The docking station on your Mac desktop is the most convenient place to access your daily apps and features, such as Siri, launcher, and wastebasket. The dock can display up to three recently used apps that have not been added to it, as well as a folder of projects downloaded from the Internet.

Open the project in the dock

In the dock on your Mac, do one of the following:

  • To open App: Click the App icon. For example, to open Access, click the Access icon in the docking station.
  • Open a file in an App: Drag and drop the file onto the App icon. For example, to open a document created in a Pages Document, drag it onto the Pages Document icon in the dock.
  • To display the project in Access: Hold down the Command key and click the icon of the project.
  • To switch to the previous App and hide the current App: Hold down Option and click on the current App icon.
  • To switch to another App and hide all the others: Hold down the option-command key and click the icon of the App you want to switch to.

You can hold down the Control key and press the item to display a shortcut menu for performing other operations, such as opening or closing the App, opening a recently used document, and so on.

If the App stops responding, you can “force out” the App in the dock (potentially losing unstored changes). Press the Control-Option button on the App icon and select “Force Exit”.

Add or remove docking items

On a Mac, do one of the following:

Add item to dock: Drag and move the App to the left (or above) of the separator line separating the most recently used apps. Drag files and folders to the right (or below) of another dividing line separating the most recently used apps. The project’s avatar will be placed in the dock.

Remove item from dock: Drag item out of dock until “Remove” is seen. – Only stand-ins will be removed; The actual project stays on the Mac.

If you accidentally remove the App icon from the dock, you can easily put it back (the App is still on the Mac). Open the App and make its icon appear in the dock again. Hold down the Control key and tap the App icon, then choose Options > Keep in dock.

You can also rearrange items in the dock: simply drag and move them to a new location.

Custom docking station

1. On your Mac, go to The Apple Menu > System Preferences and tap Docking.

2. Change the options as required.

For example, you can change how items are displayed in the dock, resize and position the dock, or even hide the dock.

To learn about the options, click the Help button in the panel.

To quickly resize the dock, place the pointer above the separator line until the double arrows appear, then drag the dock to make it bigger or smaller. Or hold down the Control key to press the separator line and select an action from the shortcut menu.

You can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate to the docking station. Press Control-F3 (control-FN-F3 on a portable Mac) to move to the docking station. Then use the left and right arrow keys to move between the ICONS. Press the Return key to open a project.

The red flag on the dock icon indicates that you still need to perform one or more steps in the App or system Preferences. For example, the red mark on the Mail icon in the dock indicates that you have a new email to read.

After dragging the folder to the dock, you can view the folder as a stack. By default, the dock comes with a “download” stack.