Working with Applications in the Dock

In this lesson for macOS Mojave on the Mac, I look at how to work with applications in the Dock, including viewing open applications in the Dock, favoriting or adding an application to the Dock, setting an application to open when you log in to your Mac, and show an application in the Finder from the Dock.

Applications and the Dock
The Dock is divided into three areas – applications, recent applications (new in macOS Mojave), and documents and folders. You’ll see vertical lines separating these three areas. Applications are located on the left. We are going to focus on applications and the Dock in this lesson.

View which Applications are Open
Since the Dock stores your favorite application as well as open applications, how can you tell which applications are open? When you open an application, a black dot will appear below the icon in the Dock. If you see an application without this dot, but in the dock, this means it is a favorite, but now open. As soon as you open it, the dot will be there.

Favoriting an Application
To add an application to the Dock, so you have easy access to it, open your Applications folder and drag the application you want to favorite onto the Dock. You need to drag it to the right side of the vertical line. When you favorite an app, it does not remove it from the Applications folder, and you can still open it through the Applications folder.

Opening an Application at Login
You can set an application to open when you log in to your computer through the dock. Just click-and-hold on the application you want to open at login. You need to do this with the application icon in the Dock. When you do this, you will see a popup menu with various options. Under Options, you will see Open at Login. Select this to open the application at login, deselect to have it no longer open at login.

Showing the Application in the Finder
You can also sow the Application in the Finder through the popup menu when you click-and-hold on the application icon in the Dock. When you select this, a Finder window will open to the folder the application is in. Usually, this is the Applications folder.

See this Lesson Action
To see this lesson in action, take a look at the video above.

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