How to Add a Recent Items Menu Stack to the Dock of Mac OS X

You can add a Recent Items menu Stack to the Mac OS X Dock by using a defaults write command. The default is set to “Recent Applications” but once the Dock item exists you can adjust it to feature other recent items too, like Recent Files, Recent Items, Recent Servers.

This is a neat feature that works in all versions of Mac OS X, so let’s show you how to enable it with a defaults string from the command line.

How to Enable a Recent Items Dock Stack in Mac OS X

Launch the terminal found in /Applications/Utilities/ to get started.

Copy and paste the following syntax onto a single line at the terminal prompt, be sure it’s all on the same line, you can type it out if you want to as well but the syntax is a little programmatic in appearance which could make it cumbersome to write out to some users:

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

That needs to all be on a single line, so if you copy and paste it make sure the command is one string. Hit enter to execute the command.

You will then need to kill the Dock, this allows the change to take effect by relaunching the Dock process:

killall Dock

Now right-click on the newly appeared ‘Recent Applications’ Dock item, it will have appeared next to the Trash icon.

You can change this to be Recent Applications, Recent Documents, Recent Servers, Favorite Volumes, or Favorite Items. If you want more than one, just run the command again at the Terminal.

This menu item will stick around in the Dock as long as you want it to.

If you want to remove the Recent Items menu, just drag it out of your Dock like any other Dock item in Mac OS X.

Neat huh? Thanks to Sean for the submission, if you know of any other cool tricks or defaults commands, be sure to let us know!