How To Create A ‘Recent Apps’ Shortcut In Your Dock

The great thing about the Mac is ‘it just works’, which is always a good place to start. What makes the platform even better is that as you become more familiar with it ‘just working’, you’ll also gain deeper insights into the tweaks and tips that can make you just work even better, and this useful little Terminal tip is just one of these:

Scenario: You use a lot of apps in your work. You get a little tired running to LaunchPad, checking for an icon in Finder, and you haven’t yet gotten used to using Command-Space to use Spotlight to search for and open an app (by name) for you, or Siri for that matter…You want a folder in the Dock that contains the apps you most recently used so you can get to them fast. This tip creates a Recently Used Apps Stack in your Dock that works just like your Downloads folder/stack.

Here’s what to do:

• Launch Terminal
• Write the following EXACTLY AS YOU SEE IT:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'

• Now write:

killall Dock

• Hit Return, the Dock will disappear and reappear. Type Exit, hit return, quit the dock
• Now you should have a Recent Applications Stack in your Dock, just like this image.

I hope this little tip comes in useful. I liked it. I was reminded of it when I cam across it in MacLife‘s April issue.