Quick Dock

Instant app switching from your keyboard. Your Dock. Faster.

Take control of your Dock with numeric shortcuts.

Switch apps, hide them, or trigger App Exposé from the keyboard.

Fast app switching: Press a modifier key (Option by default) and hit a number to activate or hide an app instantly.

Exposé at a glance: Press another modifier (Control by default) to see all windows of any app. New to this macOS feature? What App Exposé is, and every way to open it.

Simple setup: Grant Accessibility access once — then Quick Dock is ready to work.

How it works

1️⃣ Fast app switching

Press the modifier key (default: Option)
Numeric labels 1–9 and 0 appear on Dock icons
Pressing a number:
- activates the corresponding app
- hides it if it’s already active

2️⃣ Show all windows of an app

Press another modifier key (default: Control)
Numeric labels 1–9 and 0 appear on Dock icons
Pressing a number triggers App Exposé for the selected app (all windows of that app are displayed)

Switch between apps and windows from the keyboard, without a mouse or trackpad.

Why use it?

Quickly switch between apps and view their windows directly from your keyboard — just like in Windows and Linux.

The idea was simple and practical, so I decided to bring it to macOS.

Permissions

At first launch, the app will request Accessibility access.

This is required to:

activate apps
manage their state
trigger App Exposé

Once granted, the utility is fully ready to use.

Quick Dock and DockView 2

Quick Dock does one job and stays that way: numbers on your Dock, keyboard only, nothing else running. It is still sold and still supported — if you own it, nothing changes.

The numbering idea now also lives inside DockView 2 as Dock Shortcuts, next to window previews on hover, the ⌥⇥ window switcher and window layouts. If you want the whole set in one app, try DockView 2.

One thing to know: App Exposé on a second modifier is Quick Dock only. DockView does not have it. If that is the part you use, stay here.