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I want the Dock completely gone. I haven't used it in the past three releases of OS X (10.5 to present). I want it completely gone, and LaunchBar there instead. Is there a way to kill the Dock so that it does not load or run?

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    I realise this was a while ago, but your comment to the original answer below indicates that you gave up on this idea. Have you tried the other solutions in the mean time? That 1000 second thing is amazing. I use my launchpad accessed via a touch pad gesture, which I much prefer to using the dock. Maybe you could update your original post with a summary of how things have moved on since the original question was asked.
    – Geoff Pointer
    Oct 13, 2018 at 23:50
  • No, I never tried the other solutions as none of them would have done everything I was looking for. I just think that given all the other more precise methods of interacting with Finder, the dock is antiquated. I didn't want to spend resources on it.
    – Everett
    Oct 17, 2018 at 21:36
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    I agree about the dock and now use my mac without it. It's still there of course and you can still see it in app exposé but my screen real estate is now completely free of it. What is it that still troubles you about using Joonas' solution?
    – Geoff Pointer
    Oct 17, 2018 at 22:29
  • Favourited. Both for how to do this again and how to re-enable it later...
    – Robino
    Mar 27, 2020 at 10:18
  • A simple psychological solution that works for me - move the dock to the right side of the screen. I have basically forgotten it's existence now
    – Janac Meena
    Feb 10 at 18:40

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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The Dock process on OS X is responsible for more than just the actual Dock on your screen. It does a bunch of background stuff, including Dashboard. Most notably, the Finder won't function properly if the Dock process isn't running, so turning it off completely is pretty much a no-go without breaking OS X in the process.

The best I can suggest is keeping the dock hidden, and make the size as small as possible so you're less likely to trigger it.

You can also position it where it's least likely to get in the way - as you probably know, you can put it on the left, right or bottom of your screen. But you can also pin it to a particular corner, just use the defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string start command. Type that command in Terminal (replace start with end to change which corner it goes in, or middle to go back to the default), then killall Dock to restart the Dock and apply the change.

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    Though this may have worked at one time, it doesn't seem to any longer. The only options that work currently it seems are left, right, and bottom as seen here. If anybody finds a way to make this work, please update.
    – theherk
    Jan 12 at 10:57
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This article from Lifehacker.com.au suggests setting the Dock autohide delay to 1000 seconds, like so:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 1000; killall Dock

To restore the default behavior:

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay; killall Dock

The author says he sets the delay to two seconds, so he can still get to the Dock in those rare cases when it's needed.

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    Instead of setting a small delay to get your dock back when needed, simply unhide the dock with command-option-D. This basically gives you full control on when you want to see your dock.
    – Julien
    May 8, 2021 at 2:47
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    Perfect. I want the Dock to only appear when I do the "4 fingers up" gesture. And this suits me perfectly. Thanks!
    – Faruk D.
    Jan 24, 2022 at 15:24
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    Setting to ~15 instead of 1000 works for me - if something happened to the keyboard I'd want to be able to get to the dock still in an extreme case.
    – Freewalker
    Jan 20 at 17:54
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    Works on Ventura as well.
    – haridsv
    Feb 1 at 9:56
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This answer doesn't really add that much to what is already here, but I felt that the answers offering solutions for hiding it lacked some information.

I personally use uBar and I've used the following set of terminal commands without any issues. I can only confirm that I've used these without any issues since El Capitan. I can't remember further than that for sure.

To be clear, this only hides Dock, so that you will never have to deal with it accidentally popping up.

For those who don't know, these lines of code should be run in Terminal. It can be found here: /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app. Just open Terminal and paste in the lines and press enter.

# Hide Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true && killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 1000 && killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE && killall Dock

# Restore Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false && killall Dock
defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay && killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool FALSE && killall Dock

You can run each line separately as well.

Explanation on what each line does:

  1. First line turns on autohide
    • As someone mentioned, Cmd+Alt+D still toggles Dock visibility just like before. This is useful if you need to assign application to a specific space. Using the Dock is the only way (AFAIK).
  2. By default when Dock autohide is on, hovering over the edge where it sits shows the Dock pretty much immediately. This line Makes the hover delay 1000 seconds, making it pretty much impossible to accidentally show dock if you happen to hover over the edge. You'd have to let it sit there for ~17 minutes.
  3. This removes the bounce animation that happens when applications want your attention or when an application is launching. I've noticed that depending on the Dock icon size, they may peak from the edge when they start bouncing. This gets rid of that issue.

killall Dock at the end of each line forces Dock to quit and then it restores itself automatically. This is to basically load the new settings. It's only necessary to run killall Dock after the very last line, but this way it's easier to run the lines separately if necessary ...and in bulk it really makes no difference.

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    I'm on 12.6, and the autohide delay does not seem to take effect. If I set it to 1000 and kill Dock, it still appears almost instantly if I accidentally move the mouse over it.
    – rcorre
    Oct 19, 2022 at 15:37
  • @rcorre, Hmmn... Maybe try restarting the computer afterwards. It should work... I've been using this exact code snipped since like Mavericks on every major version up to Monterey, where it works just fine. I do maybe have some recollection if not always sticking but I can't remember the details of how it resolved. Maybe I ran the commands one by one or without killalle or tried different values first to see if anything sticks. Or perhaps it was the restart...
    – Joonas
    Oct 19, 2022 at 20:16
  • Unfortunately I tried restarting after, and the setting still doesn't stick. The dock appears immediately after moving my mouse to the bottom of the screen.
    – rcorre
    Nov 14, 2022 at 20:33
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    Oh, sorry @Joonas! I missed the killall cfprefsd bit. That totally worked, thanks!
    – rcorre
    Nov 23, 2022 at 18:16
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    Works on Ventura as well.
    – haridsv
    Feb 1 at 9:56
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You can change icons size to 1px using:

defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -float 1; killall Dock

To restore it to usable size:

defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -float 64; killall Dock

Or simply open System Preferences and change the Dock size there.

There's a downside though, you can't quickly inspect the Dock if you need to, without changing the size back.

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  • It would help if you gave more information about this setting and how to set it back to its default.
    – Geoff Pointer
    Oct 13, 2018 at 23:46
  • This setting change the apple dock icon size.
    – Yukulélé
    Oct 15, 2018 at 8:30
  • to get back, run this command but replace 1 by 64
    – Yukulélé
    Oct 15, 2018 at 8:33
  • or simply go to system preference > dock and change size value
    – Yukulélé
    Oct 15, 2018 at 8:35
  • The down side of this idea is that it is not straightforward if you want to take a quick look at the dock.
    – Geoff Pointer
    Oct 15, 2018 at 16:02
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To double click an icon and toggle the behaviour. using @Jonas code -Thanks!

I saved the following into a file named Toggle_Dock then ran sudo chmod +x Toggle_Dock which might have not been needed. Now I can just use the icon to toggle the dock.

# Check if dock is hidden
if [[ "$(defaults read com.apple.dock autohide)" -eq "1" ]]; then
  # Restore Dock
  defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false && killall Dock
  defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay && killall Dock
  defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool FALSE && killall Dock
  exit
fi
# Hide Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true && killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 1000 && killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE && killall Dock
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The free app Onyx has the option to "hide the dock" completely under the parameters tab. And with Xmenu (free) my dock is now a dropdown list.

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