how do i delete history in Preview?

It's simple. You were halfway there.

1. When Preview is open, click File > Open Recent > Clear Menu. You'll notice this clears the menu in the app.

2. To finish, and ensure the Dock icon history is cleared, simply quit Preview (Cmd-Q, or File > Quit)

Now reopen Preview. You'll notice now when you right-click that nothing appears in the history. I have used this successfully many times.

This is not a bug, as other posters have mentioned. Lion changed the way the user interacts with recently used files.

this works.

thanks! <3

this works.

thanks! <3

CLHendricks wrote:

It's simple. You were halfway there.

1. When Preview is open, click File > Open Recent > Clear Menu. You'll notice this clears the menu in the app.

2. To finish, and ensure the Dock icon history is cleared, simply quit Preview (Cmd-Q, or File > Quit)

Now reopen Preview. You'll notice now when you right-click that nothing appears in the history. I have used this successfully many times.

This is not a bug, as other posters have mentioned. Lion changed the way the user interacts with recently used files.

This does not work for me at all.

I followed the steps exactly (I had actually done this previously myself) multiple times with the same result.

And altough my Preview recent files on the tab bar show empty, when I right clcik on the dock Preview's recents are still full ---and always remain so.

I'm running the latest Lion on an iMac with no third party sotware.

1. Close applications

2. System preferences> notice the number of recent items> drop down the box next to applications to NONE.

3. I did the same with documents and servers.

4. uncheck restore windows box.

I know the topic is about Preview, however, in Spotlight, we have found that images we have not saved and only looked at, are showing up via Spotlight. These are images we like but not everyone would like. What we did to eliminate the images from showing up to "anybody" happening to use our MBP was to: Go to Spotlight Preferences. Under the Search Results tab, there are several items checkmarked or not. We unchecked Images, Movies, Webpages, Messages & Chats. These unchecked selections have worked well for us so far as content indexed from these areas do not appear to any casual user of our MBP when doing a Spotlight search and that has made us ... happy.

Again, I know the subject was about Preview but this thread was the closest I have found so far concerning our problem with items showing up in Spotlight that we definately did not want to.

In 10.7.5

File,

Open Recent,

Clear Menu

does clear the histrory, after quitting the application.

Right, Mountain Lion makes it difficult to get rid of previously viewed images.

"Clear menu" clears the menu but not the thumbnails, and when you print, unless you are careful, everything gets printed.

What I do is to always close Preview with Shift-Command-W (close image). When you close the last image, Preview closes. And then, when you start Preview again, your previously viewed images are not there anymore.

Thank you guys for help. The problem was solved open the terminal and delete few things from here:

Alexandrus-MacBook-Pro:Preferences Mac$

I personally delete one item at a time...if I don't want to have a particular picture in preview, I go to file>Open recent>close selected image. This works every time for my images.

If you really want to remove the history in the app but also in the dock (including the recent thumbnails that appear in App Exposé), this will do the trick. Basically, clear the history but also remove the app from the dock and add it again:

http://www.computer-boffins.ca/2012/08/clearing-recent-items-from-dock/

This is the right way to do it. Thank you.

Like everyone else, I keep personal data on my Mac.

BUT I do it in a controlled way.

I create an encrypted DMG (Disk Image) with DiskUtility in my Documents folder,

But do not put the password in my key chain. This stops it from being auto mounted.

It's so easy to do....

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-DMG-File-on-a-Mac

Tips 1) If you are short on disk space take Steps 1 & 2 seriosuly.

Else just decide on 10 Gig is more than enough for now and furture, and goto step 3

2) Keep the password somewhere safe incase you forget it, mine's in a biscuit tin in the kitchen.

All this stuff I have read about clearing History becomes irrelevant.

Preview can not display what is not there (mounted).

The bonus being if my machine is ever stolen, the crooks do not get to see my Banking

details any more than they get to see what me and my partner got up to last weekend!

Best Wishes

Mike.

If you really want to remove the history in the app but also in the dock (including the recent thumbnails that appear in App Exposé), this will do the trick. Basically, clear the history but also remove the app from the dock and add it again:

http://www.computer-boffins.ca/2012/08/clearing-recent-items-from-dock/

This works perfectly! Seems to be a bug with Mountain Lion 10.8.5 that clearing the history in the Preview app (File -> Open recent -> Clear menu) does not clear the history in the dock (two finger click the Preview icon in the dock).

Unless I’m missing something, this is (at least now with Yosemite) pretty straightforward. WITH ANY IMAGE OPEN IN PREVIEW, SIMPLY QUIT PREVIEW WITH COMMAND-Q. Now open any image again, and you’ll see that Preview has cleared its history. If you go now to File > Open Recent, you’ll see confirmation that the only image in history is the current one. NOTE: IF YOU QUIT PREVIEW USING THE PREVIEW ICON, IT WILL NOT CLEAR PREVIEW’S HISTORY. The already-mentioned method of File > Open Recent > Clear Menu has the equivalent result but is of course less direct. I’m using Yosemite v10.10.5.