The Docksmith manual

Everything the app does, written as the thing you are trying to do. If you already know what you are looking for, the contents list is the fastest way there — and every heading has its own link, so you can send someone straight to the paragraph that answers them.

Install and first run

Download it free from docksmith.app/download and drag it to Applications. The app and the disk image are signed and notarized by Apple, so macOS raises no “unidentified developer” warning.

The one permission that matters

Accessibility is what lets Docksmith see and act on other apps’ windows. Without it the docks are still real docks — pinning apps and folders, clicking to launch, the Trash tile, drag-to-reorder, and the app palette all work. What stays dark is everything that touches other windows: the open-apps strip, per-tile window lists, Focus mode, the workspace, and automatic full-screen detection for the knock.

Screen Recording is optional and does one thing: the live window previews when you hover a tile. Everything else works without it.

No kernel extension, no disabling SIP, no login-item trickery.

Where Settings lives

Docksmith has no window and no Dock icon of its own: it lives in the menu bar. Left-click its icon to open Settings…; right-click, or ⌃-click, for the full menu. Every instruction below that starts with Settings… starts there.

Your first dock

Open Settings… → Docks, add a dock, and choose three things: which display it lives on, which edge of that display, and where it sits along that edge. Then drag apps onto it, or pin them from the app palette.

A dock for every display

Docksmith holds up to ten docks. Each one picks its own display, its own edge — top, bottom, left or right — and its own position along that edge. At most two docks share a single edge.

Docks are keyed to a stable display ID, so unplugging a monitor and plugging it back in does not teleport them.

Where a dock sits, and where it answers

A dock sits centred or pushed to one end of its edge: left, centre or right on a horizontal edge; top, middle or bottom on a vertical one. Its reveal zone goes with it. A hidden dock answers only on its own stretch of the edge, never the whole side of the screen — which is why two docks at opposite ends of the same edge never fight over your cursor.

Showing and hiding one

⌃⌘1 through ⌃⌘9 show and hide docks 1 to 9; ⌃⌘0 handles the tenth. Drag a dock up or down the list in Settings… → Docks and those positional chords follow the new order live.

A dock given a shortcut of its own keeps that one across a reorder instead — a chord you chose on purpose never migrates to another dock.

Hiding and bringing back

Auto-hide is on by default. A hidden dock comes back when your cursor reaches its own stretch of its edge — instantly on a quiet edge.

Busy edges wait, on purpose

The top edge, where the menu bar lives, and any boundary shared with another display are busy edges: they ask for a brief, deliberate pause before a dock appears. The delay is adjustable in Settings… → General, from 0.24 s to 0.72 s in five stops, with 0.36 s the default.

Two more courtesies: clicking anywhere else dismisses a revealed dock immediately, and a busy edge stays silent while a menu is open — that gate covers the top edge and display boundaries, which is where a dropdown actually falls. A quiet edge — a bottom or side edge with no neighbouring display — reveals on contact and does not consult it.

Peeking at everything at once

⌃⌘P is held rather than tapped: every hidden dock comes out while the keys are down. With auto-hide switched off the docks are already on screen, so the chord is not registered at all.

The knock

Where an edge is genuinely contested, hover stops summoning and a deliberate gesture takes over. This exists because edge panels are exactly where full-screen work lives: in Photoshop, the tool column is the left edge. A dock that pops out on hover there is not a feature, it is an interruption.

The gesture depends on the edge

Judged over the dock’s own stretch of that edge:

• A bezel stops the cursor, so it can be touched: tap the edge, pull back — a glowing hairline confirms the tap — then tap again while the line still shows.
• A seam with another display stops nothing, so the crossings themselves are the knocks: cross onto that screen and back, twice. The line lights after the first round trip.

Two displays side by side means the inner edges are seams and the outer ones are bezels. Trying a bezel gesture on a seam simply does nothing, so it is worth knowing which one you have before deciding the feature is broken.

The rhythm the app expects is adjustable: Settings… → General offers Brisk, Standard and Relaxed. If the second tap keeps arriving too late — or too early — that is the setting to move, not your hand.

When the knock is armed

Automatically whenever an app fills the screen — and that covers more than native full screen. Two kinds are detected: native full screen, where the app gets its own Space, and any window covering the display’s whole frame including the menu-bar band, such as a game, a kiosk player, or Photoshop’s total F mode.

One kind cannot be detected: full screen with the menu bar — Photoshop’s default F. Measured on the machine, such a window is indistinguishable from an ordinary maximized one. For that case, set the dock’s Reveal to Knock permanently in Settings… → Docks.

The keyboard palettes

Search apps — ⌃⌘S

A palette over everything, listing the apps in your Applications folders. Type a few letters, press Return to launch or bring one forward. Rows already pinned somewhere say so. No Accessibility needed to launch from here.

⌘Return pins the selected app to a dock instead — straight in when you have only one, otherwise it offers your docks by name; ⌘1–⌘9 pin straight to that dock and ⌘0 to the tenth. The + on a hovered row does the same.

Open a file — ⌃⌘O

The same idea for your working folders: Desktop, Documents, Downloads, and every folder pinned to a dock. Return steps into a folder or opens a file with its usual app; typing a few letters searches the current folder and a few levels below it.

• ⌘Return lists the apps that can open the selected file — ⌘1–⌘9 pick one directly — plus Show in Finder. On a folder it pins that folder to a dock instead.
• ⌫ in an empty field, or ⌘↑, goes up a level.
• Esc clears the field first, then closes the palette.

The first visit to a folder may trigger macOS’s own permission question, once, per folder. Say no and the palette shows an access card rather than pretending the folder is empty — undo it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Files and Folders. Files never leave your Mac.

Windows, focus and the workspace

All open apps — ⌃⌘A

Every app that currently has a window open, most recent first — an app running with all its windows closed does not appear, even though ⌘Tab lists it. Minimized windows do count. Pick one to bring it forward, or press Esc to dismiss. Also reachable by ⌘-clicking any dock.

Focus mode — ⌃⌘V

A frosted veil over the display your active window is on — that display only, so reference material on another screen stays bright. The veil follows your focus from screen to screen. Press ⌃⌘V again to lift it.

Workspace — ⌃⌘W

Drag an app tile onto the desktop — not a window, and not onto another dock. That app joins your workspace and every member window tiles itself; the order you add them is the layout, and the ghost grid you see during the drag is exactly what you get.

• Drop a member tile onto another member’s cell to swap their places.
• ⌃⌘W shows or hides the whole workspace — and if a member went native full screen, the first press brings it back to its cell.
• Esc cancels a drag, and a tile’s context menu removes its app from the workspace.

Native full screen (⌃⌘F) belongs to each app’s own View menu; Docksmith never takes that key.

Folders, Trash and previews

Drag a folder from the Finder onto a dock to pin a browsable location — clicking it opens a grid of recent files.

The Trash tile is added from Settings… → Docks. It accepts dropped files, which stay recoverable, and opens the Trash in the Finder.

Off by default. Turn on Show window previews in Settings… → Hover previews, and macOS asks for Screen Recording at that moment. Then hovering a tile shows a live preview of that app’s window — the one a click would bring forward, not all of them. It is the only thing that permission is for; without it the dock is otherwise complete.

Right-clicking a tile gives that app’s window list, with Hide and Quit.

Making it yours

Changing any shortcut

The seven feature shortcuts live in Settings… → General, and each dock gets its own in Settings… → Docks. Click one and press the combination you want. There is a reset per shortcut and one for all of them.

Two honest limits: a shortcut needs at least two modifier keys, and macOS gives no way to know in advance whether another app already owns a chord. If one does nothing when you press it, record a different one.

⌃⌘K shows every shortcut currently in force on one panel — the live list, not the defaults — so a chord you recorded shows exactly as you recorded it. Any key closes it.

Appearance

Settings… → Appearance decides how the bars look rather than how they behave: Icon size, the glass material — Ultra-thin, Regular, Thick or Opaque — labels on or off, corner style, and the intensity of the effects: the focus veil and the landing spotlight.

The app’s language

Docksmith ships in six: English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Simplified Chinese. It follows your system language by default, and Settings… → General offers a per-app override, applied the next time it launches.

The built-in macOS Dock — your choice

Docksmith runs happily alongside Apple’s Dock, or it can hide it for you. It records your original Dock settings first and puts them back when Docksmith quits normally; if it is force-quit or crashes, the restore is healed at the next launch.

Driving it from scripts

Docksmith answers docksmith:// links, so Shortcuts, Focus modes, Raycast, BetterTouchTool or cron can drive it. Each dock’s show, hide and toggle links are shown in its Docks tab. The rest:

• docksmith://focus/on, docksmith://focus/off, docksmith://focus/toggle
• docksmith://overview/toggle — the open-apps strip
• docksmith://search/toggle — the app palette
• docksmith://files/toggle — the file palette
• docksmith://shortcuts/toggle — the shortcut sheet

There is deliberately no link for the peek: it lives on keys being held, and a URL has no way to say “released”.

Trial, licence and updates

The free trial

Seven days, fully featured, no card and no account. The download is free and open to anyone; the key is what starts the app. Open Docksmith and click Get a free trial key… in the License pane — that button carries your Mac’s fingerprint to the site, which is what the key is tied to.

The trial is issued once per Mac, not per address: asking again from the same machine returns the same key rather than a fresh week. The seven days run from the day the key was issued, not from the day you install.

When it ends, the docks stop and your native macOS Dock is restored. Nothing you configured is deleted, and entering a licence key resumes exactly where you were.

Buying, and what a licence covers

One payment, no subscription, no account — a licence covers a stated number of Macs, and the more Macs it covers the less each one costs. Paste the same key into the License pane on each Mac. Prices are on the pricing section of the home page.

The key is validated entirely on your Mac — no activation server and no account. Docksmith only ever reads from its own server, and there are exactly two such reads: the daily update check, and, only while a purchased licence is installed, the revocation list — read at most once a day, plus once the moment a key is pasted. Nothing identifying you is sent, and a trial never reads it at all. Its purpose is that a refunded key stops working.

Reinstalling, a wiped disk or a new machine is just download, paste, done.

Updates

Docksmith checks for updates once a day, and you can switch that off in Settings… → General. Check now in About asks immediately. Every 1.x update is included in your purchase.

When something is wrong

No docks appear at all

In order of how often it is the answer:

1. No key. The app runs, the docks do not, until a trial or licence key is in the License pane. With no dock on screen there is nothing to click, so this is the moment the menu bar matters: its icon is the way in.
2. The dock is hidden — auto-hide is on by default. Move the cursor to its edge, or press its chord.
3. The dock is assigned to a display that is not connected. That row is marked “— disconnected” in Settings… → Docks; reassign it there.
4. Two docks already occupy that edge. An edge holds at most two: a third is hidden silently, so it can read “shown” in Settings and appear nowhere on that screen.
5. Every dock is hidden. That is a supported state and it survives a relaunch.

A shortcut does nothing

Three causes, in the order worth checking:

1. Global shortcuts is off — one master switch in Settings… → General that unregisters every chord at once. Resetting shortcuts does not turn it back on.
2. Another app already owns the chord. macOS gives no way to know that in advance and does not report the clash — record a different combination.
3. ⌃⌘A, ⌃⌘V or ⌃⌘W only: Accessibility is missing. The chord fires, the action is off — see the permission that matters.

⌃⌘K shows what is actually in force right now: a chord missing from that panel is one that never registered.

Hover previews show nothing

1. Is the switch on? They are off by default — Settings… → Hover previews.
2. Grant Screen Recording. The button just under that setting is the reliable route; it is a separate permission from Accessibility.
3. Relaunch Docksmith. macOS generally hands over blank frames until the app restarts.

A dock keeps appearing over my work

That is what the knock is for — see The knock. If the app you are in is full screen with the menu bar still showing, macOS makes that indistinguishable from an ordinary window, so set that dock’s Reveal to Knock permanently rather than waiting for automatic detection.

Still stuck

The support assistant answers from the same knowledge as this manual, works through it with you, and opens a ticket when it cannot help. If you would rather write to a person, team@docksmith.app reaches Fred directly.

Every shortcut

The defaults. Anything you record yourself replaces the row it belongs to, and ⌃⌘K in the app always shows what is in force right now.

A shortcut needs at least two modifier keys. ⌃⌘P is held rather than tapped, and is not registered at all when auto-hide is off — there would be nothing for it to reveal.