How to Customise Your Mac Dock Beyond What System Settings Allows

macOS gives you exactly one slider for dock customisation — icon size — plus a handful of toggles: position (bottom, left, right), auto-hide, magnification, and whether to show recent apps. That's the full list. If you want anything beyond that — custom icon spacing, folders, a dock on every monitor, or a different visual style — you're working outside what System Settings can do.

What macOS actually lets you change in the Dock

Before reaching for third-party tools, it's worth knowing what's genuinely built in:

• Icon size: System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Size slider. Range is roughly 16–128px visually, though the slider doesn't show you numbers.
• Magnification: hover magnification with a separate size slider for the enlarged state.
• Position: bottom, left, or right edge of the screen — applies to all monitors.
• Auto-hide: hides the dock until you move the cursor to the edge. The delay isn't configurable natively.
• Show recent apps: adds a separator and up to three recent/running apps you haven't pinned. Turn this off in System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Show recent applications in Dock.
• Minimise effect: Genie or Scale, via System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Minimise windows using.
• App shortcuts: right-click any dock icon to see window list, options (keep in dock, open at login), and occasionally app-specific actions.

That's genuinely it. No colour, no per-app anything, no way to group apps, no multi-monitor control.

How to add invisible spacers to group your dock apps

Spacers are the most useful native-adjacent trick — they're not in System Settings, but they don't require installing anything. Open Terminal and run:

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

This adds one invisible spacer to the right end of your pinned apps. Run it multiple times to add more. Drag them into position between your app groups. To remove one, just drag it off the dock like a normal icon.

For a smaller, tile-sized spacer (half-width, sits in the right section of the dock near the trash):

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

Spacers are the best free way to bring visual structure to a cluttered dock — break your apps into logical zones (work, media, utilities) without any third-party software.

Why you can't change dock icon size per-monitor or per-app natively

macOS treats the dock as a single system element. The size setting is global — there's no per-display override, no way to have a smaller dock on your laptop screen and a larger one on your external display. The dock also only appears on one monitor at a time (whichever your cursor is closest to the bottom edge of), so the concept of per-monitor sizing doesn't even apply in the native world.

This is a significant frustration for multi-monitor users: the dock trips over to whichever screen your mouse drifted toward, and on the other monitors there's nothing.

How to get a dock on every monitor

This is not possible with macOS alone. The workaround most people reach for is System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Automatically hide and show the Dock — then you at least reduce the dead space — but that doesn't put a dock on secondary screens.

The only way to get a persistent dock on all connected displays is a dock replacement app. Dockish shows a fully functional dock on every monitor simultaneously — you can mirror the same layout across all screens, or configure each display's dock independently. It auto-detects when you plug in or unplug monitors and adjusts without you doing anything. Icon size (24–96px), spacing, and visual style are configurable per-dock, so your laptop dock and your 4K monitor dock can look exactly right for their respective screen densities.

I built the multi-monitor support as the first feature because it's the thing macOS most conspicuously refuses to do — and it's the pain point I heard about most before launching.

How to group dock apps into folders

macOS has never supported app folders in the dock. You can drag files and actual folders (from Finder) to the dock's right section, but you cannot drag one app icon onto another to make a folder the way you can on iPhone or iPad. It's one of those features that feels like it should exist and doesn't.

Dockish adds iPhone-style app folders: drag one app icon onto another and they collapse into a 2×2 folder with an auto-generated name. Tap the folder to expand it, tap an app to launch it. It keeps the dock compact even if you have 30+ apps pinned — organise by category (Browsers, Dev Tools, Communication) and the dock becomes navigable again.

How to change the dock's visual appearance

System Settings has no theming options. The dock looks like the dock — translucent background, fixed corner radius, system-controlled blur.

Terminal gives you a small escape hatch. To get a flat, 2D dock instead of the 3D shelf look (useful if your dock is on the left or right edge):

bash defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -bool true killall Dock

To revert:

bash defaults delete com.apple.dock no-glass killall Dock

Beyond that, dock replacement apps offer real theming. Dockish ships with glass, dark, light, and custom tint themes — and you can dial in icon size and spacing precisely with a number (not a vague slider) from 24 to 96px.

How to control auto-hide delay

macOS doesn't expose auto-hide delay in System Settings. You can set it via Terminal:

bash defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0 defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.5 killall Dock

The first line sets how long before the dock appears after your cursor reaches the edge (0 = instant). The second controls the animation duration (0.5 = half a second). To restore defaults:

bash defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier killall Dock

Dockish lets you set auto-hide delay from a slider in the app's preferences, no Terminal needed — and it handles the edge case of the dock refusing to auto-hide when a fullscreen video is playing (a known native bug).

Which changes are worth making now vs. later

If you want a tidier dock without installing anything: use spacers (the Terminal command above), turn off "Show recent applications," and set your icon size deliberately. That gets you 80% of the way there for zero cost.

If you want folders, a dock on every monitor, exact pixel control over sizing, or a different visual theme — macOS won't get you there. Dockish is a $6.99 one-time purchase with a 7-day free trial, so you can try the full thing before paying anything. It requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

Common questions

Can I change the Mac dock icon size to an exact pixel value?

Not through System Settings — the Size slider gives you a range with no numeric readout. You can write a specific value via Terminal with defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 60 (replace 60 with your target size) followed by killall Dock, but this still has limits and behaves inconsistently across macOS versions. Dock replacement apps like Dockish expose a proper numeric control (24–96px) that works reliably.

Why does the Mac dock only show on one monitor at a time?

This is an intentional macOS design decision — the dock follows your cursor to whichever screen edge you approach. There is no setting to change this behaviour; Apple has not added multi-monitor dock support in any macOS release including Sequoia. A third-party dock replacement is the only way to display a persistent dock on every connected display simultaneously.

Can I customise the Mac dock on macOS Sequoia specifically?

Sequoia did not add any new dock customisation options. The changes in Sequoia were confined to window tiling and iPhone Mirroring — the dock settings in System Settings → Desktop & Dock are identical to Sonoma. Everything in this post applies equally to Sonoma (macOS 14) and Sequoia (macOS 15).