MacOS – Hiding items from the Applications folder without touching them

dockfindermacos

I have a link to the Applications folder on my dock – basically it's a great, unobtrusive, quick launcher when I'm already using the mouse.

Problem is, it's cluttered up by a bunch of junk I don't want there. Dashboard, which I never use, Photo Booth, and other detritus that just clutters up the view.

I'd like to remove those somehow – but I'm not interested in a number of common workarounds for this use case:

I don't want to actually mess with the contents of the folder, which rules out every idea given in this answer. Setting the .app folders +hidden or putting a dot in their names means I have to disable SIP, and besides this could cause issues with updating or using the app later should I need it. I don't want to trash the apps either.
I don't want to maintain a separate folder with aliases to this one – having newly installed apps visible in this folder by default usually means I can launch them faster with the mouse than I can with cmd–space and finding it with Spotlight (since spotlight takes a while to update its cache)

Ideally, I could remove certain items from my "view" of the folder, but leave the actual folder untouched.

Is there a way to do this? Some feature I've overlooked or some app that provides an unobtrusive dock menu?

Best Answer

Go to the Applications folder, then do 'Find', and search for any application whose name is not (X, Y, Z). Save the search, and add the search to your dock.

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There's no standard way to open a new window with open or AppleScript though. You'd have to use different terminology for each application.

on alfred_script(q)
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