Clear Recent Items from the Dock

Simple Solution:

1. Open Preview

2. File > Open Recent > Clear Memu

3. Quit Preview

4. Drag Preview icon from Dock (goes poof)

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

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

I had a similar issue with iBank, selecting Clear Menu from File>Recent Items>Clear Menu clears the list from the file menu. Then, after a minute or two, the dock catches up... possibly after the application has been quit.

This also happened to me and I was going crazy because the items might of been deleted or from a DVD that is no longer mounted. So this is how I solved it.

To summarize, you need to delete or rename some files in your local "Library" directory, ie ~/Library/Preferences directory.

For the iWork apps and Preview. Rename these following files with a "~" in the beginning or delete it or to be safe, copy to another location:

"com.apple.iWork.Keynote.LSSharedFileList.plist" to "~com.apple.iWork.Keynote.LSSharedFileList.plist"

do the same for these files

com.apple.iWork.Numbers.LSSharedFileList.plist

com.apple.iWork.Pages.LSSharedFileList.plist

com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist

One way to do it through the GUI is open finder, go to the "Go" menu and press the "option" button.

Choose the Library menu item and open the "Preferences" directory.

Look for the files mentioned above either rename, delete, or move.

Close the application and see if the recent items still appear when you right mouse click the icon in the Dock.

If that doesn't work, then logout and log back in.

Hope this helps or solves your issue.

macridah wrote: For the iWork apps and Preview. Rename these following files with a "~" in the beginning or delete it or to be safe, copy to another location:

"com.apple.iWork.Keynote.LSSharedFileList.plist" to "~com.apple.iWork.Keynote.LSSharedFileList.plist"

This worked for me. Had to delete, then quit the App, then remove the icon from the dock, then relaunch the App.

Thanks.

macridah wrote:

This also happened to me and I was going crazy because the items might of been deleted or from a DVD that is no longer mounted. So this is how I solved it.

To summarize, you need to delete or rename some files in your local "Library" directory, ie ~/Library/Preferences directory.

For the iWork apps and Preview. Rename these following files with a "~" in the beginning or delete it or to be safe, copy to another location:

"com.apple.iWork.Keynote.LSSharedFileList.plist" to "~com.apple.iWork.Keynote.LSSharedFileList.plist"

do the same for these files

com.apple.iWork.Numbers.LSSharedFileList.plist

com.apple.iWork.Pages.LSSharedFileList.plist

com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist

One way to do it through the GUI is open finder, go to the "Go" menu and press the "option" button.

Choose the Library menu item and open the "Preferences" directory.

Look for the files mentioned above either rename, delete, or move.

Close the application and see if the recent items still appear when you right mouse click the icon in the Dock.

If that doesn't work, then logout and log back in.

Hope this helps or solves your issue.

I just used this to delete the recenttly opened items on Quicktime that appeared on the dock even though the 'Recently Opened' folder frm the Menu was empty. It worked like a charm.

Now I still need to quit the Application after deleting the 'Recently Opened' on the Menu bar in order to make the dock recently opened disappear as well, but it works!

venkatachalam wrote: This is not necessary. Simply clear the Recents in the respective application. Then logout and login. Recent items in the Dock won't be there. This works for all OS X applications.

Nope.

Bbedit does not obey this. BBedit is the worst offender for me.

What I really want is to DISABLE recent items from apps in the dock but PRESERVE RECENT ITEMS inside the App itself.

Is there a Terminal command to disable the Recent items for apps menus in the Dock (but not inside the Apps themselves)?

This solved my problem with iWork apps, thanks!

This is not necessary. Simply clear the Recents in the respective application. Then logout and login. Recent items in the Dock won't be there. This works for all OS X applications.

In my experience, as MadEyeMark said in his answer, if you quit app and remove icon from the dock, as you did, it is not necessary to also delete or rename that file.

@William Donelson - nm my response - I was responding to your first post, where you did not clarify that you were doing this for BBedit, so I assumed you were still referring to Preview app.