This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.
How to: Only Show Open Applications In The Dock
The Dock is a perfect solution for having access to all of your most frequently used Applications. If you only wanted to have the current open applications and the Trash presented in the dock at any given time can that be done? Yes!
Remember the Dock isn’t the only way to launch an application, you can also launch an application from a Spotlight search or directly from your Applications folder.
In order to show only open apps in the Dock, you will need to use Terminal. To locate Terminal simply navigate to your Applications > Utilities Folder. Within the Utilities folder you will locate Terminal.
Simply launch and then enter the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool TRUE
After you have pressed return simply enter the following, then press return again once you have entered:
killall Dock
You will notice that your Dock will immediately change and present only the open applications as shown below:
If you do not wish to have your dock presented in this way then all you need to do is go back into Terminal and enter the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool FALSE
After you have pressed return simply enter the following, then press return again once you have entered:
killall Dock
