Clearing dock items (right click)

[Cheapassmac]

Is there an elegant way of clearing the recent items on the dock? Elegant being something via settings/menus, and not outright hunting down a plist to delete somewhere and then rebooting.

For clarification, I don't mean recent items menu, but the items that appear when you right click an app on the dock (it shows recent files used by that app).

 

[HenryAZ]

Have you tried Preferences/General and set "Recent Items" to "None"? That may not suit you if you still want to see some recents. I prefer the "None" setting, though.

 

[Fishrrman]

The OP's post got me to fiddlin' with this myself.

I had the app TextEdit open, with it's dock icon showing (I keep TextEdit in the dock all the time).

I right-clicked on it, and about 5 "recent files" showed up there. How to get rid of them?

I clicked on TextEdit, which brought the app to the foreground.
Then I went to File-->open recent, and chose "clear".
Now, TE's menus no longer indicated recent files.
BUT... right-clicking the TE icon in the dock still showed them.

Apparently, recent items (as listed by the dock) are "kept elsewhere" than "in the app itself".

I then opened terminal and entered
killall Dock
Hit return, and the dock restarted, and they were gone.

It might be possible to work up an Applescript to kill the dock.

I believe there used to be an app called "Dock Restarter", but I couldn't find it with a simple search.

 

[Cheapassmac]

Have you tried Preferences/General and set "Recent Items" to "None"? That may not suit you if you still want to see some recents. I prefer the "None" setting, though.

Setting it to none, the items are still there, the items that already exist don't disappear. Also, I like to have it set to 5.
[doublepost=1544380849][/doublepost]

The OP's post got me to fiddlin' with this myself.

I had the app TextEdit open, with it's dock icon showing (I keep TextEdit in the dock all the time).

I right-clicked on it, and about 5 "recent files" showed up there. How to get rid of them?

I clicked on TextEdit, which brought the app to the foreground.
Then I went to File-->open recent, and chose "clear".
Now, TE's menus no longer indicated recent files.
BUT... right-clicking the TE icon in the dock still showed them.

Apparently, recent items (as listed by the dock) are "kept elsewhere" than "in the app itself".

I then opened terminal and entered
killall Dock
Hit return, and the dock restarted, and they were gone.

It might be possible to work up an Applescript to kill the dock.

I believe there used to be an app called "Dock Restarter", but I couldn't find it with a simple search.

Hmm, thanks for playing around. The items still being there by right clicking was bothersome (despite clearing from the menu). I'll keep in mind that forcibly killing the dock will get rid of them, but wish there was an actual user way of doing so.