Is it possible to change the delay before the dock appears in OS X on Mac?

Question

I would like to change the delay before the (autohidden) dock appears when I mouse over it.

There is currently a short delay before it appears, and I would like to make it a lot longer (one second instead of 1/10 of a second).

Based on extensive googling, this is a question that many people would like an answer to. I am hoping that the delay is specified somewhere and can be modified.

Many people would like the dock to appear instantly to be able to work more quickly.

Many people would like the dock to appear more slowly in order to effectively hide it.

Can we answer this question definitively?

Answer 1

There is a preference for the delay before the dock appears. You can change it by typing the following in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float XXX; killall Dock

Where XXX is a number of seconds. I set they delay to 10 seconds. I can still get the dock to appear if I want to, but it takes a long time and never appears by accident.

To reset the dock to the default behavior, type the following in Terminal:

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

Answer 2

Running defaults read com.apple.dock and checking here revealed no plist setting to change the dock's show delay. Secrets.prefpane and TinkerTool reveal nothing either. Therefore, I'm going to assume that there's no way to change the setting.

Answer 3

This thread doesn't answer the question but may be somewhat useful :

I know it's a little tangential, but I recently stumbled onto an alternate configuration: Set it to always show, minimum icon size with maximum magnification. It still takes up a little bit of screen space, but I can get to it instantly, and so far I have fewer accidental activations because the small icons take up less surface area on the edge.

Answer 4

On newer versions of macOS, setting seems to be changed from autohide-delay (actual number of seconds) to autohide-time-modifier (scaling factor for default delay). So the command becomes:

defaults write \
  com.apple.dock \
  autohide-time-modifier \
  -float 0.3

# Dock needs to be restarted
# for change to take effect
killall Dock

Obviously, set it to w/ever scale you want instead of 0.3: say, 0 to remove animation completely.

Answer 5

update:

defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide -float 1; \
defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 10; \
killall Dock

there appear to be two settings (Mojave tested). autohide (whether to hide it at all) is settable from System Preferences / Dock 0 = don't hide 1 = autohide

defaults read com.apple.Dock | less

{
    autohide = 1;
    "autohide-delay" = 10;
    ...
}

@Hans the delay may not have worked for you if the "boolean" was off.

Answer 6

It is not possible to change that (as far as i know).