I realize there are three sections of each screen edge where you can place the Dock, but 24 combinations seemed like overkill for this simple survey.

Also, I know many of you probably don't use the Dock, regardless of its location. But I was interested in finding out where you keep it, not whether it's used -- unless you've gone through the effort to actually kill the Dock.

-rob.

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Visible, bottom lower-right for me. I want the trash in the same corner all the time, and the bottom interferes least with open windows.

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Ditto here.

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Bottom lower left, but I keep it hidden. Also, since I use path finder, making the Dock's trash useless, I have some quicksilver mouse triggers in the corner to move dragged objects to the trash, eject disks, and open the trash when I click the lower left corner.

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Ack. That should be bottom pinned right, and quicksilver actions on the bottom **right** corner. Silly me.

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Also, the only items that are permanently there are path finder, quicksilver, and the terminal. I took the regular finder icon out of the dock with TransparentDock (which I don't use for anything else, oddly). I'm not exactly sure how they take the finder out of the dock, but it's great.

Quicksilver handles most everything, while occasionally I drag documents to application icons in the dock, especially when they are of types that an application hasn't declared for itself, and so they won't use that app. in Quicksilver.

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Don't drag to the trash.. use Command-Delete. It's a LOT easier!

---
G4/Digital Audio/1GHz, 1 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.5
www.david-schwab.com
www.imanicoppola.net

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Whatever the set up, I've found it takes a little mental commitment to learn the new muscle memory and work habits behind a more efficient work flow. Recently as I've grown more familiar with Butler I've started using that not only to start apps but to by-pass the Application Switcher or Dock and go straight to an app (by going through the same motions as if I was launching it) as well.

I've also set my Mighty Mouse scroll pee to activate the Application Switcher, which I also use more and more. These two things have essentially replaced my Dock, with the exception of the need to drag files to apps not in my Sidebar.
Sidebar gets most of the dragging because it generally several hundred pixels closer than the Dock.

Also a down side of hiding the Dock, is it takes a while to see where an application is. This goes for the Application Switcher as well, because apps move around based on last used. I find with Butler there is no mouse and no looking around. I can activate an application or bring it to the fore with my eyes closed.

P.S. I know there have been hints to increase "Save Sheet" animation speed, but what I'd really like is to increase my Dock Unhide speed. I haven't found that on this site. Anyone?

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Of course... where God intended it to be.

It's interesting that over 50% have it on the bottom in the poll.

But the comments are overwhelmingly people who have it on the right. It could simply be that the people who have thought about it, put it on the right ;o)

I don't have disk icons on my desktop. Having it on the right doesn't really work with that and you can always have them in the dock anyway.

The left interferes with work windows far too much. Ditto the bottom, for laptop owning me, it impacts far too much on the height of windows. i'd dare say a taller monitor would make the bottom more attractive alright, but now it's a physical habit of mine, I could never see me changing my habits.

But increasingly, Quicksilver is doing just that. And the dock is becoming a much less visited place.

So it's hidden.

And it only comes out when I'm not near the keyboard and my hand is already on the trackball.


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I think most people have it on the bottom just because it's the default and people either don't know or don't bother to change it.

I have it at the right flush bottom so that the Trash is at the correct place. It's hidden on my two laptops at home. At work where I have a huge monitor, it's in the same location but it's visible.

I think the right side is least intrusive as most windows don't open all the way to the right, and I very rarely maximize windows.

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me too. right bottom.

just seemed logical since i had more horizontal than vertical screen space and to pin the trash in the lower right corner.

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--
Watch out where the huskies go--don't you eat that yellow snow. F. Zappa

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God intended it to be on the bottom... otherwise it would come on the right as default!

Actually on the right would get in the way of various pallets in programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, and most software knows not to cover the Dock on the bottom.

---
G4/Digital Audio/1GHz, 1 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.5
www.david-schwab.com
www.imanicoppola.net

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Could you explain or point me in the right direction to understand the "there are three sections of each screen edge where you can place the Dock" statement?

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I suspect screen size (or at least aspect ratio) will be a factor in this that you're not capturing. It makes perfect sense to me to have the dock on the left on my widescreen Powerbook, because that still leaves plenty space for most "normal-shaped" documents. But on a 4:3 screen, I'd most likely leave it at the bottom.

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How do you put the dock on the top? And why would you want to?

Kirk

---
Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more

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To position your dock at the top use a utility like Cocktail or Tinkertool.

I chose to put it there because: a. I don't like it taking up screen real estate and b. because I almost never use it (I use the App Switcher and Lauchbar for almost all action around the screen).

Putting the Dock under the menubar makes it almost impossible to accidentally open (although it occassionally creates text artifacts).

If I need the Dock I just call it up with APPLE-OPT-D. To be specific - my dock is hidden, on top under the menubar and on the right side (or end as it is referred to in Cocktail).

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As noted, it's a great spot to hide it if you rarely use it. I put it up there when I'm working in a full-screen app like Motion, as it prevents accidental activation of the dock.

To do it without third party utils, it's just this in Terminal:

$ defaults write com.apple.Dock orientation top
$ killall Dock

It's also covered in this hint.

-rob.

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I made this simple Applescript to write the dock prefs to make the dock close to invisible and out of the way.

tcsh
cd ~/Library/Preferences/
cp com.apple.dock.plist com.apple.dock.plist.dmbu
defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool no
defaults write com.apple.dock magnification -bool no
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool yes
defaults write com.apple.dock orientation -string top
defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end
defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 16
defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string scale
kill `ps awwx | grep Dock | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`
exit

script is available here:

http://delivery.troubledmac.com/applescripts/KnockoutDock.dmg.gz

You can revert your settings with a backup that the script makes


---
dirtymouse - 'fix a troubled Mac' - troubleshooting PDF book

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With my dual monitor setup, a 23" and a 30", with two DragThing docks at the bottom and right side of the main monitor, and the left side of the monitor too far over for the Apple dock, I decided to try the top. You can use a utility like Cocktail or Xupport to activate this feature.

The problem is that, at the top and hidden, bringing the cursor all the way to the top of the screen does not show the dock. You have to place it precisely on a thin horizontal strip, between the desktop and the menu bar, to make the dock appear. I found it too cumbersome and time-consuming. So I ended up moving the dock over to the right side of the screen and resorting to using multiple layers for DragThing.

But it was worth a try anyway.

---
Tony Aguila

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I keep it at the top and after a few days of it being there I can use the track-pad on my 17" PowerBook to stop on a dime precisely where that "thin strip" of activating pixels is. It's not for everyone, or even ideal, but it's certainly not impossible to activate.

I'm actually more prone to hitting ctrl+D to make it appear when I do need it so mousing to it is all but unnecessary. And I used the hint that Robg referenced. I don't use any finder/desktop/dock enhancers.

---
http://www.digiglyphics.com

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I don't keep anything in my dock. I use it for informational purposes only as to see if an app is running. Right end pinning is my preference and 16 pixel wide (The smalles I can get). The only things constantly in my Dock are the Trash (always in the same location) and the Finder. All the other items change with use.

I use LaunchBar to do my app launching and about 1000 things more. It happens to be the fastest for me, so I prefer it over Butler and QuickSilver. I also do drag & drop with the keyboard by using the DropBar extension to LaunchBar. No mousing on my powerbook 99% of the time.

Additionally I use Desktop Manager and have the Desktop Pager with minimal size on the right hand side in the top corner.


What I would really like to see is a sorting method for the dock. So the app's icons stay in the same place. My finder icon moves up and down with the apps I launch. I'd prefer to have it besides the trash so new apps come on top and running ones stay where they are. (Witt's law)
Pepi

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The disadvantage to using Cmd-Opt-D to invoke the dock is that it will push and resize windows that happen to be in the way. Even after the dock has retracted, the affected window(s) will not move back/resize to the previous state before Cmd-Opt-D. This does not happen with the mouse.

---
Tony Aguila

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I have six screens, three over three with the Menubar on the lower-center, so I have the Dock visible on the upper-center-top. I rarely use it as a launcher (use hotkeys for 90% of dozens of daily apps), but I do use it as a visual indicator of running processes, alerts, mail-count, Office notification counts, etc.

My single-largest complaint is that they did away with a Dock that could stretch across multiple screens, as it did in the OS X Beta. It was glorious to have it spread across the top of 3600+ pixels; you could actually take advantage of motion-image icons in the Dock like QT and DVD Player.

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But I have it hidden on the right side and pinned to the lower-right corner so that the Trash is accessable in essentially the "traditional" location.

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I do that as well, essentially for the same reason.

No matter what side the dock is on, it should <i>always</i> be pinned to the end. That way the trash will always be in the same location.

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Well, only if you actually drag things to the trash. I always use command-delete to put stuff in the trash from the Finder, as it saves mousing. And if I'm in the Terminal I'll just rm, of course.

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I have mine pinned to the bottom of the screen on the right side, no magnification. Since I just have the 20 items I use the most in it, it's set to a size that's big enough to read the numbers on the badges on Safari, Mail, iChat, etc, but small enough that it doesn't get in the way. Leaves me with a large amount of space at the top of the screen to drop stuff to the desktop if I need to. ^_~

---
VGZ:
Otaku, Fanfic author, and Mac Fanatic

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What about pinning?

Mine is in the bottom right hand corner. I pinned it there back in 10.1 and it has remained there through numerous upgrades to 10.3.9

---
Brought to you by S C Johnson, a family multinational conglomerate.

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As noted in my first comment, including pinning would have required 24 distinct choices, plus one for those who have quit the Dock. That was just too many to reasonably handle in a poll and hope that people would figure it out :).

-rob.

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Right on, brutha. Bottom right is where it ought to be for one solid reason: Trash. You can always slam your mouse into the corner and the Trash will always, always, always be there (or whatever else you've hacked to replace the Trash in that location).

Why bottom right? Because that's where the Mac Trash has always been for us Mac veterans.

---
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

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I keep mine visible but very small - less than half an inch high. I can tell what icons I have and mousing over gives all the detail I need. So I can not tell how many unread messages I have in mail or the date in iCal. Never found that important. I have a desktop calendar, use desktop manager and Butler to launch apps.

As noted, when you ARD into a machine with hiding on it is difficult to manage and magnifications is just crazy to try to use remote. I do not know how they use it locally to be honest. I realize 'different strokes...' but do not see the practicality. That is my opinion.

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I keep mine in the left corner on the bottom edge.

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I keep mine on the left side, though not ideal.

Its more important that I have Desktop icon labels on the right, and they show item info (View->Show View Options), providing a dense and informative arrangement.

With these icon settings, an always visible, suitably sized Dock pinned to the right sits over most icon labels.

Oh well, left will do...

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I must be a mutant because I use the Dock constantly. I have the Icon size set to smallest (Which is pretty darn small!), and have my apps grouped by type (graphics, office, multimedia, etc.).

---
--
Adam C.

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I too do this. I suspect it's because I feel I missed out on the "NeXT Experience" and wish I had been cool enough to use one.

Also, if you don't group your apps, how will you find them?

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I have my dock on the right side.With my powerbook this gives me the viewing for most webpages which tend to be setup 1024x768 or 800x600.

When i plug in my external monitor It pushes the dock all the way over. Though it can make it harder to use some apps seperating the dock and menu bar, it allows to me to use the laptop monitor like dashboard, hiding all the small running apps(iterm, adiumn, a finder window) while allowing full screen use for whatever I am editing on the other display

---
I thought once I was found but it was only a dream

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The Dock was always on the right in the earlier versions of NeXTstep, so that's where I keep it in this new Apple-branded version of NeXTstep that people call "Mac OS X". :)

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I have two very different Dock setups in my two PowerBooks.

- In my PowerBook G4 12" Al. it's on the bottom, visible, small icons (but not at the smallest end of the scale), with applications roughly grouped by type. This PowerBook is often connected to an external 17" monitor, so I have enough desktop space. In any case the Dock's presence never really bothered me.

- In my old PowerBook G4 15" Titanium, the Dock is on the right, visible, icons at the smallest size possible, and only running applications are visible. This way, the Dock always remains very tiny and unobtrusive (the only permanent icons are the Finder, Dashboard and the Trash).

Regards,
R.

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For some strange reason, my dock at work is at the bottom, but all my computers at home have it on the right. I never really stopped to think why I did this, but now that I do think about it, it's probably because my monitor at work is so much wider, I can fit more in the dock at the bottom. I'll hide it from time to time to get a handle on either some java windows or classic windows which don't automatically size properly. Incidentally, some websites will automatically resize my safari windows a couple pixels taller than will fit. This has an odd effect on dragging the window off screen: when I drag the window down, it pops right back up and will not stay where I put it until I resize the window to not intrude upon the dock space.

Magnification really bugs me. I can't get the hang of it and it's always getting in the way, so I always turn it off.

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Bottom and visible with no Zoom, and corner pinned to the right edge so the trash can is where it should be.

---
- Jonah Lee

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Dock on the right just seemed logical to me, which I started doing on my first wide-screen (PB17") monitor. Since 4:3 ratio dominates most window & webpage configs, and workflow generally always begins at Top/Left, a wide-screen monitor leaves a rather convenient space on the RHS which makes for an ideal, usually-always-accesible location for the dock.

Since I have so many items stored in my dock, I don't bother to pin it top or bottom as my dock usually always extends the full height of the screen, and therefore my Trash generally always occupies the same position.

As for magnification, that was fun for about the first 15mins of 10.0.0 until it became extremely annoying, and that's about the last time I used it!

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courtesy of Butler - just to the left of date

http://img458.imageshack.us/img458/4805/desktopshot5mm.jpg

(with some homemade icons, Trash is first, then Finder ..... and last one is Dashboard)

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Hi - there are a few problems with the dock on the right:
1) If an window is under the dock, you can't use it's resize handle bottom right
2) It covers over the desktop icons

The only problem I've found with the left is Windows Media Player always opens with it's left edge under the dock

I also love having the trash in the same position, (in my case bottom left). The other side is also important, having the finder, safari and mail in the same place (top right). If only they let the dock stay full size with space in the middle, so the icons grow into the middle. (Like the RiscOS icon bar (amazingly similar to the dock in many ways))

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mine is bottom left and set to no magnification with minimum icon size and all this on a 30", looks pretty small now. :-)

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I use QuickSilver for almost all of my launching needs but it is still nice to drag and drop onto other programs. For example: if I have a plist that I don't want to open in its default program, I can drop it onto TextEdit or whatever editor I want. This also works well when I need to open a jpg in PhotoShop that wants to open in Preview. It is also handy for apps that I always seem to use but can never remember the name of (to launch in QS), like Digital Color Meter or Activity Monitor.

I have it as small as it will go magnifying to as big as it will go.

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I used to be a dock-to-the-right guy because obviously most screens are wider than they are tall, so it seemed that using up that space is less 'expensive' than using up space at the bottom of the screen.

Or is it...

All applications are designed (when necessary) to scroll their content from top to bottom, but will often truncate the right edge when content doesn't have enough space left-to-right. Sure, you can scroll in that direction too, but most scroll wheels don't do that automatically, and it would be overly cumbersome to do that for EVERY line of text you want to read. I realized that the more space I had left-to-right, the easier it really was to work.

So, now I'm back to be a dock-to-the-bottom guy.



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Same here, plus you can always hide it if real-estate is a huge issue.

---
Jayson --When Microsoft asks you, "Where do you want to go today?" tell them "Apple."

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Right top, because at 1600x1200 nothing ever gets under it, and I'd much rather have my applications stay in the same place than my trash. Command-Delete for the win!

Screenshot.

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Left, and I have debated the merits of EACH spot and hiding.

Reasoning: On the right, it covers the stuff saved to the desktop (I'd gladly put it over there, if when you did OS X put stuff saved to desktop on the LEFT!). The bottom is nice because then I can hide my itunes remote in the open space and nothing covers it, it doesn't cover anything else, and it makes good use of real estate. But alas, most of the things us humans work with (save for HD video content) is portrait, and putting the dock on the bottom makes those documents LESS visible, with more scrolling necessary. Now, turning on hiding nixes both these issues, but THEN I can't use my mail icon to QUICKLY see if I have new mail. Yes, I use the dock as a status monitor....

So, left is most out of the way, as nothing intrudes over there. I can set it to a small size (but not unbearable) so it's not eating up too much space, and with just a tad magnification so I can put things in and out of the dock a little easier/read the status symbols a little better.

So with it on the left side, my documents all fit on the height (PB 17"), minimal scrolling in webpages, and I can STILL fit two documents side by side with relative ease. All this, and I can also still use the dock as a status monitor (activity monitor, mail messages, etc etc)

---
----
timing has an awful lot to do with the outcome of a raindance

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The only icons I keep on the Dock are Finder and Trash only because I can't remove those or at least unaware of how to. I'm a card-carrying QuickSilver user.

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TransparentDock lets you take the finder out of the dock.

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Bottom, end position, visible, magnification off, smallest size possible, and it only contains running apps and the trash can. Under Mac OS 9 I used to run a Control Strip replacement called Extension Strip and it had a module called Process Strip which showed the running applications and I used to place it in this exact same spot. So basically the Dock is doing the same job it used to do.

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I change its position once in a while to top, right, or left but never like it on bottom. It's hidden most of the time, minimized to the smallest size (sans magnification), and pinned at the end.

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I suppose this is cheating because I use DragThing to give myself, essentially, two docks...

The "real" Dock is on the left, hidden. It contains nothing except the running applications, the Finder (usually not running since I'm a Path Finder junkie) and the Trash. I use it to quickly check if I have 14 apps running to keep memory usage under control, and to look for unread messages etc.

I don't understand people who keep docks on the right. I'm always on the right side of the screen to manipulate window controls. Having a Dock appear every time I went a pixel too far over there would give me nightmares. :)

I also have a DragThing drawer which I've set to look as much like the Dock as possible hidden across the bottom. I use it to launch my most frequently used applications, to give me contextual menu access to current project folders, and to have a quick mousey way to force Path Finder to empty the trash.

I hate icons on the desktop. When both docks are hidden there are no icons on the screen. If I want to see icons I will open a Path Finder window.

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On the right, using ClearDock to see things clearly, and TinkerTool to pin it to the bottom of the screen.

I launch almost everything with Butler or DragThing, so the Dock is only really useful for me to drop URLs into. I do have URLWell for saving one-shot links, but it gets cluttered easily, so I drop ones I might visit repeatedly (but don't have the time to bookmark properly at that moment) into the Dock occasionally.

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actually it is left at the bottom...

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defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning end

"Pins" the dock at the trash can end to the corner. Which corner depends on where you have your dock.

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I use the ultra-old 'Application Switcher Menu 2.03' prefpane to autohide the dock for a couple of (generally graphic) apps, it nicely disappears when they come in the foreground and reappears as soo as I click outside them :-)

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I find it interesting that the first 'non-default' preference (default being the bottom) is visible right. my choice as well since powerbooks are wider than they are tall and the right is more 'open' than the left.

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Bottom, pinned left. I like to keep all the palettes open in Illustrator and Photoshop, and with the Dock pinned to the left it usually doesn't interfere with them.

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On my 12" PB I keep it on the bottom and invisible, because at 1024x768 screen real estate is limited. On my dual screen PowerMac (1280x1024 and 1024x768) it is at the bottom and always visible.

So if I were forced to vote, I guess I'd go with bottom and always visible, since it's what I prefer at higher resolutions. I did have a period of about two years where I kept it to the left side and always visible on my PowerMac though. This setup was occasionally annoying with some apps that didn't like to respect that though, and would launch in the way of the dock (I think Inspiration liked to do this if I remember correctly, and some Classic apps violated this as well).

A more interesting poll might examine how people utilize dual displays. I like to keep things like Mail, Adium, and Stickies on one display, with browsers and other 'active' apps on the primary display.

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Used to be bottom, now right and visible all the time because I want to see the application statuses as soon as something (such as email arrival, rss new news, ichat messages, etc.) happens.

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