Make the Mac Dock Appear Instantly

Achal Rajyaguru — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 09:45:50 +0000

How to Make the Dock Appear Instantly When Dock Hiding Is Turned On

macOS hides the Dock smoothly by default, but this animation introduces a short delay every time you hover to reveal it. If you prefer an instant response, you can remove both the hover delay and the slide-in animation using Terminal.

The Problem

The Dock has two built-in slowdowns:

Hover delay — a short pause before it starts showing.
Animation time — the duration of the slide-in motion.

Both can be disabled.

The Fix

Open Terminal and run:



defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0
killall Dock

Automate Homebrew Updates on macOS (Once a Day, Silently)

Achal Rajyaguru — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 09:24:34 +0000

If you use Homebrew to install apps or developer tools, you probably run commands like brew update and brew upgrade often.

Wouldn’t it be great if your Mac handled that automatically—without you having to open Terminal?

In this post, you’ll set up a simple, invisible background script that updates both Homebrew casks (macOS apps) and formulae (CLI packages) once per day. It runs quietly at login—no pop-ups, no notifications, no visible windows.

⸻

Step 1: Find Your Mac Username

You’ll need your macOS username for one of the commands later.
Open Terminal and type:

whoami

Press Enter, and you’ll see something like:

john

That’s your username.
In the steps below, replace every YOUR_MACS_USERNAME with your actual username (for example, john).

⸻

Step 2: Create the Auto-Update Script

This script checks if it already ran today. If not, it runs Homebrew’s update and upgrade commands in the background — silently.
Copy and paste this into Terminal:

mkdir -p ~/.scripts
cat << 'EOF' > ~/.scripts/brew_auto_update.sh
#!/bin/zsh

LOGFILE="$HOME/.scripts/brew_daily.log"
TODAY=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")

# Skip if today's update already ran
if grep -q "$TODAY" "$LOGFILE" 2>/dev/null; then
    exit 0
fi

# Silent Homebrew maintenance
/opt/homebrew/bin/brew update >/dev/null 2>&1
/opt/homebrew/bin/brew upgrade --cask >/dev/null 2>&1
/opt/homebrew/bin/brew upgrade --formula >/dev/null 2>&1
/opt/homebrew/bin/brew upgrade >/dev/null 2>&1
/opt/homebrew/bin/brew cleanup >/dev/null 2>&1

# Mark completion
echo "$TODAY" >> "$LOGFILE"
EOF

chmod +x ~/.scripts/brew_auto_update.sh

This creates and saves the script in a hidden folder ~/.scripts and makes it executable.

⸻

Step 3: Create the LaunchAgent

This tells macOS to automatically run the script when you log in.
Copy and paste this into Terminal (replace YOUR_MACS_USERNAME with your own username):

mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
cat << 'EOF' > ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.brewautoupdate.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.user.brewautoupdate</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/zsh</string>
        <string>/Users/YOUR_MACS_USERNAME/.scripts/brew_auto_update.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <false/>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/dev/null</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/dev/null</string>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF

Now load the agent into macOS:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.brewautoupdate.plist

⸻

Step 4: Verify It’s Working

To confirm that it’s loaded:

launchctl list | grep brewautoupdate

If you see an entry like this, it’s running:

0 com.user.brewautoupdate
To check whether it ran today:

cat ~/.scripts/brew_daily.log

Each line shows the date the updater completed successfully.

⸻

Step 5: Disable (Optional)

If you ever want to stop the automation, run:


launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.brewautoupdate.plist

⸻

Done.
Your Mac now keeps itself updated with no interruptions and no visible background processes. Simple, efficient, and future-proof.

DEV Community: Achal Rajyaguru