How to Disable: Finder/Go/Recents?

In another forum it was mentioned that Spotlight is the engine behind both the Find function and the Recents function. In your face when you don't want it to be and cumbersome when you want to make use of it.

In my opinion, Apple has broken the Find function. It was so very elegant and efficient in Mac OS 10.4.11. Now it's clunky and unreliable.

As to the matter at hand, the context is this: How to enable the user to find things, especially to find one's backward trail to a starting point, while at the same time enabling the user to selectively cover (remove) one's tracks.

It's a simple task. Apple really messed it up.

I've never used it. I only recently discovered that it's there, amassing a 10,000+ item list of every document I've opened.

Maybe some of this is useful. Buy why not make it flexible? Why not give me control of the list?

Suppose I want to remove my research involving some hundreds of documents that I no longer want to clog up my history with? Based on the many other complaints I've found about not being able to do this, the better question may be:

Why don't you see the value in giving the user flexibility in what appears in their Recents list?

"What does it matter that a Smart Folder has amassed 10,000+ items? Or 100,000? or 1,000,000?

If it doesn't suit you, don't open it."

It would perhaps suit me, IF I could clear things from it if I wanted to.

As noted earlier, lots of other users have asked for the same flexibility.

Is Apple now all about: "Think SAME"?

"You can clear things. Just delete the original file. It will be removed from the recents list."

Yes, I know. I am among the many users who want to be able to clear from the Recents list without deleting the document. Is that not clear?

Are you trying to avoid telling me I'm SOL?

Smart Folders are fine. But I'd trade them away in a heartbeat to get the OS 10.4.11 Find function back.

Your comments about Smart Folders appear to me as a deflection from the question at hand, which is the non-option of clearing items from the Recents list without deleting the items themselves.

Of course, you can't always get what you want. But I've too often been dismayed by Apple making their software worse, as they "improve" it.

I most certainly have "come to grips" with things as they are. I only just learned about the inflexibility of the Recents list today. "It is what it is."

When I try to create a "Smart Folder"--following the standard instructions--I search for the word "Galileo," which appears on my computer in hundreds of documents. When the "My Mac" button is pushed, I get NO results.

I've spent hours on the phone with Apple Tech Support to get this to behave properly. They got access to my screen, tried and tried, and gave up. The Find function is broken.

Surely you understand that software engineers sometimes "fix" things that don't need fixing. In the course of justifying their existence, they make things worse. Surely you understand that.

I'm not whining, just stating the facts. The fact is that the OS 10.4.11 Find function was a thing of elegance, beauty and efficiency. Sometimes reviving an oldie but a goodie is the best course of action.

Just saying...

Of course, they follow orders.

Think same. Same as it ever was.

A possibly useful point from the above discussion, worthy of being made more explicit, is the fact that you (BDAqua) provided links to TWO third party Finding application for recent MacOS incarnations.

Surely that's an indication of much unhappiness in how Apple's own Find function works.

I don't think the well-designed Find function from OS 10.4.11 (which I happily still use on my trusty old G5) would have had any competition from third parties. Apple got it right, back then.

Me and the Apple Tech Support folks. And, I suppose, all those others who have sought third party Finding software, such as that suggested by BDAqua.

BTW, I've now tried them. They are OK, but I miss the way Find in OS 10.4.11 always organized the results into meaningful categories, each with a header that was collapsable. High Sierra, when it works, often spits out a huge set of lists that are not independently collapsable. If what you're looking for is at the bottom, you have to scroll all the way down. About that I grumble.