How to Hide the Dock and Menu Bar on Mac

Between them, the Dock and menu bar own sixty-odd pixels of every screen, all the time. macOS can hide both — they slide away when unused and glide back when your pointer visits their edge. Two settings, two minutes, and your windows get the whole display.

Auto-hide the Dock

1. Open System Settings → Desktop & Dock.
2. Turn on Automatically hide and show the Dock.

Faster: press Cmd+Option+D, the built-in toggle — same setting, no Settings app. Undo either way by flipping the switch back or pressing the shortcut again. Terminal, if you're scripting your setup:

# hide the Dock automatically
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true
killall Dock

# undo: keep the Dock always visible
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false
killall Dock

Auto-hide the menu bar

1. Open System Settings → Control Center.
2. Scroll to the bottom and find Automatically hide and show the menu bar.
3. Choose Always.

The dropdown has four options, and they're worth understanding: Always (hidden everywhere — the full distraction-free setup), On Desktop Only (hidden in normal use, visible in full screen), In Full Screen Only (the classic default: visible normally, hidden in full screen), and Never (always visible, even in full screen). To undo the whole experiment, set it back to In Full Screen Only. This dropdown lives in Control Center settings on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia alike.

The reveal gestures

Hidden never means gone. Both bars come back the same way:

• Dock: push the pointer to the Dock's edge of the screen (bottom by default) and hold for a beat — it slides out, then hides when you leave.
• Menu bar: push the pointer to the top edge — it drops down, menus fully usable, and retracts when you move away.
• Keyboard-only: Ctrl+F2 (fn+Ctrl+F2 on laptops) reveals and focuses the menu bar; Ctrl+F3 does the Dock. Handy when your hands are on the keys anyway.

Two side effects to expect. First, the hidden Dock has a deliberate delay before appearing; most people who commit to auto-hide remove it (see the closing tip). Second, with the menu bar on Always-hide, you stop glancing at the clock — some people love that, some last a day. The setting is one dropdown away in either direction.

Is it worth it?

On a 13-inch MacBook, absolutely — you reclaim roughly 5% of the screen and lose nothing you can't summon with a flick. On a 27-inch display the pixel argument is weaker, but the focus argument still stands: no badge counts in your peripheral vision, no menu bar icons blinking. Try both hidden for a week; keeping just the Dock hidden and the menu bar visible is the most common landing spot.

Make the hidden Dock feel instant

Auto-hide's one flaw is the pause before the Dock slides out. Zero it with one command — the recipe is in making the Dock auto-hide instantly.