The Accidental Dock Deployment
If you use Ubuntu’s default GNOME desktop environment and choose to configure the Ubuntu Dock to “Auto-hide,” you gain back valuable screen real estate. The dock disappears when you aren’t using it. However, the mechanism to bring it back is incredibly sensitive. If you move your mouse to the left edge of the screen (or the bottom edge, depending on your placement) for even a fraction of a second, the dock violently slides out, overlapping your active application and sometimes intercepting your mouse clicks. This is especially frustrating if you are trying to click a menu button located near the edge of a maximized window.
How to Adjust Dock Sensitivity (gsettings)
The standard Ubuntu Settings menu only gives you a binary choice: Auto-hide on, or Auto-hide off. It does not let you adjust the sensitivity. To stop the dock from popping out instantly on accidental hovers, you need to add a slight “delay” before the dock reveals itself. You can do this easily using the terminal.
1. Open your terminal application (Ctrl+Alt+T).
2. To add a 500-millisecond (half-second) delay, copy and paste the following command and press Enter:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock show-delay 500
With this delay in place, accidentally bumping the edge of the screen with your mouse will do nothing. You must intentionally hold your mouse against the edge for half a second to summon the dock.
How to Require Pressure Instead of Hover
If a time delay isn’t enough, you can change the trigger mechanism entirely. Instead of opening when the mouse simply touches the edge, you can force the dock to only open when you push the mouse hard against the edge (moving the cursor past the physical barrier of the screen).
Run this command in the terminal to enable “require pressure”:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock require-pressure-to-show true
This completely eliminates accidental deployments while keeping your desktop clean.