How To Find And Clear Recent Activity On Mac

How to Clear Recent in Finder on Mac

To make things easy, Mac logs and displays recent activity in different ways. This comes in handy when you have forgotten where exactly you saved a file. However, when you share your Mac with others, this can lead to private information exposure as the person who has access can see what you searched for. Therefore, to keep your data intact and avoid snooping people from gathering information, it’s best to clear recent activity. Hence, in this article, we will discuss how to do that.

What is the Recent folder on Mac?

The recent folder, the one appears in the Finder window’s sidebar, is where you can see a list of all the searched items. This folder is also known as Smart Folder, and it only consists of the shortcuts to the files based on the smart search parameter.

Since these are just the references, you cannot delete the Recent folder. However, if you want, you can delete recent activity from the Finder sidebar. To open it, press Shift + F + Command.

How To Disable Recents In Finder?

To turn off Recents in Finder, follow the steps below:

1. Open Finder
2. Click the Finder menu > Preferences.
3. Hit Sidebar tab > uncheck the box next to Recents
4. Exit Preferences window.

Now, you will not see the Recents tab in the Finder.

How To Delete Recent Items On Mac

Recent items can be accessed from the Apple menu, and it saves the information related to recently accessed applications, files, and servers. Erasing recent items isn’t difficult at all. To clear it, follow the steps below:

1. Click the Apple menu > Recent Items.
2. Scroll to the bottom and click Clear Menu

This will help get rid of all the items from the menu. However, this doesn’t mean the list is cleared forever. Each time you use an application, server, or perform any activity, it will be displayed here. So, to avoid disclosing information that you don’t want to share, you’ll need to clear this data often.

How to Disable Recent via Terminal

However, if you want to go a step further to show or hide recent items, you can use Terminal. So, if you are ready to do that, follow the steps below and disable recent items using the Terminal command.

1. Head to Applications > Utilities > Terminal
2. Type or copy-paste : defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE killall Finder

This command will show all hidden files

3. To hide everything in terminal type: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE killall Finder

An alternate way to delete recent file history is to use Shift + CMD keys. This will show or hide files instantly. Using either of the methods explained, you could delete or clear things that run in the background or consume memory unnecessarily.

Now, let’s learn how to delete browser data, cookies, search history from a popular Mac browser.

How To Clear Activity From Safari?

Each browser you use on Mac stores searches and activity history separately. This means you will have to open each browser and clean it manually. However, if you are looking for an easy way to delete cached files, search history uses the Internet Privacy module offered by Disk Clean Pro.

To use it, install Disk Clean Pro > Internet Privacy > run the scan > and clean all the detected traces.

Manually clear Safari history

1. Open Safari > click the History tab.
   

Note History stores all information related to data, cookies, and cache.

2. Choose Remove All Website Data > select the time range. However, if you want to delete it completely, click All History.
3. Clean History and there it is, all traces are erased.

Erasing History from Chrome

1. Open Chrome > History meu > Show Full History > Clear browsing data.

2. Select Browsing History > Clear Data.

That’s it.

Firefox

1. Open Firefox > History menu > Clear Recent History

This will clean all pages from history. However, if you want to remove individual pages, select Show All History and choose the ones you wish to delete.

Additional Information

To remove recent files from files likes Text Edit and Pages, click the File menu > Open recent > Clear Menu.

This way, you can find and clear recent files in Finder on Mac. However, if you are looking for an easy way, try using Disk Clean Pro. This Mac optimization and the cleanup tool will help clear the recent folder’s history and help recover storage space. It is a one-click optimization tool that offers in-depth cleaning and optimization for your Mac. Once you use it, you will feel the difference.

Whichever method you use, it doesn’t matter our aim to help resolve your problem. But if you let us know which method you picked and why it will be great. We love hearing from you; please leave us a comment in the section below.