Disable Dock shadow on macOS Sequoia

Question

Level 1

101 points

Disable Dock shadow on macOS Sequoia

How do I disable the shadow on the dock for Sequoia?

I am trying to take screenshots of some source code for documentation. However, the window, being close to the dock, is covered by a faint shadow from the dock. The shadow, which ends up in the screenshot, ruins the perfect white background of the code editor and leaves an annoying gradient when I put the screenshot on the white documentation page.

How do I disable the dock shadow so this doesn't happen?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.8

Posted on Oct 11, 2026 8:26 AM

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Answer 1

den.thed

Level 10

98,362 points

Oct 11, 2026 8:49 AM in response to DrYeet

You can not disable the dock shadow.

One option is to move the window away from the dock.

A second option is to temporally hide and show the dock.

A third option is to move the dock to the right side or the bottom.

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Answer 2

Oct 13, 2026 12:03 AM in response to DrYeet

You can turn off folder shadows from screenshots if you Command + Shift + 4, then press Option-Spacebar. Or maybe (I have not tried this):

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true ; killall SystemUIServer

Does that work for Dock shadow? I guess there might also be 3rd party add-ons for this.

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Answer 3

DrYeet Author

Level 1

101 points

Oct 13, 2026 8:37 AM in response to den.thed

Thanks for your response. This makes me reminisce of the old days of computer OS's. I miss when software companies used straight boxes and pure colors rather than wasting time on needless gradients and effects. It may look a little nice, but practicality suffers a mile.

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Answer 4

Oct 13, 2026 12:04 AM in response to DrYeet

[deleted double post]

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Answer 5

DrYeet Author

Level 1

101 points

Oct 13, 2026 8:38 AM in response to Matti Haveri

As a matter of fact, I had run that exact command before specifically to remove those shadows. Unfortunately they are not correlated with the dock/window shadows outside of screenshots.

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Answer 6

den.thed

Level 10

98,362 points

Oct 13, 2026 12:15 PM in response to DrYeet

You're welcome. I agree and also dislike a lot of the new features in macOS.

To make Apple aware of your dislikes, send feedback to > Feedback - macOS - Apple

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