How PrimoDock works

PrimoDock draws its own Dock bar and hides the macOS one. Nothing is deleted: the macOS Dock comes back when you turn PrimoDock's Dock off or quit the app.

The bar works like the Dock you already know (pinned apps, open apps, folders, Downloads, Trash), with two additions:

• Workspaces. Each workspace has its own Dock: its own pinned apps, folders and widgets. Windows you opened in one workspace step aside when you switch, and come back when you return.
• Widgets. Live tiles inside the bar: clock, calendar, timer, weather, battery, GitHub and more. Clicking one opens a panel with the details.

Where it lives

PrimoDock has no Dock icon and does not show up in ⌘Tab. It lives in the menu bar, in the Dock-shaped icon near the clock. That menu has:

• the list of workspaces, with a ✓ on the current one and each one's shortcut;
• New Workspace…, Edit Workspaces… and Widgets…;
• Check for Updates…, About PrimoDock, Settings… (⌘,) and Quit PrimoDock (⌘Q).

While the Settings window is open, PrimoDock behaves like a regular app: it shows in ⌘Tab and gets a tile on the bar. In that window, ⌘Q closes the window only, not the app.

The first run

On first launch PrimoDock creates a workspace called Default from a copy of your current Dock and plays a short walkthrough. In it you choose:

• Use PrimoDock's Dock (on by default);
• what happens to the macOS Dock: Hidden, Auto-hide (default) or Unchanged;
• Hide and show automatically for PrimoDock's bar (starts the way your macOS Dock was set);
• Open at login (off by default).

You can replay it from Settings › About › Show the walkthrough….

Going back to the macOS Dock

Three ways, lightest first:

1. Quit PrimoDock from the menu bar. The macOS Dock comes back.
2. In Settings › General, turn off Use PrimoDock's Dock. In that mode PrimoDock only swaps the macOS Dock's pinned icons per workspace.
3. In Settings › General › Danger zone, use Restore the macOS Dock or Reset macOS Dock auto-hide.

Each workspace keeps its own pinned apps and their order, its own folders, files and links and its own widgets. Apps you open belong to the workspace you opened them in: with Only apps on the current desktop on (the default), the bar shows only that workspace's apps.

Create one

1. In the menu bar, choose New Workspace… (or the + under the list in Settings › Workspaces).
2. Give it a name and a Colour: Blue, Pink, Orange, Green, Purple or Graphite.
3. Click Create. It starts as a copy of your current Dock.

Edit one

In Settings › Workspaces (or Edit Workspaces… in the menu bar), pick the workspace in the list. The page has:

• name, Colour and the Open app indicator;
• This workspace’s Dock: a live preview of the bar. Drag an item to reorder it; pull it off the bar to remove it;
• apps: Add app or spacer;
• Folders, files and links: File or Folder… or a URL;
• Activate on desktops: a switch for each macOS desktop (Space). Turn on as many as you like; going to any of them switches to the workspace;
• Hotkey: a keyboard shortcut for this workspace only.

Keep your changes with Save (⌘S) or throw them away with Discard. To delete a workspace, use the − under the list. The last one cannot be deleted.

Switching

• From the menu bar, by clicking the workspace's name.
• From the keyboard: ⌃⌥1 to ⌃⌥9, in list order, or the workspace's own hotkey.
• On the bar: a two-finger sideways swipe on the trackpad, or ⌘ + scroll, over the Dock.
• Right-click the bar › Workspace (shown once there are 2 or more).
• From the keyboard, with Next workspace and Previous workspace, which you record in Settings › General › Shortcuts. After the last one comes the first.
• By going to a macOS desktop tied to a workspace.
• With Workspace switcher in the Dock on in Settings › General, the bar gets one coloured dot per workspace.

A Dock on every display

With On every display on in Settings › General, every display gets its own bar, and every bar keeps its own workspace. Switching workspaces changes only the display you are on, and clicking another display's bar makes its workspace the active one. A display that moves to a desktop tied to a workspace shows that workspace. Switching on one display never hides the apps of the workspace another display is showing. Off, there is a single bar that follows the pointer, like the macOS one.

Backups

PrimoDock keeps a copy of your workspaces every time it opens and closes. In Settings › Backups, pick one to preview and use Restore…. To move everything to another Mac, use Settings › General › Workspaces backup, with Export… and Import….

Apps

Pinned apps come first; open apps that are not pinned come after a separator (Show Open Apps). Hovering an open app shows its window previews. To pin an app, drag it onto the bar; to unpin it, pull it off.

Right-clicking an app gives Options (Keep in Dock, Remove from Dock, Show in Finder, Assign To), Create Collection, Show All Windows, Hide (with ⌥ held, Hide Others), Quit and Force Quit.

In Options › Assign To, pick where the app's windows open: All Desktops, one macOS desktop, or None, like in the macOS Dock. Each desktop shows the name of the workspace tied to it. The choice is kept where the macOS Dock keeps its own, so the two agree.

Folders and Downloads

Clicking a folder opens a stack. Right-click for View as (Grid or List), Sort by (Name, Kind, Date Added), Colour, Open in Finder and Remove from Dock. The Downloads stack shows how many new files arrived.

Trash

Drop files on it to delete them, or drag a Dock item onto it to take it off the bar. Right-click for Empty Trash. For the icon to show when the Trash has something in it, PrimoDock needs Full Disk Access.

Spacers

Right-click the bar › Add Small Spacer or Add Large Spacer, or use Settings › Spacers. To remove one, right-click it › Remove Spacer.

The bar's menu

Right-clicking an empty part of the bar gives the spacers, Auto-hide, Hover Effect (None, Scale, Magnification), Show Open Apps, Workspace, Widgets… and Dock Settings….

Drop Zone

While you drag files, a glass tray appears at the bottom left for you to drop them on. If you have a File Shelf widget, they land there. Turn it on or off in Settings › Utilities.

From the keyboard

⌃⌥D moves focus to the Dock. Then the arrow keys move between items, Return or Space opens one and Esc leaves.

Adding one

1. In the menu bar, choose Widgets… (it is also at the bottom of the right-click menu of any Dock item).
2. In All widgets, search by name or browse the groups.
3. Click the card. The widget is created and goes straight to the end of the current workspace's Dock. There is no extra step.

Widgets you have already added are listed under In use on the same page.

Setting it up

Three routes, same place:

• right-click the widget › Edit Widget…;
• click the widget to open its panel and use the edit button in its footer (for example Edit Timer…);
• Settings › Widgets › In use and pick the widget.

Every widget has, on top of its own options (see the catalogue):

• Label;
• Look, when the widget has more than one (Battery, Calendar, Weather and others);
• Tile width: One icon to Four icons. Wider shows more;
• Show in workspaces: one switch per workspace. The widget is added to the end of each one you turn on.

Changes show on the bar straight away, and the In the Dock preview shows how it will look.

Moving and removing

• Move: drag the widget along the bar.
• Take it out of a workspace: pull it off the bar, or right-click › Remove from Dock. It leaves only that workspace and keeps existing.
• Delete it for good: in Settings › Widgets › In use, right-click › Delete, or the − button.

Widget stacks

A stack puts several widgets in one spot on the bar, and you scroll between them.

1. Right-click a widget › Stack With › pick another widget. Only widgets of the same width already in the workspace are offered.
2. To see the next one, scroll over the stack: one mouse-wheel notch or one trackpad swipe moves one widget, and it wraps around at the end. The dots beside it show where you are.
3. The stack's right-click menu has Add to Stack, Move Up in Stack, Move Down in Stack, Take Out of Stack and Ungroup Stack.

Changing one stacked widget's width changes all of them. Pulling a stack off the bar takes every widget in it out of the workspace.

Clicking

Clicking a widget opens its panel. Five exceptions: Shortcut runs the shortcut, AirDrop opens Finder's AirDrop window, Now Playing brings the player forward, Fans switches between automatic and full speed and Keyboard Lock locks the keyboard (for those three the panel is on right-click).

With PrimoDock's Dock turned off, widgets go inside the macOS Dock. There they are always square, at most 12 fit, and a click always opens the panel. Stacks exist only on PrimoDock's bar.

The icons PrimoDock draws on its bar can come from three places, in this order: a picture chosen for that app, an icon pack (for every app or a few) or the app's own icon. Nothing changes in the app itself: Finder, Launchpad and ⌘Tab keep its usual icon.

Icon Gallery

Settings › Icon Gallery holds the ready-made packs, with one Featured at the top. Each card shows a few of the pack's icons and a line like Covers 9 of your 12 apps: how many apps in your Dock it draws. Click a card to see the whole pack and, once it is installed, how it looks on your apps.

1. Install downloads the pack.
2. Use on Dock puts the pack on every app. Apps it does not draw keep their own icon.
3. With the pack In Use, its menu has Stop Using and Uninstall.

New packs arrive without an app update: PrimoDock checks the gallery shortly after it opens, every six hours and whenever you open the page. Packs you have not seen get a New mark and a count in the sidebar. When an installed pack is updated, the new version downloads on its own; if it cannot (offline, say), its card shows Update.

Packs come with the licence and the trial. With the trial over and no licence, the gallery, IconStudio and the Icon menu are look-only: icons already in use stay.

An icon for one app

Right-click the app › Options › Icon. It lists Original, each installed pack with an icon for that app, Choose Picture… (a PNG, or the .icns inside another app) and Open Icon Packs Folder. One app's choice wins over the pack used on all of them.

In Settings › Appearance › App Icons, each installed pack shows as a card previewed on your apps, with how many of them it covers; clicking a card uses that pack on all of them.

IconStudio

Settings › IconStudio is where you draw icons. Pick the app in the row at the top (each with its name underneath) and what goes on the icon:

Then Size and the Background: eight ready-made pairs or your own Top and Bottom colours, the gradient's Angle and Gloss. A picture or icon at full size covers the whole icon and is used as it is, with no background. The preview shows the icon large and at Dock size, between its neighbours on the bar.

A drawn icon only shows in the Dock once it is saved, and the bar at the bottom says where it stands (Not saved yet, In your Dock, In My Icons, not in use):

• Save to This App (⌘S) uses the icon on that app.
• Use This Style on All Apps draws every app in the Dock with the same background, each with its own letters. With a pack icon it becomes Use This Pack on All Apps and gives each app its own icon from that pack.
• Discard goes back to what was saved; Remove from My Icons deletes the saved icon.

Saved icons make a pack of your own, My Icons, which shows in the menus like any other. Unsaved changes are kept while the app runs, with an orange dot on the app and a count in the sidebar, and PrimoDock asks before you close the window.

Restore System Icons…, at the top of IconStudio, gives every app its macOS icon back. Packs and My Icons stay installed for later; only pictures chosen for single apps are deleted.

Make your own pack

A pack is a folder of PNGs inside ~/Library/Application Support/PrimoDock/IconPacks (Open Icon Packs Folder takes you there). Each file is named after the app it replaces: Spotify.png, visual-studio-code.png or the app's identifier, like com.spotify.client.png. Case, spaces and dashes do not matter. An optional pack.json names the pack and maps apps to files with other names:

{ "name": "Neon", "author": "You", "padding": 0.1,
  "icons": { "Google Chrome": "browser.png" } }

padding is the margin on each side, from 0 to 0.4: macOS icons leave about a tenth clear, so a pack drawn edge to edge uses 0.1 to sit at the size of the rest. PNG, ideally 1024 px. After changing the folder, use Reload Packs in Appearance › App Icons.

Packs apply to PrimoDock's bar. With Use PrimoDock's Dock off, the macOS Dock shows the usual icons.

On Windows

In PrimoDock for Windows (since 0.5.0-beta) the Icon Gallery and IconStudio are in Settings, with the same packs. Right-clicking any app, folder, Downloads or the Recycle Bin gives an Icon submenu, which also takes ICO, JPG or another program's icon, and the Dock's own Start button can wear the pack's icon too. Packs recognise Windows apps by name, in English or Portuguese: Edge gets the browser icon, File Explorer the files one, the Recycle Bin the bin. On Windows the folder is %APPDATA%\PrimoDock\IconPacks.

The window has a search field at the top (⌘F) and these pages:

A size tip: besides the setting in Appearance, you can drag the bar's separator to make the icons bigger or smaller, as on the macOS Dock.

They all live in Settings › Permissions, with each one's state: Allowed, Not allowed or Not asked yet. The widget ones are asked for only when you first use that widget.

PrimoDock never asks for your location: the Weather widget uses the city you pick. Reset permissions, on the same page, clears them all and relaunches the app.

The trial

It lasts 7 days from first use, with everything unlocked: no widget or feature is held back. Trials started up to 30 September 2026 got 14 days. In the last 3 days PrimoDock tells you with notifications (at 3 days, at 1 day and at the end) and a line in the menu bar menu.

When the trial ends, the bar stays on screen but grey and still, with a padlock. Switching workspaces and the Drop Zone stop, and the macOS Dock comes back. Your workspaces, widgets and settings stay where they were.

Activating a licence

1. Open Settings › Licence (or click the padlock on the bar).
2. Paste the key from your purchase email, shaped like PRIMO-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.
3. Click Activate. The key is kept on this Mac and works offline.

Each key covers 2 Macs and includes one year of updates. After that year the app keeps working. To move the licence to another Mac, use Deactivate this Mac on the old one, or see My licence.

Updates

PrimoDock checks for updates on its own once a day. To check right away, use Check for Updates… in the menu bar.