How to Add a Spacer to Your Dock

The OS X Dock is a great way to quickly access the application that you use most frequently. You can drag new icons onto the Dock, drag icons off the Dock, change the size of the icons... even add a nice animated genie effect to accentuate the icon you're looking for as your run your mouse over the application icons.

About the only feature missing, in my opinion, from making the Dock completely customizable, is the ability to add a spacer between icons. Ok, I lied. Not only is it possible, but with the help of one simple Terminal command, it's super-easy to do!

First, this is what my Dock looks like right now:

What I would like to do is group my icons into sections: productivity, audio/video, miscellaneous, with each group being separated by a spacer.

To do this, we need to open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal). Next, copy and paste this command into the Terminal window and press <enter>:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}'; killall Dock

Doing this will add a spacer to your Dock. Now that you have a spacer, you can drag and drop it to any other location on your Dock (just like you would an app icon). If you want to add another spacer, enter the command in Terminal again, and a second spacer will be created. Want a third spacer? You get the idea. This is what my Dock looks like after adding a few spacers:

If you want to remove an unwanted spacer, simply drag the spacer off the Dock and let go (like you would to remove an app icon from your Dock).

This takes Dock customization to the next level!

Posted on January 14, 2016 and filed under Design, How To, Mac, Opinion.