pier

Free, native macOS docks. As many as you want, pinned wherever you want. Replaces ExtraDock (€9.99/year, or €39.99 once).

Part of Openware — real, self-hostable replacements for software that shouldn't cost anything. Not affiliated with ExtraDock or Appit Studio. Written from scratch against the idea, never against their code or assets.

_{Icons magnify under the pointer, running apps get a dot, and dividers and widgets sit in the same row. Blur is composited by the window server, so it can't be captured offscreen — the real thing is translucent.}

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Why this exists

macOS gives you one Dock. On two monitors it either lives on one screen or follows your pointer around, and neither is what you want when the left screen is for chat and the right one is for code.

Pier gives you as many docks as you like, each pinned to a display, each with its own contents, position and look. They sit alongside the real Dock or replace it.

It asks for nothing. No Accessibility prompt, no Full Disk Access, no account, no network. Pointer position is the only thing it watches, and macOS lets any app watch the mouse without permission — only the keyboard needs one.

What it does

• As many docks as you want, each with its own items, size, colours and behaviour
• Pinned per display — and a dock whose monitor is unplugged goes away with it instead of piling onto whatever's left
• Any edge, or nowhere in particular — top, bottom, left, right, or drag it into open space and it stays there. Drop it near an edge and it snaps
• Magnification with a proper falloff curve, growing away from the edge it's docked against
• Running indicators and a launch bounce
• Drag and drop that works both ways — drag apps, folders and files onto a dock to add them; drag a file onto an app to open it with that app; onto a folder to move it in; onto the Trash to bin it. Drag icons to reorder, or off the dock to remove
• Widgets: clock, Trash, Finder, screen name, IP address, spacers and dividers
• Per-app custom icons — point at any image and that's the icon
• Auto-hide with a reveal band at the screen edge, and hide on full screen
• Collapse to a button when you want the space back
• Mirror the macOS Dock to fill a new dock with what's already in yours
• Deep customisation: icon size, spacing, padding, corner radius, opacity, blur material, tint, border, shadow, labels, indicators
• Runs at about 1% CPU sitting still

What it doesn't do

• No notification badges. The unread count on an app's Dock icon isn't published by macOS to anyone but the Dock. Faking it would mean guessing, so Pier doesn't show one
• Mirroring is a snapshot, not a live feed. Switching on "mirror the macOS Dock" copies its contents at that moment; it doesn't follow along afterwards
• No mascot, no pet, no Tamagotchi. ExtraDock has one and people love it. This is a dock
• Not notarized, no signed DMG. You build it from this folder. It's ad-hoc signed on your own machine, which is why Gatekeeper never gets involved
• Windows don't resize around it the way they do for the real Dock — macOS reserves screen space for its own Dock and nobody else's
• macOS 13+. No iOS, no Windows, no Linux

Build it

git clone https://github.com/openwarehq/pier
cd pier
./build.sh
open Pier.app

Needs Xcode or the Command Line Tools; no Xcode project, no signing identity, no pod install, no npm. The build compiles the app, draws its own icon with CoreGraphics (this repo ships no binary art), assembles Pier.app and ad-hoc signs it.

Move it to /Applications if you keep it. Everything else happens from the menu bar icon.

Using it

Right-click a dock	Add apps, folders and widgets, change an icon, open its settings
Drag onto a dock	Adds whatever you dropped, at the point you dropped it
Drag an icon off	Removes it — the same gesture the real Dock uses
Drag the dock itself	Moves it. Near an edge it snaps; in open space it stays put
Menu bar icon	Every dock, show/hide, duplicate, remove, and settings

Where your things live

~/Library/Application Support/Pier/docks.json

One file. It's plain JSON, and if you corrupt it Pier keeps the broken copy next to it as docks.json.broken rather than quietly starting over.

Hacking on it

swift test     # 59 tests over the pure logic — no window server involved
swift build    # debug build without assembling the bundle

The package splits in two on purpose:

• PierCore — Foundation only. The dock and item model, persistence, and the three pieces of arithmetic everything else depends on: DockLayout (tile frames, hit testing, insertion points), Magnifier (the swell under the pointer) and DockPlacement (where a dock sits, where it hides, which edge it snaps to). All testable without a screen.
• Pier — AppKit and SwiftUI. Panels, drag plumbing, the menu bar, settings.

Every position in a dock comes from DockLayout, so the SwiftUI drawing and the AppKit hit-testing can't disagree about where a tile is.

To look at a dock without one being on screen:

./Pier.app/Contents/MacOS/Pier --render-preview ~/Desktop

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MIT. Take it, fork it, sell it.