In this guide
What is the Pinodock dock?
The dock is a floating bar pinned to the bottom of your new tab page (or left or right edge — your choice). By default it shows seven navigation shortcuts: Home, Todos, Snippets, Reading, Highlights, Clipboard, and Tools. These let you jump between Pinodock's built-in panels instantly without leaving the new tab.
The new version adds a second section to the right of a thin separator — your site shortcuts. Every site you add appears as a real favicon icon, not an emoji. Click any favicon to open that site in a new tab. The dock remembers your sites across devices when Pro sync is enabled.
+ button at the right end of the dock to open the customizer. Pick a preset pack and click "Add all" — done. Your favourite streaming or messaging sites appear as favicon icons in seconds.
Adding sites with preset packs
The dock customizer groups popular sites into six preset packs. Each pack has a name, an emoji, and a curated list of sites. You can add individual sites from a pack or click Add all to add every site in the category at once.
To open the customizer, click the small + button at the right end of the dock. The customizer panel appears above (or beside) the dock with category tabs across the top.
| Pack | Sites included |
|---|---|
| 🎬 Streaming | Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Twitch, Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Max |
| 🌐 Social | X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest |
| 💬 Messaging | WhatsApp Web, Telegram Web, Discord, Slack, Messenger, Gmail, Outlook |
| 💻 Dev | GitHub, Stack Overflow, MDN, npm, CodePen, Vercel |
| ⚡ Productivity | Notion, Figma, Linear, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Trello |
| 📰 News | Hacker News, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters |
Sites you have already added show a blue tick and a blue border. Clicking a site toggles it on or off. The "Add all" button only adds sites you haven't already added — it never creates duplicates.
What each pack includes
🎬 Streaming pack
Covers the eight biggest video and audio streaming services. Particularly useful if you switch between Netflix and Disney+ in the evening or toggle between Spotify and YouTube Music. Having them as single-click favicon icons in the dock eliminates the need to type the URL or keep a bookmark folder open.
🌐 Social pack
The seven largest social networks by active users. Each opens in a new tab — so your current work tab stays open. Twitter/X, Instagram, and TikTok are the most commonly added from this pack.
💬 Messaging pack
WhatsApp Web, Telegram Web, Discord, Slack, and Messenger cover the main messaging surfaces. Gmail and Outlook are included here because they function as message inboxes. Adding the whole messaging pack gives you a one-click message tray directly in your dock.
💻 Dev pack
GitHub, MDN, Stack Overflow, npm, CodePen, and Vercel — the six sites most developers visit every session. GitHub alone saves meaningful time when you're jumping between repos, pull requests, and issues throughout the day.
⚡ Productivity pack
Notion, Figma, Linear, Google Calendar, Drive, and Trello. This pack suits teams that live in documents and project management tools. Particularly useful for designers who switch between Figma and Notion dozens of times a day.
📰 News pack
Four news sources covering tech (Hacker News), international (BBC, Reuters), and quality journalism (The Guardian). Add this pack if you read the news as part of your morning tab-opening routine.
Adding custom sites
To add any site that isn't in a preset pack:
- Click the
+button at the end of the dock - Select the Custom tab in the customizer
- Paste the full URL (must start with
https://) - Optionally type a label — if you leave it blank, the domain name is used
- Click Add to Dock
Pinodock automatically fetches the site's favicon using DuckDuckGo's favicon API. Most major sites have favicons that load within a second. If the favicon fails to load, the site's emoji (default: 🌐) is shown as a fallback.
Downloads folder shortcut
The System tab in the customizer contains a special shortcut: your operating system's Downloads folder. Adding it places a 📥 icon in the dock. Clicking it opens the Chrome downloads manager — not a new tab, but Chrome's native downloads panel — giving you instant access to recent files without leaving your workflow.
This is the only dock item that triggers a browser action rather than opening a URL.
Overflow stacks for 10+ sites
The dock has a visible cap on site icons based on your dock size setting: 7 sites for small, 9 for medium, 6 for large (larger icons need more space). If you add more sites than the cap, the extras don't disappear — they collapse into a stack button.
The stack button looks like a small 2×2 favicon grid showing the first four overflow sites. Hovering it shows a tooltip with the number of hidden sites ("5 more"). Clicking it opens a popover grid showing all overflow sites with their favicons and labels. Click any site in the popover to open it in a new tab.
This means you can add all six packs (35+ sites) and they remain accessible — you just need one extra click for the overflow ones. The sites you use most should be added first, as the dock shows them in the order they were added.
macOS magnification effect
Move your cursor over the dock and the icons closest to your cursor scale up, while icons further away stay at normal size. This is the same physics-based magnification effect found in macOS's dock — icons grow continuously based on cursor proximity, not just when directly hovered.
The effect is driven by the actual screen position of each icon (measured with getBoundingClientRect), so it works correctly regardless of separators, different-sized items, or how many sites you've added. The magnification spread is tuned per dock size: tighter on small, broader on large.
For bottom-positioned docks, icons grow upward. For left-positioned docks, they grow rightward. For right-positioned docks, they grow leftward — matching the direction the user is approaching from.
Dock position and size
Open Settings → Dashboard section to find the dock controls.
| Setting | Options | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Dock position | Bottom · Left · Right | Bottom |
| Dock size | Small (32px) · Medium (40px) · Large (50px) | Medium |
| Auto-hide dock | On · Off | Off |
Position
Bottom is the classic macOS/taskbar placement — horizontal bar centered at the bottom of the page. Left and Right turn the dock vertical, pinned to the center of the respective edge. Left and right docks work well on ultrawide monitors where the bottom-center is far from where you're looking.
Size
Small uses 32px icons with tighter padding — good if you've added many sites and want more visible in the dock. Medium (default) is the balanced choice. Large uses 50px icons — best on high-DPI displays where you want the dock to be a primary navigation element, not a secondary bar.
Auto-hide
With auto-hide on, the dock disappears off-screen as soon as your cursor moves away from the dock's edge. It slides back in when you move your cursor to within 60 pixels of the edge where the dock lives (bottom of the screen for a bottom dock, left edge for a left dock, etc.).
The show/hide animation uses a 200ms ease transition — quick enough not to feel sluggish, slow enough not to flash. Auto-hide is useful when you want the new tab to feel like a clean, uninterrupted space most of the time but still want dock access without opening a menu.
Auto-hide and magnification work together — the dock slides in, your cursor position is already over it, and the magnification activates immediately.
The dock is designed around the premise that the sites you visit most should be one click away from every new tab — without turning your new tab into a bookmark manager. Preset packs get you there in seconds. The overflow stack keeps it clean no matter how many sites you add.
→ Read the complete Pinodock guide for an overview of every feature.
→ Learn how to organise your highlights and notes with Projects and Tags