How to add a stack of recent or favorite items to your mac dock

Many of you will already know that you can drag any folder to the right side of the dock in macOS to convert it into a stack or folder however, in this article we will see a method to add a stack of recent or favorite items on the right side of the Dock, behind the separator.

Your favorites or recent ones, handy in the dock

Next, I will show you a not very well-known trick that allows you to create a unique stack type that will contain your recently opened applications or files. Alternatively, you can also configure this unique type of stack to display your favorite folders and devices that appear in the Finder sidebar. eye! This trick does not work if you have configured the dock to only show active applications.

Start the Terminal application found in the Utilities section inside the Applications folder. To quickly open the Utilities folder in the Finder select Go → Utilities from the menu bar, or use the Shift-Command-U keyboard shortcut. You can also press Command + Space and enter "Terminal" in Spotlight, for me, the fastest method.

Then, copy and paste the following command as we left it here, and press the Enter key on your keyboard:

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

Now repeat the command (press the up arrow on the keyboard and Enter) to create as many additional stacks in the Dock as you want or need.

To choose whether a new stack contains favorite items or recent items, as well as how you want them to be displayed, right-click (or Ctrl-click) the created stack and select the option you prefer in the popup menu.

If you want to change the number of items displayed in a stack of recent items, just press the Apple logo () in the menu bar, select System Preferences…, open the General preferences panel and choose another number from the menu. Recent Items dropdown.

And if you want to delete a stack of recent items or favorite items from the dock, proceed as if it were from any other application: drag the stack in question up and release when a cloud appears.