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In the course of a month I download quite a lot of trial software, including Mac utllities, after reading mentions or recommendations on other blogs. Most times I don’t find a use for a package and end up deleting it after a few weeks. Sometimes, though, a utility which works in the background makes itself so useful that you can’t remember what you did without it.
A couple of weeks ago I was working on the blog when up came a message to tell me that my trial of HyperDock had expired. Â Did I want to buy it or delete it? I couldn’t remember downloading it so I deleted it. Ten minutes later I was bereft. Why would my windows not go full screen automatically when I pushed them to the top of the screen? Where had those useful window previews of open windows gone to. I realise with a shock that I had been using HyperDock unconsciously and had grown to depend on it.
It’s one of those OS X enhancements that just does its job unobtrusively and you get to take it for granted. So much so, in fact, that I’d completely overlooked the fact that these features aren’t part of OS X. What does HyperDock do?
- Window preview bubble: When you hold the mouse cursor over a dock item you see mini pictures of all the windows that are open in that application. You can easily navigate to the window you want.
- Advanced window management: Moves and resizes windows by holding down keys and moving your mouse; automatically resizes windows when dragging to screen edges – also known as window snapping.
These are the features that I had been using unconsciously, in particular the automatic window snapping. I can’t do without it now. But there’s more (which I haven’t yet explored) including control of iTunes by hovering the mouse over the dock item; sneak peek of upcoming events by hovering over the dock item. HyperDock also adds fully configurable shortcuts to dock apps. You can assign key and mouse shortcuts to dock items to hide or quit, start Expose, open Safari table, Finder window and more.
But the jewels in the crown are the windows management and the window preview bubbles. For these features alone HyperDock is worth the reasonable $9.95 that German developer Christian Baumgart asks of you.
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Right – and he never wanted more than this one-time $9.95. (Now it is Sept. 2014 !)
This "snappy"-Feature I switched off – but I love the Drag/Resize Feature: hold ctrl-alt, click somwhere in a window and drag it around, or with crl-cmd: resize it.
Yes: you can define the modifier-keys as you like it.
Danke Christian !