Dock menus give you access to commonly used functions of applications that are currently active in the Dock. Active applications can be identified by a dark triangle on their Dock icon in Tiger, or a bluish dash in Leopard. Most active applications allow you to exert some level of control directly from the Dock, instead of bringing the application to the front and accessing its menus.
Access an Application's Dock Menu
- Place your cursor over the application's icon in the Dock.
- Right-click or click and hold the icon.
- A menu of available commands will display.
You can select any of the available commands and the application will dutifully perform the selected action, just as if you had taken the time to bring the application window to the foreground and access its menus.
Types of Commands
An application's developer determines which commands are available for activating from the Dock. Some applications only provide the bare minimum of commands that Apple requires them to support, including:
- Remove from Dock / Keep in Dock
- Open at Login
- Show in Finder
- Hide
- Quit
Each active application's Dock menu will also include a list of open windows owned by the application. For instance, if you have five Safari web browser windows open, each window will be listed in the Dock menu, making it easy to quickly switch between them.
Beyond these basic commands, developers can add functions as they see fit. Here are some examples of what you can do from the Dock menu with a few selected applications. (You may or may not see these options, depending on which version of the application you're running.)
Dock Menu Command Examples
iTunes- Repeat Off
- Repeat All
- Repeat One
- Shuffle
- Play
- Next
- Previous
- Mute
- Get New Mail
- Compose New Message
- Compose New Note
- New Chat
- My Status
The 'My Status' item in iChat's Dock controls lets you select and set your online status from one of many options.
Microsoft Word 2008- Open Recent
The Open Recent command displays a list of the most recently viewed Word documents; you can select one and open it directly from the Dock.
The Dock is more than just an application launcher, or a way to organize often used applications. It’s also a shortcut to commonly used commands available in applications.
Give Dock menus a try. They can help you be more productive, especially when you're working with multiple applications simultaneously.
