Add a Stack of Recently Closed Apps and Documents to the Mac Dock
The Recent Items List is a great way to quickly access apps, documents, servers, and anything else you need to frequently. macOS includes the ability to search for this stuff in the menu bar, but How-To Geek points out a way to add a custom icon to your dock.
To add a new icon to the dock, open Terminal (Applications> Utilities) and enter it:
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = {"list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile";}' && \killall Dock
This adds an icon to your dock that includes recently opened apps by default. If you prefer to see a different file type, right-click the icon, then select the new file type you want to see in the Dock. You can choose between applications, documents, servers, volumes and items (which includes everything and all types). You can customize the number of items shown here by going to System Preferences> General and setting whatever you want from the Recent Items drop-down list.
Quickly open recent apps and documents with this hidden Mac feature | How-To Geek