How to hide the Mac Dock completely (and get it back)

Auto-hide the Dock

1. Choose Apple menu › System Settings.
2. Click Desktop & Dock.
3. Turn on Automatically hide and show the Dock.

The Dock slides away until you move the pointer to its edge (Apple: Change Desktop & Dock settings). ⌥⌘D toggles the same setting from the keyboard.

Stop it popping up

Auto-hide still brings the Dock back whenever the pointer touches the edge. To make it wait much longer, set a long reveal delay in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 1000
killall Dock

With auto-hide on, the Dock now waits 1,000 seconds before appearing — in practice, never.

Get it back

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay
killall Dock

Then turn auto-hide off in Desktop & Dock if you want the Dock always visible again.

Replace it instead

If you’re hiding the Dock because you use another one, let that app manage it. HeyDock’s Replace the macOS Dock does the steps above for you — it saves your Dock settings, sets auto-hide with a long delay, and puts everything back when you turn it off, quit, log out, or after a crash. (HeyDock is our app.)