The dock is where your most used and popular apps are placed. By default, the dock is located at the bottom of the screen, visible at all times. The iLife and built in OS X applications are placed in the dock automatically, such as Safari, Mail, iCal, iTunes, iPhoto, Garagband, etc. These can be removed, changed position, and more applications added to the dock at will.
To remove an application from the dock, click and hold on the Application icon and drag it onto your desktop. Release the mouse and it will disappear. Any applications removed from the dock can still be opened from the Application Folder.
To add an Application to the dock, drag its icon from the Application folder to the Dock. The icons will move aside and make room for the new application.
More Dock preferences can be set by using the System Preferences. Open System Preferences by clicking its icon in the Dock or Applications folder.
Under the Personal section of System Preferences, click on Dock.
The Dock settings window will appear with several sliders and check boxes.
The Size slider will adjust the size of the dock in normal view. For example, moving the slider all the way to the left will make the Dock as small as possible while still viewing all its applications.
Checking the Magnification box with make the Dock icons larger in size as the mouse sweeps over them. The slider adjusts the amount of magnification.
The Position on Screen radio buttons will move the dock to the left, bottom or right-hand side of the screen. By default, the Bottom button is pressed. Selecting Left will make the dock appear vertically on the left-hand side of the desktop.
The Minimize Windows Using: dropdown box will effect how a window looks as it shrinks into the Dock when pressing the yellow bottom at the top left of any window. Scale will just minimize the window, while Genie effect will add a “stretched” appearance to the window as it travels.
Usually when a window is minimized it will appear in the right-hand side of the dock as a new icon. Checking the box labeled Minimize windows into application icon will make the windows of each respective application shrink into that application. This will not create a new icon.
Animate opening applications will cause the icon of that respective application to bounce up and down while it is starting up.
Automatically hide and show the dock will cause the dock to disappear when the mouse is not at the bottom of the screen. To make it appear, just move the cursor to the bottom of the desktop where the dock would normally be.
Hi. I have a mac os x. Whenever I shrink my dock, it starts at the bottom of the screen, then shrinks to the bottom right-hand corner. Why?