Macintosh Dock

The Dock

The Dock is a menu bar that provides quick access to folders and applications on the hard drive. It also contains the trash can where you can move files you wish to delete. You can customize the Dock by clicking on the Apple, selecting Dock from the dropdown menu, and clicking on Dock Preferences from the side menu that appears.

Under Dock Preferences, adjusting Dock Size will make the Dock larger or smaller. If you choose the Magnification option, then you can adjust how much the icons will be magnified when the mouse moves over them. Adjusting Position on Screen will place the dock on the left, right or bottom of the screen. Minimize using: affects how windows are minimized.

Selecting Animate opening applications will determine whether the icon bounces at the bottom of the screen to indicate the opening of an application.
If Automatically hide and show the Dock is selected, then the dock will disappear when the mouse is not near that edge of the screen, and will reappear when the mouse moves by it.

After opening a program, a small black triangle will appear beneath it in the Dock. Additionally, if you are running more than one program, and a program in the background needs some form of user input the icon of that application will bounce in the Dock.