The Vanishing Dock
The Dock is the central hub of macOS, providing instant access to your favorite applications, the Finder, and your Trash. For many users, it sits permanently at the bottom of the screen. However, to maximize vertical screen real estate (especially on smaller MacBooks), macOS includes an auto-hide feature. When activated, the Dock slides completely off the edge of the screen and remains hidden until you push your mouse cursor against that specific edge to summon it back. While this provides a clean aesthetic, it can be incredibly annoying if you need to constantly monitor application notification badges or if you frequently overshoot when moving your mouse, triggering the Dock to pop up over your work.
Pinning the Dock Permanently
To keep your application shortcuts permanently visible and stop macOS from automatically hiding the Dock, you must disable the auto-hide behavior in the system settings.
There is a very fast way to do this if your Dock is currently visible: simply right-click (or Control-click) on the thin vertical divider line separating your apps from your recent files/Trash on the Dock itself, and select “Turn Hiding Off”. Alternatively, click the Apple logo in the extreme top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, scroll down and click on Desktop & Dock. At the very top of the right-hand panel, look for the toggle switch explicitly named Automatically hide and show the Dock. Click this toggle to turn it Off. The Dock will immediately slide up from the edge of the screen and lock into place permanently.