Improve usability when dragging items to a hidden Dock

Apr 28, '11 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: canisbos

Many of us have turned on Dock hiding to maximize usable screen area. One small problem with a hidden Dock, however, is that when you want to drag a file onto an application or folder icon on the Dock, you don't always know exactly where to aim, since you can't see the Dock until the mouse is on top of it. As a result, you will usually drag the file to the wrong location on the Dock at first, and you will need to hunt for the correct target, all the while keeping the mouse button down. Sometimes you will even drop the file onto the wrong icon while 'scrubbing' the Dock for the right one.

My solution to this problem is to reveal the Dock with a keystroke after initiating the drag, but before the mouse reaches the Dock area. By doing that, I can visually locate the target icon first, and then drag the file straight to the target. No more scrubbing.

To facilitate doing that, I have assigned an easy-to-use keyboard shortcut to the action labeled 'Move focus to the Dock' in the Keyboard prefpane. By default, this action's shortcut is Ctrl+F3. That's just too cumbersome to type on some Apple keyboards, which lack dedicated function keys. But most of these keyboards have the F5 and F6 keys unassigned to any system function, so they are available for binding to whatever you wish. Either of these keys is a pretty good choice for assigning to this action.

You can find the 'Move focus to the Dock' action in System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts » Keyboard & Text Input.

After assigning (for example) F5 to the 'Move focus to the Dock' action, it becomes very easy to reveal the Dock in the act of dragging an item toward it before the mouse reaches the Dock area: just press F5 (or whatever) while dragging.

What would be even better is if some kind software developer would write a program that would automatically reveal the Dock if it detected you were dragging an item in its direction. Until that happens, the keyboard trick described here provides at least a little relief.

[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. On my MacBook, F5 is bound to raising the sound volume, so I tested it using F12, which is also awkward, but it did work.]

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