Remove Recent Applications from Dock

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A Mac user's dock is a sacred place. We customize our dock to no end, and if you're ultra organized like me, you even use dock separators to group your app icons.

Apple recently implemented a feature which displays three recently used apps in the dock. For basic users that's reasonable, but for power users like us, it's an annoyance.

To remove this recent applications feature:

  1. Click the Apple menu, then choose System Preferences
  2. Click the Dock icon
  3. Uncheck the Show recent applications in Dock checkbox

I lived with this invasion of Dock privacy for far too long. Take a moment to cleanse your Dock and you'll feel much better!

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Discussion

  1. zakius

    wow, so the solution is “just go to the expected place and untick one checkbox”
    I guess this may be too much for many of mac users but I doubt they will be able to read text as long as this one either way

    I clicked this cause I was curious what kind of shenanigans, rain dances and unholy sacrifices you had to do but it turned out it was absolutely reasonable!

  2. Speedy

    Actually, mine was already unchecked (I have OS Mohave for a while). I checked and unchecked again, and they are still the same 504 docs under Recents. No way to delete them; unless I delete them manually but it will delete the original docs in my computer.

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