But using your Mac without putting your own favorite icons in the Dock is like. Nobody but you (and Apple) can put icons on the right side of the Dock. The Downloads folder collects all kinds of online arrivals: files you download from the. Click the Launchpad icon in the Dock, and then click System Preferences. If you're using Mac OS X v10.6 or later, click the System Preferences icon in the Dock. Click Desktop & Screen Saver, and then click Desktop. To select the kind of desktop picture you want to use, do one of the following.
The Dock in Mac OS X is how most users launch their frequently used applications, but it can also be a great way to jump directly to your favorite websites. For example, I use on my Mac, and even though there is a for OS X, I prefer the interface of the “” experience, which is accessed via a browser. Until now, I’ve accessed Plex on my Mac by launching Safari and using a bookmark to my Plex server in the Bookmarks Bar. But I decided to make launching Plex even faster by adding a shortcut to my Plex server’s address directly to the Dock. Here’s how it works. While I’m using Plex in my example, these steps can be used to add a Dock icon for just about any website. First, launch Safari and navigate to the website you wish to add to your Dock.
Make sure to navigate to the exact URL you want to open with your Dock icon. Another example aside from Plex: if I want to create a Dock icon to launch the at TSN, I’d navigate to that exact URL ( not the primary TSN URL ( In the Plex example, I’ll navigate to the Plex Web URL, which is and then log in with my account credentials if necessary. Once logged in, use the mouse or trackpad to click and hold on the URL in the Safari address bar. While continuing to hold your click, drag the URL down to the right side of your Dock (the side to the right of the dividing line, which contains the Trash can and your Downloads and Documents folders. As you move your mouse cursor into the area on the right side of the Dock, you’ll see a space appear designating the position of your website URL. Once you’ve positioned it in the desired location, release your mouse click and a globe icon will appear in the empty space. This is the shortcut to your website URL, which you can verify by hovering your cursor over the icon to reveal its description.
To launch the site via your new shortcut, just click on it like you would with a standard Mac app. The designated URL will open directly in your Mac’s default browser. In our Plex example, clicking the new Dock icon sends me directly to the Plex Web interface in Safari. If your browser is already open, clicking the icon will load the site in either a new tab or a new window, depending on your settings in Safari’s Preferences. You can repeat the steps above to add multiple websites to your Dock, and you can even add custom icons to individual website Dock icons. The trick in the latter case is to drag the website URL from Safari’s address bar to your Desktop first, then follow the same steps used to, and then finally drag the URL icon to your Dock.
Once in place in your Dock, you can rearrange your website shortcuts by clicking and dragging them, but keep in mind that they need to remain on the right side of the Dock’s dividing line. Want news and tips from TekRevue delivered directly to your inbox? Sign up for the TekRevue Weekly Digest using the box below. Get tips, reviews, news, and giveaways reserved exclusively for subscribers.
Already you must be knowing how to add your favorite app to Dock in the Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. But how about adding group of apps as an folder in Dock?, like how the ‘Downloads’ folder shows up in the dock. This simple guide shows you how to group your favorite and frequently required apps together and add them to dock in latest. Adding a single App icon to dock is very simple, you just need to drag and drop in the free space of the dock. Removing an app from dock also easy, you need to drag the app icon from dock and drop into the Trash (Recycle bin). Always, grouping and categorizing apps in Mac OS X is good and useful, because you can access your most frequent apps quickly from dock itself. Obviously you can’t add every apps to dock separately, the space in the dock is not enough for this purpose.
Recommended Readings: Do you want to sell your Mac laptops?, Find out the best How to Group Apps on the Dock – Mac Yosemite In summary this is what we are going to do; create a folder and move your favorite apps’ aliases (like shortcut in Windows Operating System), then move the folder with these app aliases to the dock- very simple. 1) Create a folder; make sure you do not delete it later.
We will be moving the required apps shortcuts in to this folder. 2) Now open the ‘Application’ folder (Go – Applications) and select the apps you need to move to the newly created folder then to the dock as group. You have to press and hold ‘Command’ key while selecting the apps (it is like holding Ctrl key in Windows OS while selecting the icons).
3) Now we need to move this selection of icons to the new folder (which we created earlier). DO NOT just drag and drop, if you do like that, the entire apps (including all files of the app) will be moved to the folder.
But our purpose is to just ( a small file which refer to original app icon). Therefore, press and hold ‘Options’ and ‘Command’ key while dragging these apps from Application folder to new folder. Since the aliases are very small, the copying will be over within few seconds. If it takes longer, then I’m sure something wrong with your move and mostly all files of the apps will be copied now (that is not what we wanted here). Also, make sure the aliases (like shortcuts in Windows OS) mark is there in every icon you have moved.
4) We have done the major part now. Now you can drag and drop the folder to the dock. Make sure you drop near ‘Downloads’ or ‘Trash’ in the dock (extreme right). You should see the stacked group of apps on your dock now. This is the simple method to group your favorite apps to the dock and manage it properly in Mac OS X 10.10. If these icons look empty, you may need to restart your Mac computer to make it work.
This method is applicable for all Apple computers including MacBook Pro and Mac Pro desktop which running on Yosemite OS X 10.10 or earlier versions such as Mavericks and Mountain Lion.