EskeleThree edges, five rows
Left, bottom or right. Sized to its icons or stretched full width, one row or five, aligned where you want it. A side bar is a column and behaves like one.
Open source Built in Swift, for macOSA dock when you want one,
A dock when you want one,
a taskbar when you don't.
Eskele is a minimal macOS dock that sits on the left, bottom or right edge and hides the system Dock while it runs. It gives back the things the real Dock never had — window lists, a searchable launcher, live progress, a full-width taskbar mode — and keeps the things it did.
Nothing in the core bar needs a permission. Free, open source, and it puts your Dock back exactly as it found it.
Design
Big, on the bottom edge, only as wide as its icons, centred. The default.
What it does
A bar that earns the strip it takes
Every one of these is a setting, not a mode you have to commit to. Change your mind and the bar follows.
A dock, or a taskbar
Icons Only keeps it a dock. Icons with Labels turns every running app into a named button, and in full-width mode every window gets its own, titled with the window.
Real badges, from the Dock
Mail's unread count, Messages, App Store updates — whatever macOS is already drawing on a Dock tile appears on the bar within two seconds, with nothing to configure.
A launcher on ⌃Esc
Favourites, every app grouped by category, and what you used recently. Type to filter — initials work, so vsc finds Visual Studio Code — then press Return.
It knows about windows
One dash per window, a right-click list you can close from, windows in another Space reached four different ways, and a live thumbnail on hover.
Progress where it happens
Files landing in a pinned folder fill its cell, with no permission at all. Music, Spotify and VLC report their position. Anything else can come from a command you write.
Activity on ⇧⌥
Hold two modifiers and every running app reports processor and memory, helper processes included. Nothing is sampled until the keys go down.
Hides the system Dock
Optional, off by default, and reversible. Your Dock preferences are captured before anything is written and restored on quit — including after a crash.
Clock, calendar, Trash
A digital clock or a drawn dial at the far end, hover it for the month. A Trash cell that counts what it holds and accepts a drop.
A closer look
Three things worth the tour
Press ⌃Esc and start typing
The Apps Menu is the launcher at the leading end of the bar. The search field is focused the moment it opens, so you never reach for the mouse.
- Matches are ranked and initials work —
vscfinds Visual Studio Code. - Every System Settings pane is in the same list, opened straight to it.
- Sleep, Log Out, Restart and Shut Down are a fixed row of buttons, not four rows you have to scroll to.
displ
DisplaysSystem Settings
Display CalibratorUtilities
Desktop & DockSystem Settings
SleepLog OutRestartShut Down
A cell says more than an icon
The badge is the app's real one, read off the Dock's own tiles. The stripes are a status. The scrim is what that app is costing you right now.
- Neutral stripes while an app is starting; red while it is not responding.
- An amber glow when an app puts a dialog up behind your back.
- A badge the Dock does not carry can come from a command in
badges.json.
12
18%1.2 GB
Unread · starting · not responding · holding ⇧⌥
Windows, not just applications
Grant Accessibility and the bar stops guessing. Apps show one dash per window, up to four; right-click for the list, with minimised windows indented and a Close on each.
- In full-width labelled mode each window gets its own button, titled with the window rather than the app.
- Windows in a full-screen Space are reached four ways, best first — including the app's own Window menu.
- Turn on Window Previews and the hover label grows a live thumbnail — even for a minimised window.
Safari3 windows
Eskele — a dock for macOSClose
Accessibility — Apple DeveloperClose
Release notesMinimised
Controls
A click grammar you already know
The modifier combinations are uBar's, so the muscle memory carries across. A gesture that means nothing on the cell under the pointer does nothing at all.
| Gesture | Effect |
|---|---|
| Click | Launch or activate. Clicking the app you are already in hides it. |
| ⌘-click | Show in Finder. |
| ⌥-click | Hide the app, or bring it back. |
| ⌥⌘-click | Show this app and hide every other one. |
| ⇧-click | Quit the app — or, on a window button, close that window. |
| ⇧⌘-click | Force-quit the app and start it again. |
| Middle-click | The same as ⇧-click. |
| ⌃-click | The context menu, as everywhere else in macOS. |
| Drag | Reorder. Drag off the bar to unpin; hold ⌘ to make that impossible. |
| Drop a file | On an app to open it there, or on the Trash to trash it. |
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
| ⌃Esc | Open the Apps Menu from anywhere. ⌥Space and a right-⌘ tap are the alternatives. |
| ⌃⌥⇥ | Move focus to the bar: arrows to move, Return to open, Esc to go back. VoiceOver reads each item. |
| ⌃⌥D | Show or hide the bar, wherever you are. |
| ⌃⌥1…0 | Activate the first ten items. Hold ⌃⌥ and the bar numbers them for you. |
| ⇧⌥ | Hold to read every app’s processor and memory use. |
Permissions
What costs what
The bar works out of the box without granting anything. Each permission below buys a specific set of features and nothing else — and every one of them is optional.
- NothingThe bar, pinned apps, folder stacks, launching, reordering, the Trash cell, auto-hide, the reveal and slot hot keys, the activity overlay, folder progress, the clock, hiding the system Dock.
- AccessibilityWindow lists and counts, per-window buttons, full-screen detection, “not responding”, real Dock badges, per-display window filtering, the attention glow, and the right-⌘ tap if you pick it.
- Screen RecordingWindow previews on hover. The only feature that asks for it, and it is off by default.
- AutomationEmptying the Trash (Finder), Sleep / Log Out / Restart / Shut Down (loginwindow), and media progress (one prompt per player).
Take the strip back
Install it, put it on an edge, and read the docs when you want the parts that are not obvious.