How I have my Mac Dock configured to work faster

Optimize the speed of the Dock using Terminal commands to speed up its animation and show only the applications that are open.

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You can configure the Mac Dock using an app, as I explain in the article:

Dock on Mac, Terminal or app to improve hiding?

I do it manually, because that way I can adjust certain things separately.

With the following command, I adjust the Dock’s hiding options, setting the delay (autohide-delay) to “0.0” so the Dock responds the moment I pass the pointer over the area, since by default it has a slight delay.

And then I set the appearance animation time (autohide-time-modifier) to “0.5” to execute.

Zsh
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true && defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0.0 && defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.5 && killall Dock
Zsh

With that, it’s practically instant without losing the animation effect, I just speed it up a little bit so it hustles.

Since I pretty much open everything using Spotlight, lastly I have it set up so that the Dock only shows apps that are currently running, and for that you have this command.

Zsh
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool true && killall Dock
Zsh

And if you want to change it back to normal, you do it with this other command.

Zsh
defaults delete com.apple.dock static-only && killall Dock
Zsh

Just a heads-up that sometimes when you enable showing only open apps, it removes all your shortcuts from the Dock, so even if you turn it off to get the normal Dock back, you’ll have to add your shortcuts again.