If you’re like me, and prefer a distraction free desktop, you probably have the auto-hide option enabled for the Dock. A minor annoyance I’ve had with this option is the speed that the Dock responds.

Thankfully, there is a hidden preference (autohide-delay) that can be set to adjust the speed of the hide and show animation using the Terminal.

Steps

• Launch the Terminal application (Applications > Utilities > Terminal)
• Paste in the following command:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.5

*In this example the hide and show animation is sped up to 0.5 seconds. Substitute 0.5 with any value to either speed up or slow down the animation time. You can also enter a value of 0 (zero) which will eliminate the animation and instantly hide and show the dock.

In order for the preference change to take effect you’ll have to restart the Dock process by using the following Terminal command:

killall Dock

To restore the Dock animation speed back to the original setting, use the following commands:

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier
killall Dock