Remove Recent Applications from Dock

By  on  

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!

Recent Features

  • By
    Responsive and Infinitely Scalable JS Animations

    Back in late 2012 it was not easy to find open source projects using requestAnimationFrame() - this is the hook that allows Javascript code to synchronize with a web browser's native paint loop. Animations using this method can run at 60 fps and deliver fantastic...

  • By
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools CountDown Plugin

    There are numerous websites around the internet, RapidShare for example, that make you wait an allotted amount of time before presenting you with your reward. Using MooTools, I've created a CountDown plugin that allows you to easily implement a similar system. The MooTools JavaScript The CountDown class...

  • By
    Shake Things Up Using jQuery UI’s Shake Effect

    Yesterday I created a tutorial showing you how you can shake an element using Fx.Shake, a MooTools component written by Aaron Newton. It turns out that jQuery UI also has a shake effect which can draw attention to an element. The XHTML Exactly the same as...

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.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!