Noob here. Just installed Budgie 26.04 on my wife’s laptop for basic stuff. The bottom panel, or dock, or whatever it’s called, stays visible and takes up so much space whenever any program is opened. We want it to be able to hide when something else is in use. Right clicking it does nothing. I’ve checked around Budgie settings, and can only find options for the top panel. I was unable to find a similar thread in this forum, and chatgpt gave nothing but hallucinations for responses. All we need is for it to auto-hide.
At the moment it set up as intellihide. So it hides itself when an app is full screen. If you want true autohide then move your mouse onto the dock, and right click in a spare space. That will reveal various options for the dock which includes panel visibility settings.
If you don’t want the dock appearing at all, and want to use panel based icons for launching, using Budgie Welcome - Makeovers and layouts and choose a layout that doesn’t include the dock.
I’ll try again later today, but right clicking empty space wasn’t doing anything last night.
Right click anywhere on the dock (even on an icon) > Panel > Visibility > Auto-Hide:
Or, more radically, open the terminal (Ctrl Alt t) and copy and paste this line, the dock will no longer launch:
sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/crystal-dock-autostart.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/crystal-dock-autostart.desktop.back
To restore the dock at startup:
sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/crystal-dock-autostart.desktop.back /etc/xdg/autostart/crystal-dock-autostart.desktop
I did not get any of these options.
Really?
Are you on UB 26.04?
Try to reinstall Crystal Dock from terminal:
sudo apt purge crystal-dock
reboot
sudo apt update && sudo apt install crystal-dock
But you can also disable Crystal Dock’s automatic launch and replace it with the Icon Task List applet in the panel:
Right click on desktop > Budigie Desktop Settings > Bottom Panel > Add applet > Icon Task List
Yes, did a clean install last night. Right clicking the dock does nothing. I’ll try reinstalling crystal dock later and see if that works.
Feel free, you know how to do.
Wow I’m so stupid. Ctrl right click does it.
I wouldn’t have dared say that, but it’s not entirely untrue. 
But let the one who has never experienced this cast the first stone.