Clear recent items in Lion

Sorry, but any way to explain for someone not familiar with Shell.

I've tried and created the fhistory.txt, and is sitting in my desktop, and also changed to fhistory.sh

But I don't know what to do with it.

Thanks in advance!

I haven't looked at this thread for a good while so I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but after I struggled with bash / terminal solutions I ended up finding that the app "Mac Cleanse" in the App Store solves this problem beautifully.

It's a small program that is aimed at saving you some hard disk space and improving your privacy by deleting unnecessary files, clearing caches, etc. There are probably many alternatives but this is the one I've stuck with, even though the software is like $7 and got some 3 star ratings as a result.

Simple Solution:

1. Open Quicktime

2. File > Open Recent > Clear Memu

3. Quit Quicktime

4. Drag Quicktime icon from Dock (goes poof)

5. Open Quicktime and see no more dock history of recent items

Works for Preview as well. Might work for other apps.

can you please post how to reverse those terminal commands?

thanks

WOW what a feature, its a great concept with a major Achilles heel... I just got past a fifteen minute cycle of doom with Pages. First a document crashed Pages, then guess what, everytime I start Pages it crashes over and over. You think Lion would cop that there was something amiss.

All in all, a great bit of lateral thinking on behalf of Apple, poorly executed.

Why cant we just hold down the command and alt keys when opening a program to temporarily disable this farse, sorry feature? Having to remember to hold down alt Q or commnd alt Q when quiting is stretching it. I want to close a program there and then, not make a decision now about how I might be using it when next opened in a couple of days time.

Great concept as I said, but once more Apple don't seem to trust us with any form of control. Using scripts and terminal is ok if you are a Linux geek with time on your hands. I'm neither. I bought my mac because 99% of the time it just works, but for that 1% of the time, boy oh boy...

Yes, I agree with you completely, Hibernian56.

I have some (semi-) good new tho! I have been testing Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) and it seems they fixed the problem. Perhaps because of this thread!

I say it's only "semi-" good news though, because there are other ways in which Apple has removed more control/privacy. For instance they've more rigorously stripped users and programs' ability to change your MAC addresses (which they were already trying to do in Lion) and made it easy for hotspots and other Internet services to see that number.

PS Let me tell you -- I am a total Linux geek and I love the Terminal, but in such a situation you get even more frustrated because there is more stuff to go wrong and you are more aware of the limitations that Apple imposed that other Linux-based systems do not have.

Still, it beats Windows and it's nice to use OS X when you want to relax and enjoy a nice end-user environment.

I tried using Rich's directions and made the changes in terminal. Now every time I open quicktime my Mac crashes. Finder stops responding, quicktime freezes and I even lose my ability to type. Is there any way to undo or delete the changes I made in terminal? I went back in there and deleted the three commands but the problem remains.

Did you ever find a way to reverse the terminal commands?

Thanks for the great script. It wasn't working with apps such as QuickTime Player that have a space in the app name. To fix it, just change the part of the script where it says:

dir=`dirname $application`

to:

dir=`dirname "$application"`

and use either of these forms to invoke the command:

fhistory.sh QuickTime\ Player

fhistory.sh "QuickTime Player"

For those that are very unfamiliar to the command line and can't get the script working, also try this instead:

sh fhistory.sh QuickTime\ Player

sh fhistory.sh "QuickTime Player"

Saludos,

@ Rich, Could you pls post the reverse terminal commands to what you wrote earlier? Found another way to clear the history files, so I would like to have them back 😝

thanks in avance!

The way I did it was to go into Mac HD: Users: (then the name of the owner, usually your name): library: preferences, and find a file called

com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX.LSSharedFileList.plist

I pulled it out, and put it on desk top. Closed quicktime, and it was gone. I looked at another quicktime movie, and it started a new recents list, and replaced the file. So far, so good.

Never liked programing, which is why I liked Apple over PC.

Hey, found this topic when I was looking for a way to reliably clear the recents menu for most Mountain Lion apps.

I'm finding, at least in Mountain Lion, that the behavior of the "File < Open Recents" menu being in sync with the dock's recents menu, which is the same list as you get when you invoke that app's Mission Control, is completely inconsistent. I tried the above method for deleting that preference file. In my case, it was Preview I was trying to fix, so I found that same preference file for Preview, deleted it, and it had the effect of completley getting rid of the recents menu, but then when testing it by opening a new PDF document and closing it, it didn't appear in the recents menu at all.

Then I tried MadEyeMark's method--thanks! It seems this is the only solution that reliably works to get the open recents menu in the menubar back in sync with the Dock's. It seems that there is some kind of cache going on for apps in the Dock where it is keeping the same recents item list until you either clear the app from the dock or restart/log out. Kind of ridiculous that they can't get the list to update itself dynamically, and in fact I'm going to report this to apple.com/feedback to make sure Apple knows about it.

Hmm, intereting. While I was trying this, I was opened a PDF with Preview, cleared recents from the menu bar, and now it seems to update the dock's recents as well, dynamically even while Preview is open. So it seems just in certain apps the list get stuck occasionally, and you just have to clear them from the dock, and then it "unsticks" or whatever. Still, people annoyed by this should report it to Apple.

I like the general feature of having recents appear when you invoke Mission Control on a specific app, I just wish it was always consistent with the "Open Recents" application, because it tends to get really full down there, so I just wish it would reliably clear those when you invoke the "Clear Recents" command in the menubar.

Anyway, glad I got it fixed for Preview, at least temporarily.

Delete recent history using the method above.

Delete files from computer.

*Restart your computer*