How to Customize Your Mac’s Dock to Make It Your Own

Personalize your Mac by tweaking how the Dock looks, where it is, and how it works.

Are you tired of looking at the same old Dock at the bottom of your Mac’s screen? We’ve got great news for you. You can actually customize the Dock and change its location, size, and many other settings. Here’s what you need to know to do it.

How to Customize the Mac’s Dock

You can change many aspects of the Dock to make it feel your own. Whether you want to change its size or location, you can do it from the System Preferences like this:

On your Mac, click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of your screen.
Click System Preferences.
Select Dock & Menu Bar.

Here’s where the magic happens. This is where you’ll be able to change and customize your Dock. But what can you do exactly?

Related: Everything You Need to Know About Your Mac’s Dock

Dock Customization Options in macOS

As you can see from the Dock & Menu Bar preferences, you can customize quite a lot of aspects of your Mac’s Dock. So let’s go over the basic options.

Size

This one’s pretty self-explanatory. You can change the size of the Dock and its apps in real-time. Drag the slider to the left or right and you’ll see how the Dock changes size automatically.

Magnification

You need to check Magnification to enable this feature. Magnification will magnify the size of an app when you hover your mouse over the Dock. After you enable Magnification, you can use the slider to choose the magnification size you want. Test it by moving your mouse on top of your Dock.

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Related: A Beginner’s Guide to the macOS Menu Bar

Position on Screen

You can probably guess what this does. You can change where you want to locate the Dock on your Mac’s screen: put the Dock on the left or right side of your screen or keep it at the bottom.

Minimize Windows Using Effects

You’re probably wondering what the Genie or Scale effects are. The truth is these are just aesthetic features. You can choose the effect an app will use when you minimize it. There’s no reason to choose one over the other, so go for the one you prefer.

Make the Dock Your Own

Now it’s your turn. You know how to make your Mac’s Dock feel like your own now. Remember that if you don’t like any changes you make, you can always go back and update the settings to their original state. And if you’re still feeling creative, there are other ways to personalize your Mac too.

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