Heres a good question re: Recent Items

[jbrown]

Under the Apple Icon drop-down menu on the top left of the menu bar, the is the " Recent Item " - which shows both the most recent ( 10 ) applications run, as well as recent documents/images opened. You can choose to clear them all, but....


....is there a way to delete single items ( and thus not clear the entire list )? So for example - if I ran Google Earth yesterday, it would show on the list - but I'd like to delete it and not the others.......


cheers

 

[richard.mac]

because your looking up pron? haha jk

the only way to delete items in recent items is to clear the whole menu

 

[WildPalms]

Ok, this isnt simple but its not difficult either.

1. Logoff as yourself and logon as another user with admin rights.
2. Open Terminal and navigate to /Users/<yourname>/Library/Preferences
3. Type: plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.recentitems.plist
4. Type: open com.apple.recentitems.plist (this should open the Property List Editor
5. Click on Root to open the tree
6. Click on Applications to open the tree
7. Click on Custom List Items
8. Open each numbered item until you find the item you wish to remove and with the number highlighted, click on Delete
9. Close and save the file
10. In Terminal, type: plutil -convert binary1 com.apple.recentitems.plist
11. Logoff as the current user and logon as yourself.

This should allow you to remove one entry from the list, or as many as you like. If something goes wrong, you can always delete the com.apple.recentitems.plist file and it will be recreated (empty as if you cleared it) usually on logon.

 

[trendfox]

re: Recent Items

Is there any way of Creating an array in the recentitems plist to enable showing of Recent Folders. I tried editing the file in Property List Editor using the other entries as templates, saved the file (though was directed to using "save as" via a dialog on grounds that finder couldn't find the file..) and relaunched finder but the system just behaved as if I had'nt altered the file in any way.

Reading your post it looks as if one of the problems is that I may need to login as another admin. But you sound quite knowledgeable and my guess is that if there it is possible you probably could enlighten me and save a lot of time manually creating null sub fields for say 30 data items.....

cheers

Ok, this isnt simple but its not difficult either.

1. Logoff as yourself and logon as another user with admin rights.
2. Open Terminal and navigate to /Users/<yourname>/Library/Preferences
3. Type: plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.recentitems.plist
4. Type: open com.apple.recentitems.plist (this should open the Property List Editor
5. Click on Root to open the tree
6. Click on Applications to open the tree
7. Click on Custom List Items
8. Open each numbered item until you find the item you wish to remove and with the number highlighted, click on Delete
9. Close and save the file
10. In Terminal, type: plutil -convert binary1 com.apple.recentitems.plist
11. Logoff as the current user and logon as yourself.

This should allow you to remove one entry from the list, or as many as you like. If something goes wrong, you can always delete the com.apple.recentitems.plist file and it will be recreated (empty as if you cleared it) usually on logon.