Remove App Icons from Recent Apps in Dock on Mac

The “Recent Apps” section of the Dock on Mac shows the three most recently used apps that are not otherwise in the Mac Dock. This is a handy feature for returning to recently used apps, but if you wish to remove one of the apps from the Recent Apps section, you can do that too.

How to Remove App Icons from the Recent Apps Section of the Dock in MacOS

1. Drag and drop any app icon from Recent Apps to the Mac desktop



2. Hold the drag until you see a “Remove” note appear instead of the app name and then release to remove that app from the Recent Apps section of the Dock



3. Repeat to remove other app icons from Recent Apps in the Mac Dock if you feel like it

In the screenshot example here, we’re removing “Apple Configurator” from the Recent Apps section of this Mac Dock.

Any of the three most recent apps will appear here in the Recent Apps section of the Dock unless you manually remove them, like shown here.

If you open the apps again, they will return to the Recent Apps section as well.

Whether or not you enable or disable the Recent Apps section from the Mac Dock is entirely a matter of personal preference, but if you do use the feature, you may find this trick to interact with the Recent Apps part of the Dock.

There are other ways to customize the Dock on Mac as well.