JumpDock press kit

In one sentence

JumpDock is a Mac menu bar app that puts System Settings panes, privacy sections, utilities and system folders one click away, including the Gatekeeper setting macOS gives no direct link to.

In one paragraph

Every setting on a Mac is three clicks away and the one you want is always the third. JumpDock puts them in the menu bar instead: 36 built-in destinations covering privacy sections, settings panes, utilities and folders, each checked against the Mac it is running on so nothing is offered that the system does not have. Shortcuts can also point at any app, document or folder, and several behind one icon become a menu. It began as a single shortcut to the Gatekeeper setting, “Allow applications from”, which sits at the bottom of a long Privacy & Security pane and which macOS publishes no URL for, so JumpDock opens the pane and scrolls to it. It also gives every audio output its own volume slider and mute, each acting on that device whether or not it is the one currently in use.

The facts

What is worth writing about

Three things that are genuinely unusual, in case they are useful:

The Gatekeeper setting has no URL. macOS publishes anchors for most of System Settings, including most privacy sections, but none for the Security section. So the setting people need when their Mac refuses to open an app is the one setting nothing can link to, which is why Apple’s own instructions end with “scroll down”. There is a full list of the identifiers that do work, read off a running system, in the settings URL guide.

Volume for a device you are not listening to. macOS gives you one volume control and it follows the current output. Every other device on the machine has none. JumpDock gives each its own, so you can set the interface feeding your monitors while you are on headphones.

The permission is scoped to the one feature that needs it. The app’s internal model records how much work each destination does once its pane is open, and only the two kinds that drive the interface ever touch the Accessibility API. A user whose shortcuts are all plain links is never asked for anything.

Screenshots and video

Full resolution, free to use, no credit required, though a link back is always welcome. I send these on request rather than hosting them on this page. Use the support form, choose JumpDock, and I will reply with a download link the same day.

What is available:

• Screenshots of the menu open in the menu bar, the menu bar icons alone, the Shortcuts settings window and the Volume settings window.
• Two Privacy & Security frames: where the pane opens, and where you actually needed to be.
• Two short screen recordings: one click from the menu bar to the Gatekeeper setting, and setting a device that is not the current output.
• The app icon, 1024px, transparent.

JumpDock’s own windows and menus come in a light and a dark-appearance version. They are the same scene captured twice rather than two different shots, so either set can be used throughout. Use whichever suits your site.

The two Gatekeeper frames are light only. They are Apple’s Privacy & Security pane rather than anything JumpDock draws, so they illustrate macOS rather than the app, and a dark version would be at the mercy of whatever the system happened to be announcing that week.

Contact

Phillip Fuller. Use the support form and choose JumpDock.

Happy to answer technical questions about how any of it works, and to send a license key to anyone writing about the app.