Clean up and Personalize the Dock

If any of the following statements are true about your or your Mac’s Dock, you need to clean it up:

• You have so many items on the Dock that you must get out your reading glasses to make them out.

• The Dock contains items you never use.

• The Dock gets in your way and hides the information bar in an application like Photoshop or it prevents you from clicking the Contact Us link at the bottom of a Web page.

• Each time you open a text document, it opens in the trial version of Word instead of AppleWorks where you’d like it to.

• The Finder shows icons and there are just too many to sort through. You should be viewing the items another way, perhaps as a list.

• The applications are buried in the Applications folder and it takes too long to locate and open each one.

Take a few minutes to look at your Dock, take inventory of your software and hardware, and write down what you use your Mac for on most days. Now, take a look at the Dock and see if there’s anything there you simply don’t use that often. If you don’t have a DV camera, you probably don’t need iMovie. If you don’t listen to music, you probably don’t need iTunes. You can remove any icon you don’t want by dragging it off of the Dock to an empty area of the desktop. (You can always drag it back from the Applications folder if you desire.) Here are some ideas:

• Remove the System Preferences icon; once preferences are set, they’re set. If you need to change preferences later, go to HD>Applications>System Preferences.

• Remove any application you don’t use weekly, including GarageBand, iMovie, Address Book, iPhoto, iCal, and QuickTime Player. These can be located later in the Applications folder.

• Remove the Preview icon. Preview opens automatically when you need it. You might not want its icon gunking up your Dock.

• Remove any folders you’ve added that you no longer use. (These are on the right side of the Dock).

Take a look at the differences between a messy Dock and a clean one. [See Image 1] [See Image 2]

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