The Bouncing Icons
macOS relies heavily on visual flair to provide user feedback. One of the oldest animations in the operating system occurs when you launch an application. When you click an icon in the Dock (like Safari or Mail), the icon will automatically begin jumping or bouncing up and down until the application has fully loaded into memory and the main window appears on the screen. While this indicates the Mac is working, on older, slower machines, an application might take 15 seconds to load, resulting in a highly distracting, continuous bouncing animation at the bottom of your screen.
Grounding the Dock
To create a calmer visual environment and stop macOS from automatically animating or bouncing application icons when they are opening, you must adjust the Dock preferences.
This is a simple native setting. Click the Apple logo in the top-left corner of the screen and select System Settings (or System Preferences on older macOS versions). In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Desktop & Dock. In the main right-hand panel, look near the top for the section specifically related to the Dock’s behavior. Find the toggle switch labelled Animate opening applications. Click this toggle switch to turn it Off. From now on, when you click an app in the Dock, the icon will simply remain still while the application silently loads in the background.