The Dock Clutter
The Dock is the central hub for launching and managing applications on macOS. By default, it displays icons for all currently running applications. When you use the “Hide” command (Cmd + H) to temporarily remove an application’s windows from your screen without actually quitting the program, the application’s icon remains in the Dock.
In older versions of macOS, Apple provided an option to show the icons of these hidden applications as translucent or faded, distinguishing them from active, visible apps. However, many modern users find this visual distinction unnecessary and prefer a cleaner, uniform look. If you use a lot of applications simultaneously and frequently hide them to keep your desktop clear, having half of your Dock icons appear washed out or faded can look messy and visually inconsistent. If you want all running applications—whether their windows are currently visible or hidden—to look exactly the same in the Dock, you can turn off these hidden indicators.
How to Make Hidden Apps Look Normal
You can force macOS to display all running apps with full-opacity icons via the Terminal.
- Open the Terminal application (you can find it by pressing
Cmd + Spaceand typing “Terminal”). - To disable the translucent effect for hidden applications, copy and paste the following command into the Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool false- Press Enter to execute the command.
- For the changes to take effect, you must restart the Dock. Type the following command and press Enter:
killall DockYour screen will flash briefly as the Dock restarts. From now on, when you hide an application using Cmd + H, its icon in the Dock will remain fully opaque and vibrant, looking identical to the icons of applications with active windows on your screen.