How to minimize an app by clicking its Dock icon on Mac

What clicking a Dock icon does on a Mac

A Dock click on a Mac means “take me to this app”. If the app isn’t open, it opens. If it’s open behind other windows, it comes to the front. If it’s open with no windows, many apps open a new one. And if you click the app you’re already in, with its windows showing, nothing happens at all, because you’re already there.

On Windows, the taskbar treats that last click as a toggle: click the app you’re using and it minimizes, click again and it comes back. If you’ve used Windows for years, your hand still expects that, and on a Mac the click goes nowhere. Then you reach for the yellow button, or a shortcut, to do what one click used to.

What macOS gives you instead

⌘M minimizes the front window into the Dock. It works one window at a time, so an app with four windows open takes four presses.

⌘H hides the whole app: every window disappears at once and the app keeps running. Bring it back by clicking its Dock icon or with ⌘Tab. ⌥⌘H does the opposite and hides every app except the one you’re in.

Option-click another app’s Dock icon to switch to it and hide the app you were in, in one move. It’s the closest thing macOS has to the Windows click — but you click the app you want, not the one you want gone.

Double-click a window’s title bar to minimize it, if you set that up: in System Settings → Desktop & Dock, choose Minimize for “Double-click a window’s title bar to”. The same pane can minimize windows into their app’s Dock icon instead of beside the Trash, which keeps the Dock tidy — but no setting there changes what a click on the icon does.

Minimize, hide or next window: which click to choose

The fix gives the click one of three jobs. Minimize sends the app’s windows to the Dock, where you can see them, and the next click on the icon brings back the windows it minimized. It’s the one that feels like Windows.

Hide clears the whole app off the screen, like ⌘H, without leaving minimized windows in the Dock. Pick it if you like a short Dock and bring apps back with ⌘Tab.

Bring up its next window doesn’t put anything away. Each click on the app you’re in brings its next window to the front, so you can cycle through an app’s windows from the Dock. It suits apps you keep several windows of, like Finder or a browser. From the keyboard, macOS already has a shortcut for the same job — switch between windows of the same app explains it, and why it sometimes seems to do nothing.

Dragging icons, long presses and Control-clicks behave as they always have, so the Dock’s menus and rearranging still work. If an app should keep the Mac’s usual click — one where you click the icon on purpose to open a new window, say — add it to the fix’s list and it’s left alone.

Other Windows habits macOS doesn’t keep

The Dock click is rarely the only one. On a Mac, ⌘Tab switches between apps rather than windows — a window switcher puts every window in the list. Closing an app’s last window usually leaves the app running — quit it when the last window closes. And the green button sends a window into its own full-screen Space — make it fill the screen in place, or, when you need a particular size rather than the whole screen, resize a window to an exact size such as 1920 × 1080. In Finder, ⌘X doesn’t cut files at all — cut and paste files with ⌘X and ⌘V. And ⌘Q, one key over from the ⌘W that closes a window, quits the whole app with no warning — make it hold-to-quit.

Because Mac apps keep running until you quit them, the ones you opened once in the morning are often still open at the end of the day. If that bothers you, have the apps you pick quit on their own after they’ve gone unused for a while.

Permissions, and turning it off

More fixes macOS doesn’t give you

One of 47 fixes and 10 apps in MacFixes. Every fix · Every app · Something else your Mac won’t do? Request it.