Hide the Dock for clean screenshots and recordings

A full-screen screenshot with the Dock sitting along the bottom looks unfinished — and in a screen recording, the Dock sliding in and out is a constant distraction. Auto-hiding the Dock keeps it out of frame. Here's how to hide it before you capture, plus the capture tricks that avoid it entirely.

Hide the Dock before you capture

The simplest fix is to take the Dock off-screen for the duration of the shoot. Turn on auto-hide and a full-screen grab or recording shows clean desktop where the Dock used to be:

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

Or set it from Terminal, which is handy inside a screenshot-automation script:

# Hide the Dock for a clean capture
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true
killall Dock

# Undo when you're done shooting
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false
killall Dock

One caveat while capturing: with auto-hide on, the Dock still reappears if your pointer drifts to its edge. During a recording, keep the cursor away from the bottom of the screen and it stays hidden.

Capture without the Dock even when it's visible

You often don't need to touch the Dock setting at all — you can capture in a way that excludes it:

• Grab one window. Press Shift+Cmd+4, then Space, and click the window. macOS captures just that window on a transparent background — the Dock is never in the shot. See how to screenshot a window on Mac.
• Select a region above the Dock. Shift+Cmd+4 gives you a crosshair; drag a box that stops short of the bottom bar.
• Record a portion of the screen. Shift+Cmd+5 → Record Selected Portion, and draw the frame to exclude the Dock.

For recordings, hide it and keep it hidden

A recording is less forgiving than a still, because a stray cursor near the edge will summon the Dock on camera. Turn on auto-hide, then plan your movements to stay clear of the bottom edge. While you're cleaning the frame, also stop notification banners from popping into the recording — see how to hide notifications while screen recording on Mac.

Lose the drop shadow too

Window screenshots come with a wide drop shadow that bloats the image and looks heavy in docs. Trim it with how to take a screenshot without the shadow on Mac.