If you’re like most Mac users, you probably have a few favorite preferences panes that you use all the time. Maybe it’s the Downloads pane, the Music pane, or the Photos pane. But if you want to add those panes to the Mac Dock, you may be out of luck. Fortunately, it’s easy to add your favorite preferences panes to the Mac Dock. Here’s how:
- Open System Preferences by clicking on the Apple icon in the menu bar and selecting System Preferences from the list of options that appears.
- Click on Dock at the top of System Preferences and select Preference Pane from the list of options that appears.
- Select your desired preference pane from the list of available panes and click on Add at the bottom of the window.
- Your new preference pane will now appear in the Dock and can be used just like any other preference pane! ..
If you use a particular System Preferences pane frequently on your Mac, you can easily place a link to it in your Dock for quick access. In fact, you can link as many preference sections there as you’d like. Here’s how.
On a Mac, each section of System Preferences is traditionally called a “preference pane.” The behavior of each preference pane is handled by a file in located in your macOS System Library folder. The neat thing about these files is that if you open them, they act as links that directly take you to their corresponding section in System Preferences. That means you can drag the files to your Dock and use them to quickly access various system settings.
RELATED: How to Quickly Find Specific System Preferences on a Mac
To do that, we first need to locate the preference pane files using Finder. Activate Finder and select Go > Go to Folder from the menu bar.
In the “Go to folder” window or slider that appears, type (or paste) /System/Library/PreferencePanes.
Next, you’ll see a Finder window filled with files that represent the various preference panes. These are the System Preferenes that come with macOS by default. (If you are looking for a third-party preference pane file, visit /Library/PreferencePanes instead.) Each one has a “.prefPane” extension.
Scroll through the window until you locate the file representing the preference pane that you’d like to add to your Dock. For example, “DateAndTime.prefPane” is the file for “Date & Time” preference pane. Click and drag the preference pane file onto the file and folder shortcut area of your Dock, which is located near the Trash can.
You’ll notice that if you try to drag the files to the left side (or upper portion, depending on how you have your Dock oriented) of the Dock, you won’t be able to. That section is reserved for applications only.
After that, any time you want to change a particular setting in one of the preference panes, just click its icon in the Dock, and System Preferences will automatically open to that section.
If you’d like to remove a preference pane from the dock, simply drag its icon far away from the dock, hold for a moment, then release.
