What Happens When Your Mac Dock Runs Out of Room?

Why Apple's Dock shrinks instead of overflowing

Open enough apps and Apple's Dock gets smaller. Mac-Forums users report that with magnification off, every icon has to fit on screen, so the Dock shrinks all the icons to fit when you have too many. Pinned apps and running apps shrink together. On a laptop screen they can end up too small to tell apart.

Ask in Apple's forums about a bigger Dock and a user reply there gives the answer people have gotten for years: there's no preference setting for a second row of icons, though third-party dock-like apps allow multiple rows. For macOS 26 Tahoe, a DockGroups guide reports that the Dock's behavior settings (size, magnification, position, auto-hide, minimize effect, recent apps) are unchanged and still live in System Settings → Desktop & Dock, and that Tahoe's new icon styles (Default, Dark, Clear and Tinted) sit under System Settings → Appearance → Icon & Widget Style. Those are a forum reply and a third-party guide, not Apple documentation, so treat them as reports and check your own Mac's settings.

The closest thing macOS has built in is Stage Manager, which you set up under System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Stage Manager → Customize. It works differently from the Dock: you get a strip of thumbnails for recently used apps, not every app you have open. Reports of how many thumbnails it shows differ. An older Macworld article about macOS 13 Ventura said thumbnails are added until there are five, and after that the most recently used apps take the row. A more recent 2026 Setapp guide says up to six, and you can't rearrange them. Neither source gives a figure confirmed for Tahoe, so check on your own Mac.

The usual advice is to prune. You can turn off Show recent applications in Dock and remove pinned apps you rarely use. That helps with pinned icons. It doesn't help on a day when you really do need a lot of apps open.

Several third-party apps take this on, in different ways. According to Appish, DockDoor is free and doesn't replace the Dock: it adds window previews, a window switcher on Option-Tab, gestures and keyboard controls to Apple's Dock, while a separate DockDoor Pro app replaces the Dock with a dock on every display, profiles and nearly 50 widgets. The same source says uBar ($30 once for up to two Macs) can be set up as a dock or a taskbar, and with grouping off every open window gets its own button. It also notes that uBar's current 5.0.4 release requires macOS 26 Tahoe or later on Apple silicon, while older versions ran on macOS 10.13 or later, so which version you can use depends on your Mac. Another Dock ($4.99) adds a second dock that stays visible for pinned apps, folders, files and links. Our roundup of the best Dock replacements for Mac compares them in more detail.

How Moor makes room when the dock is full

Moor is another of these options. It needs macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later, so this section only applies if your Mac runs that. Moor never folds extra apps into a pile. Earlier versions of Moor put the overflow into a "+3" folder tile. That tile is gone, and a scrolling strip has replaced it. Each open app stays a real icon with its usual menu, badge and drag.

When a Moor dock runs out of space, it makes room in this order:

1. Icons shrink. Icons, spacing and padding get smaller together, but never below 36 points. If you already picked smaller icons, Moor leaves them as you set them.
2. Widgets step down. If your pinned items still don't fit at 36 points, widgets get narrower one step at a time: extra wide, then wide, then icon size.
3. Running apps scroll. Only the running apps section moves. Your pinned apps, folders and widgets stay where they are, and the open apps scroll along the dock as a strip.

Full details are in the docs page When the dock is full.

Getting around the strip

When it costs no space, the apps you used most recently also stay in view. If you scroll away from the front app, the strip stays where you left it until you switch to a different app.

Turn on two-row wrapping

Some people would rather see more apps at once than scroll. For them, Moor can wrap the running apps into two rows. This is a setting on each dock, so you choose the dock first and set it there.

1. Open Moor's Settings: click the menu bar icon (the little boat) and choose Settings, or press Command-Comma while that menu is open.
2. In the sidebar, choose Docks, then select the dock you want to change from the list.
3. Set Running apps to Wrap to 2 rows.

The running apps in that dock now fill two rows. If even two rows aren't enough, they scroll by whole columns. Other docks keep their own setting.

Wrapping only applies to bars. A dock using the Islands theme always shows one row that scrolls, and so does any dock while you're editing it.

Tips and tricks

Turn on Accessibility so badges show up. Unread-count badges and minimized windows in Moor's docks need Accessibility. Settings → Setup lists any permission you skipped, with an Allow… button. See Permissions.

Every icon in the strip has the full menu. Right-click an app to see its windows, Show All Windows, Hide, Quit and Options → Keep in Dock. Hold Option and Hide turns into Hide Others, and Quit turns into Force Quit. To pin an app, drag it out of the strip to where you want it.

Hover instead of hunting. Rest the pointer on any running app to see its windows, with Close and Minimize buttons. Live pictures need Screen Recording. Without it you get a list of window titles. See Window previews and the Window Switcher.

Use the keyboard when the strip is long. Control-Option-F opens Search, which finds installed apps and apps that are running. The Window Switcher (Option-Tab) lists every window and filters as you type. It's off until you turn it on in Settings → Shortcuts.

Split a crowded dock. You can put a dock on any edge of any display, so if your pinned items crowd a dock, move some to a second dock on another edge. Press Control-Option-E to edit your docks, and the Add to your docks panel opens beside the dock. It names the dock it will add to, and you can also drag items straight into any dock. More in Docks.

Script it. In Moor's local API, a dock's runningLayout setting can be scroll (the default) or wrap2, and PATCH /v1/docks/{id} changes it for that dock only. You can send it with curl over the Unix socket or with the moor api command. See MCP and API.

Troubleshooting and limits

• My pinned items still don't fit. Only the running apps scroll. If your pinned apps, folders and widgets are wider than the display even at the smallest size, remove some from that dock or move them to a second dock on another edge.
• Wrap to 2 rows doesn't seem to do anything. Check that you changed the right dock, then check its theme. Islands always shows one row. Edit mode also shows one row until you press Done.
• No badges or minimized windows. Start at Settings → Setup and choose Allow… next to Accessibility. Then switch Moor on in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Moor notices within a second.
• My pinned order changed. It shouldn't. Scrolling and wrapping only affect the running apps section.

Next steps

Open a typical day's worth of apps and watch where the strip starts scrolling. If you keep scrolling to reach apps, switch that dock to Wrap to 2 rows. If your pinned items are what's crowding the dock, move some to a second dock on another edge. Remember that Moor needs macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later.

Moor has a free 14-day trial at moorapp.com.