Poll: Screen Location of your Mac OS X Dock?

[MacRumors]

Vote: Poll: Screen Location of your Mac OS X Dock? (http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=340)

[arn]

This has been a poll in the past, but seems appropriate again.

arn

[Mord]

bottom will surely win it's so much more practical

[arn]

Originally posted by Hector
bottom will surely win it's so much more practical

I would say Bottom will win because it's the default.... whether it's more practical or not is up for debate. :)

arn

[punter]

bottom will win, but left is best!

Right gets in the way of your scroll bars and resize. And your icons on the desktop

Bottom gets in the way of "play" in quicktime movies full sized, and in the way of your resize.

Left could get in the way of your red button if you have it fill your screen... but it's good because you resize windows away from it, so you won't run over it.

glad i got my comment in early :) how about a poll on responses to 10.3.2 or whatever it was

[winmacguy]

Personally at work I have had mine hidden at the bottom of the screen, but have known some strange people who insist on having theirs at the side of the screen which takes a lot of getting used to.

[Gymnut]

left hidden. nuff said.

[ckwm]

I was one of those strange 'leftie' people but have recently popped the dock back down to the bottom. Right would annoy me, getting in the way of all the icons.

[mproud]

Top is an option through TinkerTool or similar. Why would you when the menu bar is already up there? I don't know.

Though mine is at the bottom.

Still would like to see someone get multiple docks going on, like, say, left and right or left and bottom.

[Wes]

Bottom, on the right it gets on top of all my desktop icons and on the left it covers all of this:

[backspinner]

On the right, it is the most natural. On the left would be ok too, I think. I'm on a PowerBook or iMac and have very few space vertical but lots of it horizontal.

The OS keeps the space under the dock free, so I don't know where these comments about this come from?

[wordmunger]

I'm a writer, and I want to see as much of my text document as possible. On a TiBook, there's plenty of horizontal real estate, but not as much vertically, so I place the dock on the right. Then working in MS Word, I make the main toolbar vertical as well, so that my document can stretch all the way from the top menu to the bottom of the screen.

I used to be annoyed that the dock got in the way of my disk icons, but in the past year, I've managed to wean myself of disk icons completely. In fact, I rarely use the desktop at all any more--I only tend to use it as a "temporary" holding place for downloaded files.

One feature that would be cool for those who like to see the disk icons and complain about the dock on the right obscuring them is an option for disk icons to appear automatically in the dock! Or "smart" disk icons that move themselves a little bit to the left when the dock's on the right side.

[yuri_koval]

Bottom-Right suites me with TinkerTool

[vancenase]

> top right

i have some X11 apps that i use daily and like to hog the left side (upper and lower regions)

[macFanDave]

In all of the single-digit Mac OS's, the icons were always on the right-hand side of the screen. Having the Dock on the right-hand side is the most consistent with my years of Mac use.

Of course, if you are switching from Windows, you might like the Taskbar-like bottom-mounted Dock.

As far as the Dock impinging on your application windows is concerned, that's the program developer's fault. All well-written OS X programs take the Dock's position and size into account when they draw themselves and, at most, will go right up to the Dock.

[PretendPCuser]

Originally posted by Gymnut
left hidden. nuff said.

It was easier for me switching from OS9 to have the Dock hidden on the left. I was always mousing over there anyway for....holy crap! I forget why i always was moving my mouse that way! What did we do in OS9 that required you to have the mouse on the left side of the screen?

Oh, hidden is the way!!! Watch newbies be baffled! Great Fun!!! :D

[wPod]

does noone use hacks to move their dock around? mine is in the bottom left hand corner hidden. would also be interesting to see if people hide their docks or not. when searching for extra desktop space (i haev a 12" PB) hidding the dock is awsome.

[jxyama]

mine's on bottom right. wherever you put it, i find it practical to flush the dock to a corner in such a way to make the trash immobile. i realize i hardly ever drag the actual files to the trash anymore, but i find it more usable regardless...

i'm against hiding the dock because i personally believe less things are animated on the desktop, the better. it's distracting and you lose the instant visual information provided by the dock.

i don't like to put it to the left because i'd like (and most of us and most apps, i assume) to open various documents and menu panels flushed to the left.

bottom gets in the way because most screens are shorter on the height. vertical real estate is usually more precious.

right gets in the way of the icons on the desktop... as others mentioned. but i think it's the most "logical" place because it doesn't have inherent "flaws" i mentioned above.

i think the best solution would be to have dock on the right, flushed to the bottom with desk icons showing up on from the left side of the screen. (aka, like windows, except by putting dock on the right, you save the vertical real estate compared to taskbar of windows...)

[shadowfax]

mine is on the bottom left. it gives me a kickass workflow--i have a safari window open on the right, an iChat window on the left, and in the lower right, my iTunes window.

i realize i didn't blur my buddy list, but i trust you guys won't be d*cks and bug my buddies...

http://www.macsnaps.com/snaps/screengrab/1071759602.jpg

[trebblekicked]

left, hidden. i still pop it up by accident occasionally, but this is the way that works for me.

[FriarTuck]

Bottom hidden for myself, bottom unhidden for wife & kids.

[fluidfloyd]

Bottom : Hidden : No magnification

The apps I use most of the time have a fair amount of palettes so I keep the dock hidden to reduce screen clutter. It does pop up a bit when I don't mean it to, but I can live with that...

fluidfloyd

[AmigoMac]

How do you do that?

My dock is still in the middle, I'd like to move it ... thx in advance!

[rog]

right side of course, the only logical choice. Apps do not by default put windows on the right side, so this way the dock never . If it's at the bottom, unless I have hiding turned on, it gets in the way of attemtps to resize windows. If you maximize with most apps, it will grow as large as can be on the bottom but not the right. I never have any problem with scroll bars getting covered up. And of course the main reason to put it on the right is that horizontal res is greater than vertical, so you have room to spare especially on widescreen monitors.

[achmafooma]

left for me. When I first switched from Windows, I had it on the bottom because it was more in-tune with my taskbar training.

About a year later, when I was bored in class one day, I played around with it on the left and really liked it there... so I switched it to the left on my desktop at home and after a couple days' adjustment I love it there :-)

I probably would have done it on the right, except it messes with the desktop icons. I wish the desktop would automatically move icons out of the way of the dock ;-) maybe in 10.4.

[fixyourthinking]

There's no choice for multiple docks???

I have a dock on the left, right, and bottom

Applications left

Utilities right

Internet/Network bottom

[Laslo Panaflex]

I have a dual monitor setup, and have it placed to the right. The right monitor is the one without the finder, so I get great screen space and the dock never gets in the way.

[TVGenius]

Left; fixed; no magnification. On a 21" Cinema, it's the only way to go. I have Final Cut Pro fill the entire rest of the screen, and if it's at the bottom, whenever I work on the bottom of the timeline I always accidentally get to it. With some projects I've been doing lately, a 21" at full res is still small for my timeline...

[edesignuk]

Originally posted by TVGenius
On a 21" Cinema <snip>a 21" at full res is still small for my timeline...
a 21" Cinema? There's no such thing? Is there?

There's 20", 22", 23".

[TVGenius]

I thought there was... it measures just a hair over 20.5 inches... maybe it's only 20...

[zaphoyd]

I usually have it on the bottom. But when I am working with both monitors I put it on the left of the left monitor. That lets me use the whole main screen for final cut, and use the second screen for everything else.

[macMaestro]

Now here's a question. How many people use the eye candy known as Magnification.

(Bottom, no mag)

[Sailfish]

Right gives the less hassle for me and I keep enough icons or adjust the size so it stays about a 1/2 inch wide, no magnification.

I moved the desktop icons slightly to the left and they have stayed that way, even with a "clean up".

This makes it easy to drag a desktop icon into a dock folder, problem is I can't access the inner folders like I can if I wasn't dragging something. (feature request!)

Bottom is a hassle as a lot of apps screens maximize right on it, ditto for the left and Photoshop tool bar. Plus I like to use the bottom off screen occasionally, just keeping the top of a window showing.

I tried a hack that put the dock at the top, no good.

Guess for small screens the bottom is best.

My "Blob" is in the bottom underneath the column of desktop icons when not in use.

[mrsebastian]

bottom right with tinker tool

[wdlove]

I voted that I don't use Mac OS X, in the minority at 2%.

My wife is with the majority her Dock is at the bottom.

[dylanemcgregor]

Mine is on the left side and hidden. I'd like to be able to leave it visible, but it always seems to overlap my windows and looks cluttered.

Off topic:

I noticed a bunch of posters mentioning that their icons are on the right as well. Every time I reboot I move the icons to the left side of the screen where I want them. Any way to make this change stick?

-Dylan

[TomSmithMacEd]

Originally posted by adzoox
There's no choice for multiple docks???

I have a dock on the left, right, and bottom

Applications left

Utilities right

Internet/Network bottom

YOu can have more then one dock?! How?! email me! I wish you culd put the dock on the top....

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by TomSmithMacEd
YOu can have more then one dock?! How?! email me! I wish you culd put the dock on the top.... yeah man! that would be cool. then it would get in the way every time you moved the mouse up to click on a menu button! shoot, that would rock!

[mc68k]

bottom left

[edesignuk]

dual screens, left hand side of left hand screen.

[nagromme]

Try LEFT and you'll never go back.

Any other choice makes accidental clicks easy when scrolling.

Plus the bottom wastes useful vertical screen space, meaning more scrolling in every app! Documents scroll vertically--and besides, many Macs have wide screens: horizontal space is more available!

And the right side visually crowds your desktop icons if any. Especially the Dock labels on top of icon labels.

Left should be the default, along with Scale Minimize (faster than Genie). The other defaults are already good: I like Magnification and Hiding, but NOT both together. That makes icons hard to hit quickly.

Tip: hold down Opt and drag the Dock divider bar. It snaps to the "sharp" sizes. (Hold Shift to drag to any screen edge.)

[mactastic]

I think we should try the poll with 6 choices, well 7 if you count other. Right, left or bottom, and hidden or not. I'd be curious to see how many people hide vs how many don't.

Personally I am on the right and hidden. I keep the dock to it's minimum size but have it magnify slightly when I mouse over it.

I'm in agreement with the other TiBook users, with a widescreen format display it makes little sense to put the dock on the bottom when you have such little up and down real estate. One side or the other is definetly the way to go.:D

[pimentoLoaf]

With VirtualPC, you'd think I'd also have my dock on the left, but...

I have a few data items on my screen and it would get too messy to move it there (or on the right, for that matter).

Let's see.

Dock on bottom, HD icon on right with a gap, F@H client, Downloads folder, two gaps, and Aladdin's Secure Delete just above the dock's Trash icon; if I screen shot things, there are three gaps for PDF icons between those.

On the left, a textEdit document describing purchases for the system, PDF manuals for AirPort & BorisCalligraphy, and a tutorial folder on FXScript DVE's.

In other words, the dock belongs on the bottom in MacOS X.

[a1291762]

I've got my dock on the bottom but not centered. It's pinned to the "end" position which means the trash is *always* in the bottom right corner (where it is supposed to be).

I also have my icons small and the dock background transparent.

Link

[pivo6]

Mine is on the bottom. Isn't it better on the bottom? ;) I don't have many icons there, so it really doesn't get in the way.

[mms]

Hidden on left side with no magnification. Hidden is the only way to go with limited screen space (like my 14'' Lombard).

[iPC]

lefft
hidden
cleardock
no bouncing

[TyWahn]

right .. hidden

[wdlove]

Well now I officially have Mac OS X Panther. My Dock is at the bottom, still need to do some adjustment so it's not quite as annoying with the popups.

[mms]

What popups? Unless you're using IE (and I don't understand why you would) then you can usually block popups.

[Nanda Devi]

Anyone else use hot corners? I kind of dig 'em. Drag your mouse to the designated corner of the screen and activate the screen saver, drag mouse to another corner and prevent the screen saver from coming on.

But this is probably not news to anyone....

Oh yeah, bottom, no magnification, hidden.

[howtoplaydead]

bottom, practical