For macOS
One app. Every dock.
Yours is in there. Go and build it!
macOS 14 and later. Apple silicon and Intel.
The idea
There is no correct Formbar.
What installs is a set of choices we made on your behalf. None of them is load-bearing, and none of them is an answer we are attached to.
It holds no opinion
Everything it does on the first launch is a suggestion. Nothing underneath is invested in you keeping it.
Your version is the real one
What you set beats what we shipped. Not as a preference filed somewhere, but as the only arrangement the app recognises afterwards.
You will look for the wall
Sooner or later you go hunting for the place it stops bending. Keep going. There is nothing there.
Yes, it takes the Dock’s place.
macOS lets nothing remove the Dock, so Formbar hides it and does its work instead. Treat that as the floor rather than the pitch. Nobody wants a dock that does less than the one already on the machine.
Some of that floor arrives as parts that ship switched on. They come off like everything else.
The demo
Take one apart
One configuration out of the set, running live. Change it and it answers immediately. Keep what you like and carry the settings across.
Several windows
One thing an item can say about itself, and a few of the ways to say it. There is a great deal more of both.
The number, on the icon
Count. A badge on the icon names how many.
The exact number, at a glance. It costs a corner, and it says nothing about which window you are in.
Multiple windows: Count badge
Apply these settingsWhat you are actually getting
Nothing in here is ours to keep.
Every piece of the dock that installs is a decision we made. Each one comes out. Not worked around, not overridden by a setting. Out.
It knows nothing
What runs underneath has never heard of a window, or a group, or the trash. It arranges what it is handed. Everything with a name arrived from somewhere else.
Ours come off
The window list is not built in. It is an add-on that happens to ship switched on. Switch it off and the dock carries on without it.
Somebody else’s bug is not your problem
Code from outside runs apart from the dock. When it falls over, it falls over alone. This is a surface you look at all day and it does not get to vanish.
Nobody is asking you to code
Writing your own is the last door, not the first. Most people never find it, and the dock is finished without it.
A tool with a favourite is not open.
The parts we wrote arrive through the same door as the parts anyone else writes. No priority, no private access, no protection from replacement. That is not generosity, it is arithmetic. A ceiling only disappears if nothing is holding it up.
Hold one piece back for ourselves and that piece becomes the place your idea dies.
How far it goes
Most people never open the store.
What installs already covers the day. Everything past it exists for the cases that belong to you alone.
- 01
What ships
Enough that a lot of people stop here and never think about it again. None of it is welded in.
- 02
What we add
Extensions we write ourselves, a press away. Narrower than the defaults, broader than one person.
- 03
What everyone else adds
The cases we would never think of, built by the people who have them. Submitting one needs no Apple developer account.
- 04
What only you need
That door is open and it works. Reaching it means nobody else on earth wanted what you wanted.
The store is a convenience and never a mandate. An author who would rather hand their work out directly is free to, signed under their own identity.
What does not change
It behaves like infrastructure.
It does not move under you
Whatever you build stays built. The dock does not rearrange itself and does not develop opinions overnight.
It never asks you for anything
No prompts in the bar, no badge nudging you toward a purchase. Upgrades live in settings, where you go looking for them.
A broken part is just a broken part
One thing failing is one thing failing. It is never the whole dock going dark while you work.
It is the quietest thing on the screen
You look at this strip more than almost anything else on the machine. It should ask less of you than anything else too.
Plans
Free, forty euro a year, or by the seat.
The free dock is a complete dock, permanently. What the paid tiers add on top is not settled yet, and we would rather leave the row empty than guess at it.
Free
Permanent. Never a trial.
Freeno card, no end date
- A complete dock, with no end date
- Every part of it replaceable
- Community support
Personal
One person, every Mac they use.
€40a year, billed annually
- Not ruled yet: what this adds over free
- Email support rather than the community
- One month free, whenever you start it
Team
For a business buying Formbar for its people.
Volume pricingby the number of seats
- Not ruled yet: the price per seat
- Assign a seat to an email address
- Take the seat back when someone leaves
- One invoice, with your VAT identifier
Questions
Before you install it.
Yours is still in there.
Go and build it.
macOS 14 and later · Apple silicon and Intel