I have over 60 app icons in my MacOS dock. I use most of them, but the others I want available in the dock so that I don’t have to go searching for them. Visually tolerable on my 27" display, ridiculous on my MacBook.
I would much prefer something like the iOS setup. A flick of the finger reveals the desktop. My apps are organized into folders that let me see the top 9 apps in the folder. up to 216 app icons visible with a flick of the finger.
MacOS folders on the desktop are opaque. I could put app aliases in them, but there would be no visual cues as to the contents of the folders.
I spend most of my time on the Mac because it is so much easier to do work there than on the iPad or iPhone. But I wish Apple would put some thought into the UI.
The Dock is like a placeholder they invented when they couldn’t think of an elegant way to access apps. But they never went back and implemented a proper solution. Somebody at Apple figured out how to do it on iOS though.
When I started using the Mac in 1989, I was working in the computer industry. The Mac was the first computer that actually made me more productive. These days what differentiates Apple products is the way the products work together, not the elegance of the individual products.
My Dock has 25 app icons, but when I open an app from the Dock, it’s more by its relative position than by the actual icon. On My Mobile devices, I never look beyond the first screen or two and depend on Spotlight to open apps.
On my Mac, I almost never use the Apps folder; instead, I use Spotlight to open the app or a file associated with it. Usually, the few characters produce a short enough list to make selection easy.
The Dock is most useful for notification, messaging, and reminder apps that show a highlighted number for items that may need attention.
Years ago I created a folder called Utility in my Home folder. I Option-Command-click dragged several Applications to this folder so they display as aliases. Next I dragged the Utility folder to the Dock and selected the option to keep it in the Dock. When I click on the Dock “Utility” icon the icons for the enclosed apps are displayed.
The small black arrows indicate an alias. I recently added some iOS apps.
A similar process could be used to group the apps with related functions as a single icon in the Dock - as you can do with iOS.
Another old OSX trick…You can assign a new display icon to the folder with aliases via the Get Info feature. First, with Finder, locate an app or drive with an icon you wish to use. Click on the icon in top left of the Get Info window and copy it (command-c). Now Get Info for the folder with aliases, click on its (dull) icon and paste the replacement icon with command-v. (just realised this does not change its appearance in the Dock)
I am relieved that Apple has not quietly withdrawn the Alias feature of macOS as I use it for creating folders with aliases to, for example, store reference files (bibliography) for a new project from an earlier projects, instead of duplicating those reference files.
@NickGPappas , did you use Launchpad in MacOS? it’s quite similar to iOS presentation.
I never used it as I’m more of a Launchbar kind of user for Apps, but I knew it was there. @mpainesyd ‘s method is kind of similar.
One could also do the aliases-in-a-folder trick then resize the icons to fit in one view and put the folder in its own Space, which would be available with a multi finger swipe.
Then I searched for “use launchpad macos” on the Interwebs and got quite a few links from reasonably reliable sites indicating that Launchpad’s functionality has been moved into Spotlight, and those users who want to restore Launchpad and thereby remove that functionality from Spotlight can do so with a Terminal command.
I haven’t tried the command myself so didn’t want to include any links that would appear I endorse the technique.
So I’d suggest first trying Spotlight or a folder of aliases and if that isn’t the right tool for you, search and read and decide about Launchpad.
Back in the classic Mac days, I used DragThing and a very similar program whose name escapes me at the moment. If you haven’t looked into similar “modern” application launchers, like DockThings, Station, iCollections, and others, it may be worth your time. If you search TidBITS Talk for “DragThing”, you’ll find a few discussions of potentially suitable alternatives.
I have a few folders in my Dock for easy access. Tahoe allows you to customize your folders with colors and symbols. But why oh why doesn’t that customization show up in the Dock?
I do the same. Even though I mostly use Spotlight to launch apps (usually just 3-4 characters are enough to push the right one to the top), I have a couple folders in my Dock with symlinks to most frequently used apps or docs.
Navigation can be improved perhaps by choosing to display as stack rather than just the generic folder icon (right-click on folder in Dock for those options), but I gather that this can still result in a lot of hunt and pick.
It sounds like the pre-Tahoe LaunchPad is what would have worked best for the OP. I wasn’t a huge fan and basically never used it, but to each their own. I think in Tahoe, the closest you could come to that (w/o 3rd party apps) would be Spotlight with cmd-1.
Before OS X, I used QuicKeys for a ton of stuff. Application launching was one that I used all the time for the half dozen apps I used daily. I wish Services offered the same “it just works” quality. I have set up services in Automator to launch a few apps. But it’s easier to just keep them in the dock.
Same. I just open Applications. Once I’m are in that folder in column view, if I’m looking for an application that isnot in sight in the list, typing the first letter of the name takes me to whatever the first app with that name is, which if it isn’t the app, is at least very close.
