I’ve been using MacOS since 2012. This past 10 years were sometimes interrupted by brief moments of Windows for work, but for me it’s been mostly MacOS. I got a new MacBook about year ago, and in an attempt to maximize the screen real estate (or atleast the feeling of it) I decided to automatically hide my Dock. I haven’t looked back since. In this post I will explain why.
Size matters
A little background, a year ago I purposefully chose the 14" MacBook Pro instead of the 16". I came from the previous generation Intel 13" with touchbar, so it seemed like a good option with a bigger screen in more or less the same form factor. The 16" is significantly heavier with 1.6 vs. 2.1 kilograms, and was too big to fit in my favorite laptopbag. Since I have to carry my laptop with me daily, it made sense for me to go for the 14".
Around the same time, a friend of mine bought the 16" model. When we compared the two I realised just how much screen real estate you miss with the smaller option. We all know that an extra inch makes a huge difference (for screens!), so imagine two. Long story short: I caught a minor case of buyer’s remorse. In the search for a solution, I tried hiding the Dock.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, “the 14” MacBook Pro” is easy to remember, but it actually has a 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display (3024x1964 pixels, 254ppi). That translates to a screen width of roughly 11.91 inch and height of about 7.73 inch.
If you take the standard Dock settings, with the Dock at the bottom of the screen in medium size, it takes up ~0.75 inch. So if you permanently show the Dock, your effective screen real estate is not 14.2 inch but 13.8 inch. That’s almost 10% less screen! In other words, hiding your Dock makes your effective screen size 10% bigger, and allows you to use its full potential.
Navigation
The main task of the Dock is navigation. So when you hide it, how are you supposed to navigate? First of all, don’t forget that you Dock is still accessible, just hover over the area where it’s supposed to be for it to pop up. But if you’re in the mood to take your MacOS experience one step further…
Opening apps
Searching and opening apps is fairly easy with MacOS Spotlight. But I personally prefer tools such as Alfred or Raycast, which are both basically Spotlight on steroids. A simple ⌘+space launches Alfred on my mac, which I use to replace the app opening functionality of the Dock.
Switching apps
Navigating between apps is also easy. There are a couple of options. The native MacOS way is by using ⌘+⇥ and ⌘+⇤ to switch between your open apps, and ⌘+` to switch between the active screens within that app.
I often switch apps with Alfred as well. I like this approach because it simplifies navigation, you always press ⌘+space and type in the app you want to go to. If you’ve already have this app open it shows the screen, if not, it opens the app. Here you can then also use ⌘+` to switch between the active screens within that app.
If you’re not a fan of using that many hotkeys, there are tools such as AltTab which allow you to switch between all active screens of all open apps, just like on Windows.
Conclusion
I really encourage you to try hiding your Dock. It’s a simple switch (Preferences > Desktop & Dock > Automatically show and hide the Dock) and it truly elevated my MacOS experience. An additional benefit I noticed was that hiding my Dock really reduced the clutter on my screen which led to increased productivity.