How to Change the Mac Dock Hover Delay Using Terminal

Many Mac users prefer to set their Dock to automatically hide, freeing up valuable screen real estate on smaller MacBook displays. By default, when you move your cursor to the bottom of the screen, there is a built-in, split-second animation delay before the Dock slides up. While Apple designed this delay to prevent the Dock from accidentally triggering when you reach for a window border, power users often find it sluggish. If you want your Dock to appear instantaneously the moment your cursor touches the screen edge, you can remove this delay using a simple Terminal command.

Removing the Hover Delay

Because Apple does not provide a slider for this delay in the standard System Settings, you must interact directly with the macOS defaults database using the Terminal application.

1. Open the Terminal application on your Mac. You can find it by pressing Command + Spacebar to open Spotlight Search, typing “Terminal”, and hitting Enter.
2. Copy the following command exactly as it appears, and paste it into the Terminal window:
   defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0
3. Press Enter to execute the command. This changes the delay value to zero seconds.
4. For the change to take effect, you must restart the Dock process. Copy and paste this second command:
   killall Dock
5. Press Enter. Your screen will flash briefly as the Dock reloads.

Now, test the result. Move your mouse to the bottom of the screen. The Dock should appear immediately, with absolutely no hesitation.

Speeding Up the Slide Animation

While the previous command removes the delay before the Dock appears, the Dock still takes a fraction of a second to physically slide upward. You can speed up that sliding animation itself with a second command.

1. In the Terminal, paste the following:
   defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.15
2. Press Enter. (This cuts the animation time down significantly. Setting it to `0` removes the animation entirely, which can feel too jarring, so `0.15` is a good balance).
3. Restart the Dock again by typing:
   killall Dock and pressing Enter.

How to Revert to Default Settings

If you find the instantaneous Dock is triggering accidentally too often and you want to restore Apple’s original factory settings, open the Terminal and run these two commands consecutively:

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier

Followed by a final killall Dock to apply the restoration.