How to reset the Mac Dock to default

By Peter Cohen
last updated

I've offered a bunch of power tips to customize the contents of your OS X Dock: Adding spaces between applications, for example, or adding recently-added apps and documents. If you went overboard, however, and your Dock is now far too disorderly for your tastes, here's how to reset it.

Even if you haven't heavily customized your Dock using Terminal commands, this week's power tip can come in handy. Because this won't just get rid of Terminal customizations. It'll reset your Dock to its default settings, just like when you first took your Mac out of the box. Default apps will be restored to their standard locations, and preferences like magnification, hiding, and so on, will be reset.

Everything will be reset.

How to reset your Dock to its default

  1. Open Terminal (located in the Utilities folder).
  2. Type (or copy and paste) defaults delete com.apple.dock; killall Dock
  3. Hit return.

Your Dock will now be new as the day it shipped. Customize again with care.

3 Comments
  • Thank you for the How To Peter as I suggested for new Mac users like me. I look for something new by you daily and am learning alot. Thanks again my friend.
  • For whatever reason, this does not seem to reset the size slider in Dock settings. Thoughts?
  • Hi all, yesterday I was doing a few things on my wifes MBP 13" Running High Sierra and was unable to change either magnification or size of her dock from system prefs. Curious I had a look at my MBP Retina 13" and neither can I, although I can increase the magnification setting but i cannot change the dock size on either device using the slider in system prefs.
    Anybody else have this issue because I cant find anything on the web about it.