How to auto hide the Dock on a Mac, and make it faster

⌥ ⌘ D hides the Dock until you need it. How to turn it on, the Terminal commands that make it appear instantly, and how to undo them.

Guide · Updated 13 October 2026

Press ⌥ ⌘ D, or turn on System Settings, Desktop & Dock, Automatically hide and show the Dock. The Dock slides away and windows get its space.

Make it appear faster

By default the Dock waits a moment, then slides in. These Terminal commands remove the wait and shorten the slide:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.3
killall Dock

To go back to the normal speed:

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay
defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier
killall Dock

Other ways to give the Dock less room

  • Move it to the left or right side: wide screens have room to spare sideways.
  • Make it smaller with the Size slider in Desktop & Dock.
  • Turn off Show suggested and recent apps in Dock to keep it short.

ClutterFreeMac has a strip dock of its own at the bottom of the screen that shows every window on the strip; it can auto hide too (Settings, Navigation), so it never takes room from your windows.

Questions

What is the shortcut to hide the Dock on Mac?

⌥ ⌘ D turns automatic hiding on or off.

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