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rduja

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 22, 2011
1
0
Since Lion, applications such as Quicktime and Preview have been caching recent items if I right-click them in the dock. Even if I clear my recent items these entries don't go away, does anyone know how do clear the "dock history"?
 

me_94501

macrumors 65816
Jan 6, 2003
1,009
0
Since Lion, applications such as Quicktime and Preview have been caching recent items if I right-click them in the dock. Even if I clear my recent items these entries don't go away, does anyone know how do clear the "dock history"?

I've noticed this too. Anyone have any ideas?

EDIT: OK, I kind of figured it out. I basically had to nuke my Dock prefs .plist, as well as the .plists for every item in my Dock that's remembering recent items. Sigh.
 
Last edited:

Jaypiddy

macrumors newbie
Sep 21, 2006
4
0
Some tips here.

Since Lion, applications such as Quicktime and Preview have been caching recent items if I right-click them in the dock. Even if I clear my recent items these entries don't go away, does anyone know how do clear the "dock history"?

So far all I have found is to open the application that you want to clear the said dock items go under the "Open Recent" under the "File" menu and reboot the application. That will clear the "recent items" in the dock.

There is also a way to disable the feature in Terminal for each application. The details are here on this post.
 

natd1993

macrumors regular
Jul 6, 2011
140
51
Great Britain
Since Lion, applications such as Quicktime and Preview have been caching recent items if I right-click them in the dock. Even if I clear my recent items these entries don't go away, does anyone know how do clear the "dock history"?

Clicking on the following option, and then closing the application and waiting for ten seconds seems to work for me.

screenshot20110721at120.jpg
 

Jaypiddy

macrumors newbie
Sep 21, 2006
4
0
Disable recent items in Terminal

Since Lion, applications such as Quicktime and Preview have been caching recent items if I right-click them in the dock. Even if I clear my recent items these entries don't go away, does anyone know how do clear the "dock history"?

I found the the way that you can disable this from apps here I did the same for Quicktime and a few other apps. It works great. Do all the apps you want then re-boot.

"Lion lists recent items with each application in the Dock (accessible via right-click) and in the Application View of Mission Control. To remove those and disable future additions, run the following commands in the Terminal. Note that to figure out the application's bundle identifier, you can open Activity Monitor, click the application in the list of processes and then click the “Sample Process” button. Then makes sure the “Display:” popup is set to “Sample Text”."

Sampling process 66975 for 3 seconds with 1 millisecond of run time between samples
Sampling completed, processing symbols...
Analysis of sampling VLC (pid 66975) every 1 millisecond
Process: VLC [66975]
Path: /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC
Load Address: 0x100000000
Identifier: org.videolan.vlc
Version: 1.1.11 (1.1.11)
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [175]

[...]​

"VLC's application bundle identifier is thus org.videolan.vlc.

Now, to disable recent item listing for VLC, you would issue the following commands in Terminal:"

defaults write org.videolan.vlc NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0
defaults delete org.videolan.vlc.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments
defaults write org.videolan.vlc.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments -dict-add MaxAmount 0​

_____________________
Jaypiddy
 

aquariusrick

macrumors newbie
Sep 7, 2009
7
0
Since Lion, applications such as Quicktime and Preview have been caching recent items if I right-click them in the dock. Even if I clear my recent items these entries don't go away, does anyone know how do clear the "dock history"?

I found that for Preview, if you clear the recent history from the file menu and quit the application, THEN remove the application from the dock and add it back, it will get rid of the recent items that show up in the dock. No need to log out and log back in for me.
 

thazsar

macrumors newbie
Dec 30, 2011
4
0
Here's the steps I used to clear this info out:

-Open the App you're targeting

-Choose 'File' (next to the App Name)

-Choose 'Open Recent'

-Choose 'Clear Menu'

-CLOSE/Quit the App

-Reopen the App

-Right Click on it in the Dock

Your 'Recents/History' should now be gone!!!

No Terminal, Commands, Rebooting, etc., etc....Just simple steps for stupid people like me!!!
 

Balooba

macrumors member
May 27, 2003
99
53
Here's the steps I used to clear this info out:

-Open the App you're targeting

-Choose 'File' (next to the App Name)

-Choose 'Open Recent'

-Choose 'Clear Menu'

-CLOSE/Quit the App

-Reopen the App

-Right Click on it in the Dock

Your 'Recents/History' should now be gone!!!

No Terminal, Commands, Rebooting, etc., etc....Just simple steps for stupid people like me!!!


This at least doesn't work for QuickTime Player.
 

andersonng

macrumors newbie
Sep 21, 2013
1
1
Best Solution!

There is an easy fix to this...(For Mountain Lion Users)
1. Go to System Preferences
2. General
3. On Recent Items, Select None
4. Voila! No More Recent Items! :D
 
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Druid54

macrumors newbie
Sep 29, 2017
2
2
Since Lion, applications such as Quicktime and Preview have been caching recent items if I right-click them in the dock. Even if I clear my recent items these entries don't go away, does anyone know how do clear the "dock history"?
This worked for me (in Catalina):
1. Open the dock application with the recent items you want to clear; such as Storyist or Numbers. You do not need to open a file.
2. Go to: File-Recent Items-Clear Menu
3. Quit the application
4. Check the dock application icon to ensure recent items have cleared.
 
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