Hiding items from the Applications folder without touching them

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?

Solution 1:

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.