Finding Applications

What’s Up, Dock?!

The Dock, the bar at the edge your Mac screen with all the pretty icons, is a concept Steve Jobs brought over from his NeXTSTEP operating system. He introduced it to the world when he showed off Mac OS X for the first time in 2000 and today’s version is little changed from the Dock released to the public 20 years ago.

The Dock is a convenient place to get quick access to applications and other items on your Mac without having to browse or search your computer. However, the Dock was by no means intended to hold all your applications (even though it could). Rather, an efficient use of your computing experience is to put the items you use most in the Dock.

Additionally, original items are not stored in the Dock. Dock items are simply links to items stored elsewhere on your Mac. For this reason, if you remove one of these items from your computer, you’ll be left with a question mark on the Dock.

But if not the Dock, where do you find the other apps and things you want to open? And how do you know that they even exist? Read on…

Applications Folder

Since Mac OS X’s release in 2001, the preferred place for applications to live on your Mac has been the Applications folder. This consolidation came after the previous 17 years when it was cool for apps to be strewn through the Mac drive. (In the present era, some apps cannot even run properly or check for updates unless they’re in an approved Applications folder.)

There are a few common approaches to access Applications:

1. Click the Finder on the Dock and click Applications on the sidebar of the resulting window
2. Make a new Finder window (command in Finder’s File menu) and click Applications on the sidebar
3. Choose Applications from the Finder’s Go menu

If you don’t see Applications on the sidebar and want it there, I would follow up with two questions:

1. Is the Favorites section hidden? If you see the word Favorites and no items within, mouse over it and click Show [or look for a > button]
2. Is Applications truly not in the sidebar? Go to Finder Preferences > Sidebar and enable Applications

Launchpad

When Apple released Mac OS X Lion (10.7) in 2011, it introduced Launchpad, a way of viewing and opening applications similar to iOS. I’ve never gotten into using Launchpad but some folks prefer seeing their apps in a grid, swiping through them, organizing them in folder boxes, etc.

If not in the Dock, you’ll find Launchpad in your Applications folder. Alternatively, on many Mac keyboards produced since 2011, the F4 key (with six squares in a grid) toggles Launchpad.

Spotlight

If you find yourself more efficient by keeping your hands on the keyboard—or if pointing and clicking just isn’t your style—you can invoke Spotlight, start typing an application name, and press Return as soon as it’s selected. Spotlight indexes everything on your Mac (name and content) so you can quickly find your stuff, including applications.

The default shortcut for Spotlight is Command+Space and you can customize this in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts. Spotlight is also the magnifying glass on the menu bar.

I highly recommend and challenge you not to reach for the mouse while using this tool. I think you’ll find it a lot easier to type to improve your search query and/or use the arrow keys to navigate.

Plus, since Applications are generally shown at the top of the search results, it should be quite easy to find, select, and open the one you seek, assuming you know what it’s called. (You can customize the order in System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results.)