Mac Dock folder tip - How to move a folder to the Mac Dock

Mac Dock FAQ: How do I move a commonly used Mac folder to the Dock so I can access it easier?

When you first buy a Mac, the right side of the Dock (the right side of the highway stripe on the Mac Dock) will have just the basic items on it, such as the Applications and Downloads folders. What a lot of people don't know is that you can put links (shortcuts) to your own folders there as well. In fact, this is a great place to put shortcuts to your most commonly used Mac folders.

How to put a Finder folder on the Mac Dock

To put a Mac Finder folder on the Mac Dock, just follow these steps:

1. Open the Mac Finder, and navigate to the folder you want to place on the Dock.
2. Click the folder, and drag it to the right side of the Mac Dock. Be careful here to place the folder on the Dock itself, and not on top of the Applications or Downloads icons. If you place it on those icons, your folder shortcut will end up inside those folders.

After you drop your folder on the right side of the Mac Dock, you can now click it, and you'll see that it behaves just like the Dock Downloads folder.

It's important to note here that what you just did was create a shortcut to your folder. To be clear, this action does not move the folder. If you look at the Mac Finder, you'll see that your original folder is right where it was when we started.

Mac Dock - How to remove a folder from the Mac Dock

Of course things are always changing, and a today's commonly-used folder won't be so commonly used in the future, so you'll eventually want to remove that folder from the Mac Dock. This is also easily done.

To remove folder from the Mac Dock, just click the folder, and drag it up and off the Dock. As you do so, you'll see a "cloud" added to the folder icon, indicating that the folder icon is about to disappear in a puff of smoke.

Again, your original folder is still right where you found it in the Mac Finder, so this is safe to do. In fact, I recommend verifying that your original folder is still in the Finder before you do this.