Filed under: Productivity, TUAW Tips
TUAW Tip: Put a Recent items Stack in your Dock
Here's another brilliant tip by way of Mac OSX Hints. It turns out that you can actually put a "Recent Items" Stack in your toolbar with a couple of terminal command. Once you execute it this stack allows you to choose between displaying Recent Applications, Recent Documents, Recent Servers, Favorite Volumes, and Favorite Items. If you click on the Stack it opens in grid view to show whichever of these you selected. As per usual with a Stack, the Dock icon is dynamic.
Incidentally, these are the same "Recent Items..." that appear in the drop-down Apple menu, which can be adjusted in the Appearances Preference Pane.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
PSM said 4:47PM on 11-16-2007
OK, I'll be the first to admit it -- I like Stacks. Thanks for the tip!
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Kelly said 4:51PM on 11-16-2007
Just a note that if you have the recent items disable, and enable this feature the stack willl show up totally empty :)
Kinda scared me at first till I figured out why
Kel
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Mark 2000 said 5:08PM on 11-16-2007
Now, can you put a drawer icon over it?
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Kenji F said 11:47PM on 11-16-2007
@3: No, because it makes a System call (In simpler words, it isn't a folder per sé)
And you can't use it as a fan, no matter how hard you edit the string... at least I couldn't, and I almost trashed my dock.
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wiiittttt said 12:49AM on 11-17-2007
yea i tried to edit the hell out of the string with no luck...my only thoughts are since it does not treat it like a folder, maybe there is a way to add the recent items as links in a folder and then add the folder to the dock...thats what im working on now
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jake said 2:03AM on 11-17-2007
this really is brilliant. i was trying to do this with a saved search folder, but it would only display it as a folder in the dock and not like how the downloads stack works. i don't miss the curved stack though since my dock is on the left and all stacks are displayed that way by default. between the downloads stack and this, i think this is the first time the dock has become actually useful for me. cool.
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William Lane said 7:39AM on 11-17-2007
Um, Stacks are found in the Dock, not in the Toolbar
Here's another brilliant tip by way of Mac OSX Hints. It turns out that you can actually put a "Recent Items" Stack in your toolbar with a couple of terminal command.
Reply
andy said 5:06PM on 11-17-2007
great tip!
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Danny said 8:50PM on 11-17-2007
so I attempted this did what they say used the terminal comand and then killall dock now my dock is gone and i dont know how to get it back i tried repairing perissions but still no go. Help :( please
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louis said 2:26PM on 11-20-2007
Excellent!!!
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sean said 4:23PM on 12-30-2007
This trick worked great for me and is a nice addition to the doc. However, I am experiencing some strange behavior w/ the stack...there are several extra desktop folder icons in the stack and I cannot get them to go away. Any thoughts as to 1) what may be causing this and 2) how to correct the problem would be appreciated.
-s
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brad said 12:34PM on 1-22-2008
wiiittttt...
please keep us all updated about your efforts with the folder icon...i'd really love this feature and it'd be great if i could get it to sync up with the look of my other stacks.
cheers
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