Keep your Dock exactly the way you arranged it.
macOS lets a single stray drag pull an app out of the Dock, and offers no setting to prevent it. Dock Keep locks the layout — and always gives you a way back out.
macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel · Signed and notarized
No account. No tracking. No network access.
Drag an icon out of the tray and it's gone — exactly like on your Mac.
This is a model of a Dock. Nothing on your Mac is touched.
The problem
One slip, and the icon is gone.
Drag an icon a little too far and macOS removes it from the Dock, with a puff of smoke and no undo. There is no built-in setting to prevent this.
Shared Macs
A family computer, a classroom machine, a demo unit — everyone rearranges it, nobody puts it back.
Hands that shake
Tremors, reduced mobility, or simply an unsteady trackpad turn everyday clicks into accidental drags.
Locked out by a blog post
People copy a Terminal command to fix this, then can't undo it. Apple's forums are full of threads from people stuck that way.
What it does
Four things, done carefully.
Dock Keep is a small utility, not a Dock replacement. It writes a couple of macOS settings and knows how to undo them.
Lock the layout
Apps can no longer be added, removed or rearranged by dragging. Everything else keeps working: apps still launch, running apps still appear.
Keep as many arrangements as you need
Save the Dock you like and give it a name. Ten are kept, and the app takes its own snapshot before it changes anything — including before a restore, so even that can be undone.
Restore, and check that it worked
Put an arrangement back in one click. The app then re-reads the Dock to confirm it really took, and says so plainly when it didn't, instead of claiming a success nobody verified.
Spots locks it didn't set
If a Terminal command or another app locked your Dock, Dock Keep detects it on launch and offers to remove it.
Being straight with you
What Dock Keep is not.
It would be easy to oversell this. Here is where the app stops.
Not parental control
Locking requires no administrator password. Anyone curious enough to search the web can undo it in a minute.
Not security
This protects against accidents, not against intent. It is a guard rail, not a lock on a door.
Not a Dock replacement
Nothing is drawn over Apple's Dock, no events are intercepted, and no accessibility or screen recording permission is ever requested.
The promise
You can always get out.
An app that locks your Dock should never be the only way to unlock it. So here is the Terminal command that always works — whether Dock Keep set the lock, another app did, or you pasted something from a blog years ago.
defaults delete com.apple.dock contents-immutable && killall DockOpen Terminal, paste the line, press Return. Your Dock restarts and becomes editable again.
Deleting the app does not unlock your Dock — nothing runs to undo it. Unlock first, or paste the line above afterwards: it works whether the app is installed or not.
Download
Free, and it stays free.
No payment, no licence, no account. The goal is a small tool that works and a few honest bug reports.
Version 0.1.2
Built for macOS 14 and later. It has been tested on macOS 26 only — if you run it on 14 or 15, a bug report would genuinely help.
Questions
Before you download.
Does it need my administrator password?
No. Dock Keep changes a per-user macOS setting, so it never asks for elevated rights and never installs a background service.
Does it collect anything about me?
No. There is no account, no analytics and no telemetry. The only time the app reaches the network is to check for updates, and it asks your permission before the first check. It never sends a profile of your machine.
How does it update itself?
Through Sparkle, the usual updater for Mac apps distributed outside the App Store. On first launch it asks whether it may check at all; decline and the app never touches the network. Every update is verified against a signing key built into the copy you already have, so a tampered download is refused.
Does it work on macOS 14 and 15?
It is built for macOS 14 and later, and the setting it uses has been supported since macOS 10.7. That said, it has only been tested on macOS 26, so treat 14 and 15 as expected rather than verified.
What happens if I delete the app while my Dock is locked?
Unlock first, then delete it. Deleting an app runs no code, so a lock left in place stays in place. If you forget, the Terminal command above always unlocks the Dock — the app is not needed to undo its own work. Your saved arrangements stay in Application Support until you remove that folder too.
Where are my saved arrangements kept?
In ~/Library/Application Support/com.lndev.dockkeep/Backups, as ordinary property list files, one per arrangement. The app can open that folder for you, and they stay readable even if the app is gone — which is rather the point.
Will running apps and recent apps still show up?
Yes. The lock only blocks manual changes. Open apps appear as usual and the recent apps section keeps behaving normally.
Is it available in French?
Yes. The app follows your Mac's language — English and French for now, with English as the fallback for anything else. You can force one for this app alone in System Settings › General › Language & Region › Applications.
Why isn't it on the Mac App Store?
App Store apps run sandboxed, which forbids writing another process's preferences — exactly what this app has to do. It is distributed directly instead, signed and notarized by Apple.