Recent Folders missing in Save dialogs and Finder Go menu - actual fix

italik wrote:

After a clean macOS install, "Recent Folders" was permanently greyed out in Finder's Go menu, and the Recent Folders section was gone from the dropdown in every Save/Save As dialog. defaults read com.apple.finder FXRecentFolders returned an empty array and never populated, no matter how many folders I opened.

Everything commonly suggested failed: disabling the Input Sources shortcut, killall Finder, killall cfprefsd, deleting the FXRecentFolders key, a full logout, and a reboot. The com.apple.finder.plist permissions were fine and there was no sandbox container for Finder.

The actual cause: the global recent-items limit was set to None. This single setting silently disables recent-folder tracking system-wide - not just the Apple menu list, but Finder's Go > Recent Folders and the Recent Folders section in every Save dialog.

Fix: System Settings → Control Center → scroll to the "Menu Bar Only" section → set "Recent documents, applications, and servers" from None to 10 (or any number). It starts working immediately.

Note that this setting has moved between macOS versions - it used to live under General, and on newer builds it's under Control Center / Menu Bar. That's likely why it gets missed. If you can't find it, search "Recent" in the System Settings search field

Good computing italik ! Appreciate your post here.