Can I adjust the time delay for when the dock re-appears?

I like to hide the dock unless I need it. There is a slight delay before it will reappear. Is there a Terminal setting I can change so that the dock will instantly appear when I move my mouse to the bottom of the screen? I like how things work but want to tweak the timing.

Solution 1:

You can manually set the time it takes for the dock to appear using the defaults write commands:

• autohide-delay → custom appearance delay with dock animation
• autohide-time-modifier → custom appearance delay without dock animation

First, activate auto-hide in System Preferences → Dock → Autohide or type ⌘+⌥+D

Then open the Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0; killall Dock

• 0 is the time it takes for the Dock to appear in seconds. You can choose floats and integers e.g. 2, 0.5,...
• killall Dock causes the Dock to restart
• the syntax is the same for autohide-time-modifier

Restore the default behavior using...

defaults delete com.apple.Dock autohide-delay; killall Dock

According to MacOSHints this trick was found by reverse engineering from the developer Christian Baumgart of Hyperdock.

Solution 2:

• defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.6 reduces the delay and makes the animation for showing and hiding the Dock faster.
• defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0.05 only reduces the delay before the Dock is shown on hover.
• defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-fullscreen-delayed -bool false only removes the additional delay for showing the Dock in full screen.