Command Palette Dock

The Command Palette Dock is a toolbar that sits on the edge of your screen so you can open your most-used commands and extensions without opening the full Command Palette window.

Enable the Dock

To enable the Dock, open Command Palette settings and toggle the Enable Dock option. When enabled, the Dock appears as a toolbar anchored to the edge of your screen. You can leave it pinned or turn on auto-hide.

Dock layout

The Dock is divided into three regions that organize your pinned commands:

The Dock displays horizontally when anchored to the top or bottom of the screen, and vertically when anchored to the left or right.

Multi-monitor support

On multi-monitor setups, each display gets its own Dock instance and its own set of pinned bands. You can pin different commands to different monitors. For example, keep Performance Monitor on your primary display and a set of work bookmarks on a secondary display. Open Dock edit mode on the Dock you want to change and add, remove, or rearrange bands there. You can also drag bands directly from one monitor's Dock to another to move them across displays.

When you turn on the Dock for a display that doesn't have its own layout yet, the Dock starts with a copy of the primary display's layout. Changes you make afterward apply only to that display.

To turn the Dock on or off for a specific display, give a display a custom name, or use a different Dock position on a display, see Monitors.

Navigate the Dock with the keyboard

Press Win+Alt+J to move keyboard focus to the Dock. If the Dock is set to auto-hide, it appears. Press the shortcut again to move to the next Dock item, or add Shift (Win+Alt+Shift+J) to move to the previous item. Press Enter or Space to activate the focused item, Ctrl+Enter to run its secondary command, or Ctrl+K to open its context menu. Press Esc to leave the Dock.

You can change the shortcut and how focus moves between Docks with the Dock navigation setting. The shortcut works only while the Dock is enabled.

Pin commands to the Dock

There are several ways to pin commands and extensions to the Dock.

Pin from Command Palette

The easiest way to add a command to the Dock is directly from the Command Palette:

1. Open the Command Palette and navigate to the command you want to pin.
2. Right-click the command and select Pin to Dock, or open the More actions menu and select Pin to Dock.

To remove a pinned command, right-click it and select Unpin from Dock.

Pin from Dock edit mode

You can also manage the Dock layout by entering edit mode:

1. Right-click the Dock background and select Edit Dock.
2. Select the + button in the Start, Center, or End region to add a new command.
3. Choose from the list of available commands in the flyout.
4. Drag and drop commands to reorder them within or across regions. On multi-monitor setups you can also drag a band onto another monitor's Dock to move it between displays.
5. Select Save to apply your changes, or Discard to revert.

You can right-click individual items in edit mode to toggle Show Titles and Show Subtitles, or to Unpin a command from the Dock.

Pin files and URLs by drag and drop

Drag a file or a URL onto the Dock to immediately create a Bookmark for it and pin the Bookmark in place. Files and folders are bookmarked at the path you dropped, and URLs are bookmarked at their address. Pinned folder bookmarks open the Command Palette browse experience scoped to that folder when you select them.

Dock settings

The following settings are available for the Dock in Command Palette settings.

Appearance

When Image is selected as the background colorization mode, the following additional settings are available:

When Custom color or Image is selected, you can also configure:

Bands

Bands are the commands and widgets that you pin to the Dock. Installed extensions can provide their own bands. To add, remove, or rearrange bands, use Dock edit mode.

Built-in bands include:

• Time & Date: a clock band and a Notification center band. To create a clock for another time zone, run Manage custom clocks from Command Palette and select Add custom clock. For each clock, you can set a Clock name, a Time zone, and a Title format and Subtitle format (for example, time with seconds, the date, a relative day, or the week of the year), plus an Additional copy format. You can pin custom clocks to the Dock as separate bands. To change the formats of the default Dock clock, right-click it and select Customize clock. In the Time & Date extension settings, Dock clock click action controls what happens when you select the Dock clock: Open notification center (default) or Open All clocks. Formats that you define in the extension's Custom formats setting are also available for clocks, including ISO 8601 week number tokens.
• Performance Monitor: CPU usage, Memory usage, Network usage, Network speed, Disk usage, GPU usage, and Battery. The Battery band only appears on devices that have a battery. Network metrics combine traffic from all physical adapters by default. Open a network item's actions to browse adapters and set a default adapter. In the extension settings, you can choose bits, decimal bytes, or binary bytes per second for network and disk speeds.

Monitors

The Monitors section lists each connected display. Use the toggle next to a display to turn the Dock on or off for that display. Per-display settings also apply when only one display is connected. Expand a display to configure:

Behavior settings

The following behavior settings are available for the Dock.

Dock behavior

The Dock uses the Windows AppBar API to reserve screen space while it is pinned so other windows do not overlap it. The Dock also:

• Automatically restores its position if Windows Explorer restarts.
• Can't be resized or dragged. Its position is controlled by the Position setting.

Related content

• Command Palette overview
• Extensibility overview