The Dock at the bottom of the iPad screen is designed to give you quick access to your most important applications. By default, the Dock is split into two sections by a faint, vertical dividing line. The apps on the left side are your permanent favourites, which you manually place there. The three apps on the far right, however, are automatically populated by the iPad; they represent the three apps you have used most recently. While this feature aids multitasking, it constantly changes the layout of your Dock, making it look cluttered and unpredictable. If you prefer a static, clean Dock that only contains apps you explicitly choose, you can remove this “Recent Apps” section entirely.
How to Remove Recent Apps from the Dock
Disabling this feature requires a quick trip into the multitasking settings of your iPadOS.
- Open the Settings app on your iPad.
- Scroll down the left-hand sidebar and tap on Home Screen & Multitasking (on older versions of iPadOS, this may just be called ‘Home Screen & Dock’).
- Look at the main window on the right side. Under the “Dock” section, you will see a toggle switch labelled Show Suggested and Recent Apps in Dock.
- Tap the toggle switch to turn it off (the switch will turn from green to grey).
The Result
Return to your iPad Home Screen. You will immediately notice that the faint vertical divider line on the right side of the Dock has vanished, along with the three dynamically changing app icons.
Your Dock is now entirely yours to control. You can drag and drop your favourite apps into the Dock, and they will stay exactly where you put them, without the iPad inserting temporary apps at the end of the row.