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When you hide the Dock, OS X leaves a small gap at that edge. Is there a way to get rid of it?

In case you have never noticed the gap before here is a screenshot. Guess which side of the screen has the Dock:

enter image description here

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  • El Capitan has not been released yet, it's still in beta. Betas can't be discussed here because it would require people to break their NDA to discuss it. The public beta may change things, but that's not available yet.
    – William T Froggard
    Commented Jun 27, 2015 at 2:41
  • Sorry, maybe I got to remove the worlds El Capitan. The question is about the Dock.
    – firedev
    Commented Jun 27, 2015 at 2:42
  • I must have misunderstood. My bad. :p
    – William T Froggard
    Commented Jun 27, 2015 at 2:44
  • Wait, so you mean that when a window is "zoomed", it doesn't zoom completely, and leaves a small border on the bottom, right?
    – William T Froggard
    Commented Jun 27, 2015 at 2:46
  • Yes. Bottom or right/left. Depends where your Dock is located.
    – firedev
    Commented Jun 27, 2015 at 2:47

1 Answer 1

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Not yet (as of macOS Sierra 10.12.6). When hiding the dock, the OS still leaves ~4 pixels of visible space presumably reserved for some part of the dock behavior. Third party window resizing doesn't seem to help either. Creator fifafu of BetterTouchTool wrote:

You mean the gap when the dock is hidden? Unfortunately this is a limitation given by the system :-(. I haven't found a way to workaround that.

Note: This is more noticeable on lower resolution external displays (4px on a retina display is barely visible).

Some workarounds:

  • Move the window over the visible pixels, then drag from the opposite side (but also notice the additional delay in showing the dock)
  • Use an external display and set a different monitor as primary (drag the white menubar in the display arrangement in sys prefs), allowing full sizing on the non-primary display.

Related Apple SE but for visible docks: Force windows to be maximized but not fullscreen?

Have others noticed? Yes, lots. Macrumors dead ends:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/bottom-dead-space-with-automatic-hidden-dock.1716910/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/hiding-dock-still-leaves-a-few-pixels-unused.1208427/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-to-remove-space-between-window-and-dock.1094679/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/hidden-dock-small-space-in-the-bottom-of-the-screen.931858/

It's even caused bug reports for OS X app developers:

https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle/issues/555 https://github.com/fifafu/BetterTouchTool/issues/672
https://github.com/search?q=mac+dock+gap&type=Issues&utf8=%E2%9C%93

I'll add that this issue exists vertically as well:

enter image description here

enter image description here

Manual workaround enter image description here

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  • You said, "... the OS still leaves ~20 pixels of visible space presumably reserved for some part of the dock behavior", well you obviously didn't actually measure how many pixels it left, as it's nowhere near ~20, more like ~4, however if you consider that perceived space is actually the shadow of the window, it's not really a space.
    – user3439894
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 17:58
  • In case the first comment wasnt clear, If you take your second picture, the one with the red arrow pointing to what might be perceived as a space, and open it in an app like GIMP where you can magnify it and check color values... the perceived ~4 pixel space is actually the shadow of the window and as such is IMO technically not a space since a shadow is a part of displaying the window.
    – user3439894
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 19:45
  • I can see how the gap is irksome - whether 4 or 20 pixels. This is absolutely a common complaint - apple.stackexchange.com/questions/211737/…
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 22:12
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    Also, I’ve edited comments slightly - be sure to assume the dialog is friendly and meant to help or illuminate this answer as opposed to refuting it. +1 answer in my book
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 22:14
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    @user3439894 with two or more displays, the displays without the dock do not have the gap. Only the display with the dock has the gap. Thus the desktop UI is inconsistent regardless of shadows. The dimensions of the gap are not really relevant to the discussion, but good catch. I did measure the dimensions but accidentally took the width of my drag instead of the height. The answer has been updated.
    – Josh Hibschman
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 16:05

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