get rid of Preview "recents"?

[DanL]

In the dock I can hold down on the Preview icon when Preview isn't open, and select "Show Recents". When I do this, I get a selection of images on the bottom of the screen that are allegedly things that I've looked at recently with Preview. They aren't. They are a week or more old. How do I clear this list of Recents in Preview? They seem to be a pretty random collection of things I've looked at in Preview over the last month.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Preview ~> File ~> Open Recent ~> Clear Menu

 

[DanL]

Nope. That doesn't do it. What that clears is the menu that pops up when you do Preview ~> File ~> Open Recent. When that menu is cleared, the menu I'm talking about still remains. full of older stuff.

 

[DanL]

Looking around, this seems to be a major bug. I haven't seen a simple solution. If you hold-click on the Preview icon in the dock, you can select "Show Recents". You'll be shown icons on the bottom of the screen representing all the "recent" things you've looked at in Preview. Except many are not that recent. Those Recents are also listed in text above the "Show Recents" selector.

I want those to GO AWAY. Amazing that you can't seem to do it. These are NOT the "Recents" you can ask to open in "Open Recents" in Preview. Something else entirely.

Allegedly those Recents are contained in a com.apple.Preview plist, but I can't seem to find that particular plist. Maybe rebooting will do it, but who wants to have to reboot!

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Nope. That doesn't do it. What that clears is the menu that pops up when you do Preview ~> File ~> Open Recent. When that menu is cleared, the menu I'm talking about still remains. full of older stuff.

That's odd, I didn't even know of this feature so I put Preview in my Dock, quit it then right clicked it's icon ~> Show Recents & lo & behold I was presented with a plethora of icons along the bottom of my screen … there seemed to be no end to them & as you correctly wrote, most were definitely NOT recent.

Then I launched Preview & went into File ~> Open Recents & there was only 1 recent there but I clicked Clear Menu then quit Preview. Then I right-clicked the Dock icon ~> Show Recents & nothing showed up.

Really weird.

 

[DanL]

Yep, goodness knows how those icons are told to end up there, and how you make them go away. Basically they constitute at least a partial record, for anyone to see, of files that Preview on that machine has been used to look at. There must be some way of using Preview in which you tell it to "remember" a particular file, so you can quickly call it up. Evidently, it's easy enough to do that that it's easy to do accidentally. Most confusing is that there are TWO lists of "Recents". The one from which you can "Open Recent" (a list that is easily cleared), and this second more mysterious one.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

What OS version are you on? I am still on Lion, the final OS for my iMac.

 

[DanL]

Wait, but you're saying you managed to clear those icons by hitting Clear Menu? Doesn't work for me. I do that and my menu is clear but those icons are still all there.

 

[DanL]

I'm using an iMac late 2011, with El Cap 10.11.5.

 

[DanL]

Same thing on my MBP, 10.11.5. "Open Recent" menu is clear, but I have a file icon that is displayed when I "Show All Windows" or "Show Recents". Bizarre.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Yes it totally worked for me using Lion 10.7.6.

Can try repairing permissions then rebooting?

 

[DanL]

Well, of course El Capitan no longer lets one "Repair Permissions" on a disk. That being said, I rebooted, and the strange list of dock-accessible icons disappeared. OK, so that list is cleared by rebooting. That kinda sucks if it's the only way to clear the list.

Having done that, I opened a few documents in Preview. They all properly ended up in the "Open Recent" list, but didn't appear in the "Show Recents"/"Show All Windows" list in the dock. So it isn't completely clear how documents end up in that latter list.