The macOS Dock is highly animated. When an application needs your attention—perhaps an update has finished installing, a calendar event is starting, or an error has occurred—the application’s icon will literally jump up and down in the Dock continuously until you click on it.
If you are trying to focus on writing code, editing a video, or participating in a Zoom call, a brightly coloured icon bouncing in your peripheral vision is incredibly distracting and anxiety-inducing. You can disable this aggressive animation, forcing apps to wait quietly for your attention rather than throwing a visual tantrum.
How to Turn Off Bouncing Dock Icons on Mac
You cannot disable this from the standard macOS System Settings. You must use a Terminal command to turn off the animation globally.
- Open the Terminal application. You can find it by pressing Cmd + Space and searching for “Terminal”, or by navigating to Applications > Utilities > Terminal.
- Copy and paste the following exact command into the Terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE - Press Enter to execute the command.
- To apply the changes, you must restart the Dock. Type the following command and press Enter:
killall Dock
Your screen will briefly flash as the Dock disappears and reloads. From this point forward, applications will no longer bounce when they require attention. They may still display a red notification badge (if you allow them), but the physical jumping animation is completely disabled.
To reverse this change in the future, simply run the command again, replacing TRUE with FALSE, followed by killall Dock.