Background
Whenever you save files in your Mac, OS X will save this folder in a “Recent Places” category which will be available the next time you save another file. This feature enables quick access to the folders you commonly use which saves a lot of time.
But sometimes you need to have a granular control over this. For example, you may have to clear recent places or limit the number of folders that are stored under this category. In this post, I am going to show you exactly the same thing.
How to clean and manage "Recent Places" in Mac OS X
Let's start with how we can limit the number of folders that are stored in the "Recent places" category. For me by default, it stores 3 folders. It may vary as per your OS version.
To increase the limit execute following command in your terminal -
defaults write -g NSNavRecentPlacesLimit -int NUMBER
Here NUMBER is the number of entries you want. Making it Zero will disable the recent places list.
To remove this limit you can execute the following command -
defaults delete -g NSNavRecentPlacesLimit
And finally, if you want to clear recent places list then you can execute the following command -
defaults delete -g NSNavRecentPlaces
