Turn off the Dock bounce animation on Mac

For some people the bouncing Dock icon isn't just distracting — repetitive on-screen motion can trigger discomfort, dizziness, or a headache. macOS has two kinds of Dock bounce, and you can turn both off permanently with reversible Terminal commands. Here's each one, what it does, and why the Accessibility settings don't remove them on their own.

Two kinds of Dock bounce

Before you change anything, it helps to know there are two separate animations, controlled by two separate settings:

• The launch bounce — the hop an icon makes while an app is opening. It plays every time you launch an app and stops once the app is ready.
• The attention bounce — when an app wants you to notice it (a dialog waiting for input, a background app finishing a task), its icon bounces over and over in place until you click it.

Turning off one doesn't affect the other, so if you want the Dock completely still, you'll switch off both.

Turn off the launch bounce

There's no toggle for this in System Settings. Open Terminal (Applications → Utilities, or via Spotlight) and run:

# Stop icons bouncing as apps open
defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool false
killall Dock

To restore it later, reverse the value:

# Restore the launch bounce
defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool true
killall Dock

Turn off the attention bounce

To stop icons bouncing repeatedly to get your attention, use the no-bouncing setting:

# Stop icons bouncing for attention
defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool true
killall Dock

Apps can still let you know something needs a look — they'll show a badge or a notification — but the icon won't jump. To bring the attention bounce back:

# Allow attention bouncing again
defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool false
killall Dock

Both settings behave the same on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia, apply per user account, and stay put across restarts and updates.

Why Reduce Motion isn't enough on its own

It's natural to reach for System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Reduce Motion first, and you should turn it on — it calms the swipe between Spaces, window zoom, and other big movements. But it does not remove the Dock's launch or attention bounce, which is why the Terminal settings above still matter. Think of Reduce Motion as the broad control and these two keys as the Dock-specific finishing touches. For everything Reduce Motion does cover, see how to reduce motion on Mac, and to sweep up the remaining animations, how to disable animations on Mac.