I’m a Dock minimalist. There are only three applications that live in my Dock: mail, web, IM. Everything else is launched via Spotlight search. I like having an uncluttered Dock, and I like that my Dock only ever shows the applications that I have open.
Every once in awhile, my Dock will stop updating itself. It won’t show when I’ve launched an application that lives in my Dock, and it won’t show additional apps that I’ve launched. When this happens, it always throws me off to discover that I’ve got an app open that isn’t showing in m Dock.
Thankfully, there’s a quick fix for this:
- Launch Activity Monitor, which is located in /Applications/Utilities/
- In the list of open applications, select Dock and then click the Quit button in the toolbar.
After you’ve done this, your Dock will disappear for a couple of seconds. It will relaunch itself, and the newly-launched Dock should now be correct.
> There are only three applications that live in my Dock: mail, web, IM. Everything else is launched via Spotlight search.
I would do something similar, except that on my machine, Spotlight is either laughably slow, finds the wrong application, or finds a file with a name vaguely similar to the app I really want. Or most frequently, a combination of all three.
Maybe I should run Quicksilver instead? Or maybe my box is giving a not-so-subtle hint that it needs an upgrade to an SSD…
If Spotlight is slow, you should rebuild its index.
Occasionally, Spotlight does find the wrong application for me. When this happens, it’s usually that Spotlight doesn’t find the application, but rather finds its entry in Dictionary.app. It’s annoying, but it’s so infrequent that I haven’t bothered to look into alternates.
I also haven’t tried Quicksilver. Spotlight meets my needs, so I haven’t felt the need to go elsewhere. If you do, let me know how it goes. 🙂