Hide Pinned Apps, Show Only Running Ones in the Dock

A Dock stuffed with twenty pinned apps you rarely click is noise, and dragging them out one by one is tedious — and you lose the shortcuts for good. There's a cleaner move: hide every pinned app at once and let the Dock show only what's actually running. It's a single command, your pinned list is untouched underneath, and one more command puts it all back.

The clutter problem, and the honest fix

Most cluttered Docks got that way slowly — an installer added an icon here, you pinned something "temporarily" there, and now half the row is apps you open once a month. You can prune them individually by dragging each to the desktop until it puffs away, but that's a decision per icon and it permanently removes each shortcut.

The static-only setting sidesteps all of that. Instead of removing pinned apps, it tells the Dock not to draw them, leaving only running apps visible. The clutter is gone, but nothing is deleted — flip the setting back and every pinned icon reappears in place.

Hide them all in one command

Open Terminal (Applications → Utilities → Terminal) and run:

# Hide pinned apps, keep only running ones
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool true
killall Dock

The Dock redraws with the pinned clutter gone. When you want your full Dock back — every shortcut in its original order — run:

# Restore the pinned apps
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool false
killall Dock

This is reversible precisely because it never touched your pinned list; static-only is just a visibility switch. It behaves the same on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

Living with a hide-everything Dock

Because this hides all pinned apps rather than a chosen few, it's worth knowing what daily use looks like:

• It's all-or-nothing. There's no way to keep three favourites pinned and hide the rest with this setting — that would mean actually removing the ones you don't want. If you only need to lose a few, drag those out instead.
• Finder stays. It's always running, so its icon never leaves.
• Launch by search. With no shortcuts to click, press Cmd+Space and type an app's name to open it. It then appears in the Dock while it runs.
• The Trash and folder stacks remain on the right side of the divider, untouched.

For a lot of people this is the sweet spot: none of the visual weight of a packed Dock, none of the regret of deleting shortcuts, and a Dock that finally reflects the handful of apps you're truly using right now.

If you'd rather trim a few icons

Prefer to keep a curated Dock instead of hiding everything? See how to remove an app from the Dock on Mac for the clean way to drop individual shortcuts without disturbing the rest.