macOS – Restrict macOS from Automatically Enabling ‘Keep in Dock’

dockmacos

I like to have many programs running and move around things as needed, but I hate keeping anything permanently in the Dock. As of now, I have to manually uncheck Keep in Dock every time I move an app icon and it's really annoying. I don't want to do that anymore. How do I disable that feature?

This has nothing to with "Most recent apps" as that's already turned off.

Also, this question has been asked before, but everything I've found is 3+ years old and no one has an actual solution. I'm really, really hoping that in the few years since then Apple added some basic customization.

Best Answer

This is the expected behaviour and has remained the same since the days of Mac OS X 10.10. There is no way to prevent it from happening.

It still stands true, as of this writing, with the current latest version being macOS Mojave 10.14.5.

Related Solutions

MacOS – way to suppress badge counts and the dock icon bounce for Terminal.app in Lion

Google finds an example of what is, I think, disabling bounces for all Dock icons (not Terminal alone):

Annoying infinite bounces of an icon on alert!!!

defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE

However, that may be not the solution in this case. Puzzling me:

[macbookpro08:~] gjp22% date
Tue  2 Aug 2011 13:40:41 BST
[macbookpro08:~] gjp22% uname -a
Darwin macbookpro08.centrim.freeman-centre.ac.uk 11.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 11.0.0: Sat Jun 18 12:56:35 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1699.22.73~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
[macbookpro08:~] gjp22% defaults read com.apple.dock no-bouncing
2011-08-02 13:40:57.029 defaults[2501:303] 
The domain/default pair of (/Users/gjp22/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist, no-bouncing) does not exist

— nothing relating to no-bouncing my preference file, and I can run for example

tail -f -n 50 /private/var/log/system.log

— then bring something other than Terminal to foreground, watch things added to the log and in my case:

lines added to the background window do not cause any bounce, do not cause any count to appear in the Dock icon.

Dock Animation – How to Make Auto-Hide/Show Faster on macOS

To make the Dock instantly leap back into view when it’s needed, rather than slide, open a Terminal window and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -int 0;killall Dock

I find this useful, but if you’d like the animation for the dock to reappear to last for a split-second, try the following:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.15;killall Dock

To explain, changing "0.15" with any number can let you tailor things as it represents the time in seconds taken for the dock to reappear fully.

To revert back to the default sliding effect, open a Terminal window and type the following:

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier;killall Dock

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – way to suppress badge counts and the dock icon bounce for Terminal.app in Lion

Dock Animation – How to Make Auto-Hide/Show Faster on macOS

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