Apologies if this has already been asked and answered, but can’t find it.
I’m creating an application palette in Keyboard Maestro that mimics the macOS dock. I’m stuck on trying to create an entry in the palette which isn’t an app, but opens the standard macOS download folder.
I’m wondering if there is a way to put a folder shortcut or some other mechanism to do this?
(If wondering why I am doing this, I’m probably deep down a dark tunnel, but testing using the KM applicate palette to simulate having the macOS dock on multiple physical monitors simultaneously since macOS doesn’t support that for the native dock.)
What it isn’t going to give you is the different slide up displays you get in the dock. It is just going to open the folder in Finder, or Path Finder, etc. Whatever your default file manager app is.
I’m having trouble understanding what you are doing with the dock.
I have two monitors on my Mac Studio as separate displays, let’s call them “big” and “small”
Physically, left to right, I have the small monitor and then the big monitor.
My ideal solution would be to have the macOS dock vertically, always displayed, on the left side of the screen.
When I try to do this, it will only put the dock on the left side of the small monitor.
I do most of my active work on the big monitor, so to get to the dock I have to mouse all the way to the left, then keep going to mouse onto the small monitor, then all the way to the left side of that.
I’ve put a KM application palette on the left side of the big monitor, so now each monitor has a dock (or fake dock) on the physical left side of its screen.
Is there a way to do this with a setting in macOS? I have been unable to find one.
(Yes, I know there are other ways to launch apps than using the dock, but I like having the dock onscreen for my heavily used apps and use alternate launchers to reach seldom or lightly used other apps and tools.)
… what is it that is causing you some consternation on this?
In terms of settings, my monitors are set like this:
With the dock set like this:
And so it appears at the bottom of each display when I mouse down to it:
No. Because there is no common left on a set of monitors that span laterally. Hence why I noted it works for me because I have my dock on the bottom and set to auto-hide, which is the set up that permits this.
I would definitely recommend launchers over the dock and spending some more time with them to see if you can get more used to one of them - even just making more use of Spotlight. The benefits are significant if you can get used to it. I barely use the dock (auto hide means out of sight, out of mind), and find it is just so much faster to set up trigger words and hot keys via a launcher to open things.
While I make use of Keyboard Maestro palettes, these are either conflict palettes or one or two for special cases - such as a helper palette for the BBC micro:bit when one of my children is borrowing my Mac to program one to make it easier for them to get coding.
Further experimentation, the “auto-hide dock” is the setting that makes the stock modes more bearable.
With auto-hide, the dock will appear on any monitor when you move the mouse over the bottom of the screen, either screen.
With auto-hide disabled, you have to move the mouse and click with a little bit of precision to get the dock to move and appear on the current screen with the mouse.
I’ve never used auto-hide in the past as I found it slightly annoying.
Looks like I need to just grin and bear it and give auto-hide with dock at bottom a few days or more to see if I can adjust to it.
I can still place the KM customized palette on either screen in a different orientation, but seems like that now creates more confusion and no longer worth the effort.
I know I might be “talking this through out loud” but I appreciate the feedback and getting me to question what and why I am doing things a certain way versus other solutions.
I’ll put in a dying bid for the palette route as I use them extensively to avoid memorizing keyboard shortcuts and a simple app palette with some folder locations is very easy to make as the app icon gets added automatically.
The key tricks to getting them in place and looking good is to use icon only palette setting, adjusting their size to work with window placement, and picking the right color for standard or dark mode.
Apple’s “SF Symbols” app provides all the icons needed. I make text icons in some cases but that maybe a bridge too far for most.
I also enjoy deciding on what an icon is going to mean to me in my usage and again I know that’s not going to be an interest to everyone.
I’ve gone all in with dark mode and make the palettes dark to match. You may like the aesthetics or not.
As you can see, I have icons in these basically toolbar and sidebar replacements for lots of other macros that save me from going into menus or for actions that are Keyboard Maestro or another utility app specific. For ex. the Finder window toolbar replacement launches the Default Folders recent files and folders action which work better than the navtive Finder functions.
FWIW, I’m giving up on KM palettes because they make my window management layouts much more complicated and simple tools like Moom don’t “see” the palette and will put windows under them covering up the stop-light controls, for example.
I know it is solvable, but for me, compromising and using auto-hide dock on the bottom of the screen seems the path of least resistance and friction.
You could try a Dock replacement app such as Sidebar.
I too wanted the Dock on every monitor, I have four, but could not get the show/hide and open on active monitor to work. The Dock stubbornly remained anchored to my main monitor. I had been using uBar, but that appears to be abandonware (while available in SetApp, bugs go unfixed and emails to support go unanswered).
Sidebar is relatively new and under active development. While not perfect, it works for what I need.
