

Since they’re shortcuts, and not actual files, deleting them is also harmless. If you enjoyed this tip, we’ve got tons of other Dock tips available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, so check those out too.ĭo you keep your Mac Dock simple, stock, or customized? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.As for the other desktop icons (such as file, folder, or app shortcuts) you can hide them from the desktop by moving them to another folder on your Mac. The Mac Dock has other customizations available for it too, and don’t forget that you can relocate the Mac Dock screen position with ease to any side of the screen, and you can also set the Mac Dock to automatically hide or show itself with the cursor. If you remove (or add) too many things from the Mac Dock and regret your changes, remember that you can always reset the Mac Dock to the default icon set if you’d like to start over from scratch. That whimsical touch was removed in modern MacOS releases, however.Īdding app icons back into the Mac Dock is just as easy, just drag and drop them into the Mac Dock and position them wherever you’d like them to be. For example, on some earlier versions of Mac OS X, you had to click and drag an app icon out of the Dock and then wait a bit longer for a cloud icon to appear on the icon but the ‘Remove’ label did not appear, instead you’d simply release the app icon and it would disappear into a poof with a little sound effect. This applies to all versions of MacOS and Mac OS X, but there are some minor changes depending on the precise system version you’re running. There is an exception to this however, and that’s if you disabled the app icon status icons in System Preferences. You can tell an app is running as signified by the app status icons, which are little dots underneath the Dock icon if you see a dot under the app icon, it’s running and active, if you do not, then it’s not open or active. Remember, you can not remove an app icon from the Dock that is currently running.

You can remove just about every app icon from the Mac Dock if you’d like to, though Finder, active apps, and Trash will always remain the Dock. Repeat with other app icons to remove them from the Mac Dock too.Let go of the click to remove that app icon from the Mac Dock.Now drag the app icon out of the Dock while holding the click, continue holding as you drag until you see the “Remove” text appear on the icon.Locate the app you want to remove the Mac Dock.Here’s how you can remove any app icon from the Dock in MacOS: This will not uninstall the app or remove it from the Macintosh otherwise, it simply removes the app icon from the Dock. Removing app icons from the Mac Dock is simple and aside from removing it from the Dock it has no impact on the application.
