Wouldn't it be great if Finder wold have Quit ⌘Q menu item just like any other apps? So you could

• better focus on your work, without all that desktop clutter,
• switch easily between just two apps you're working with,
• and perhaps save some precious system resources?

Almost default dock from Yosemite. Notice a missing dot under Finder icon.

There's quite relatively easy way to do it, if you're not afraid to copy and paste a few commands in Terminal. And because it's you Finder only, you won't even need to type your password.

So, open that Terminal (in Applications > Utilities), paste this line

defaults write com.apple.Finder QuitMenuItem 1

and then press enter. The change of Finder's parameter QuitMenuItem is done - being set to one, which also stands for TRUE or YES. Now we need to reload Finder. Usual way is to log out and back in, or you can quit it in Activity Monitor, but since we're already in Terminal, let's use another command

killall -QUIT Finder

which sounds a bit scary, but it safely (without forcing) quits - "kills" all (but most likely just one) currently running Finder processes.

That wasn't so difficult was it?

You will then notice that Finder has, just like any other applications, Quit ⌘Q item in its menu.

Yes it has worked.

To undo this, this command removes the parameter:

defaults delete com.apple.Finder QuitMenuItem