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The Dock and FCPX?

Last year I complained that I was getting irritated by the way the hidden Dock kept popping up accidentally when my cursor unintentionally went too far below the timeline in FCP X.


A number of solutions were suggested but eventually I decided to keep the icons small and visible at all times.


Today I decided to try hiding the dock but when I moved my cursor to the bottom of the screen it did not appear.


This baffled me for several minutes until I discovered that the cursor needs to be at the bottom of the screen for 3 seconds in order for the dock to appear.


Can this timing delay be altered?

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 12.6

Posted on May 28, 2023 5:06 AM

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Posted on May 28, 2023 6:13 AM

Yes, it can be changed up or down. In my case, I actually increased it, because I have no use for the Dock and I can turn it on and off with Command-Option-D. This way I never have it accidentally appear.


I am away from my mac but I will check later and tell you the command to make the changes.

8 replies

May 28, 2023 11:48 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

For completeness, and in case you or someone wants to try it, I checked the command I mentioned:


defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0.5 && killall Dock


You can of course use a different number instead of 0.5 (I used 5 myself, to make a looong delay, as I'd rather not show the Dock accidentally). You can even put in 0 to have no delay if you wish.

May 29, 2023 1:41 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

I am not aware of any repository of such commands.


There is a general method to read and write plist files using the Terminal:


defaults read rev_url [stuff]


defaults write rev_url [stuff]



where rev_url is a way to identify things using reverse url notation - like

com.apple.dock, com.apple.finder, etc



This provides a way to read or write preferences, but we need to know the correct names for each setting.

Some I have learned over time, but mostly I just search online when I need one.

For example, I searched for

defaults command to change dock delay


and boom!




The Dock and FCPX?

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