I'm on a Mac and I honestly have no use for the Dock. I actually hide it for an eternity so it never appears by running the following command.
defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 1000000
I use Alfred and that basically gives me all I really need in terms of opening apps and then I can use ⌘ + TAB to switch apps.
I also do not really use the touch bar except for mapping it to function keys (F1 - F12) when I have a browser open or VS Code.
Having said that, I came across a very interesting project a few weeks ago called Pock that lets you put the Dock into the touch bar. This combined with "permanently" hiding the Dock makes the touch bar more useful for me. If I'm honest, it's just to see if I have a Slack notification, but that alone is worth it.
Widgets manager for MacBook's Touch Bar
Pock is a free, open-source tool that gives you quick access to your favorite controls and services while maximizing your on-screen real estate
Download | GitHub | ProductHunt | Permissions | Changelog
Thank you!
If you want to support this project, you can click here Pock will always be available as free software!
How to install
- Go to the official website and click download.
- Unzip the archive by double-clicking on the file or running
unzip - Move the extracted file to
/Applications
Usage
-
Open Pock.
-
Check the menu bar for the newly added Pock icon. You can access Pock and widgets preferences from this menu item.
(If you don't see Pock in your Touch Bar, go to the
Keyboardpane in System Preferences and select "Touch Bar shows App Controls", then relaunch Pock)
Permissions
To have a flawless experience, please click here and read…
Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash
Top comments (5)
Thanks for sharing! I will try this out.
I tried Pock for a while and have to say it takes some getting used to when it comes to training my brain that the dock is now down there, but once you get used to it, it's actually useful.
This is a pretty cool project, thanks. However, as I'm using the new MacBook Pro model with a physical ESC key it duplicates it. Looking forward to improvements.
np. I have the new MBP too and you can hide the virtual ESC key in the preferences.
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