated | Window previews on hover; largely superseded | | DockDoor | Free | Window previews on hover only, no other dock changes | | macOS built-in | Free | Size, position, magnification, auto-hide |

If you only want window previews when hovering dock icons, DockDoor is a solid free option worth trying first. If you want actual dock customisation - folders, multi-monitor, sizing control, themes - that's where Dockish fits.

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Common questions

Can I put the Mac dock on my external monitor permanently?

macOS doesn't support pinning the dock to a specific external monitor. The native dock floats to whichever screen you're using and requires hovering the edge to appear. Apps like Dockish add a true persistent dock to every connected display, independent of where your cursor is.

How do I make Mac dock icons smaller?

Go to System Settings → Desktop & Dock and drag the Size slider left. For an exact pixel value, use the Terminal command defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 40 (replacing 40 with your preferred size) followed by killall Dock. Values between 36 and 52 work well on most screens.

Can I group Mac dock apps into folders?

The native Mac dock doesn't support folders or grouping - the only organisation tool is the divider line between apps and recent items. Third-party apps like Dockish add iPhone-style folders: drag one app onto another to create a grouped folder with a 2×2 icon preview.