by When you click and hold on an application’s dock icon, its dock menu pops up. It typically includes a list of the application’s recently opened documents (assuming it supports opening documents). I find these lists to be the most convenient way to quickly locate and open such files—preferring it to the Open Recent command in applications’ File menus. Except for one thing: the dock menu lists periodically get messed up. Most especially the lists often don’t update as you open new documents, leaving you with an out-of-date list. In contrast, file lists accessed via the Open Recent command are always correct.
I have been particularly bothered by this dock menu glitch with two of my most frequently used apps: OS X’s TextEdit and Preview. On the surface, the symptom seems quite odd. As I assumed that the two list locations drew from the same data, I figured they should always be in sync. The mystery is why this wasn’t so. I decided to investigate. Focusing on TextEdit as the example applications, here’s what I found.
Locating the Recent Items “database”
Navigate to your home directory’s Library folder. A simple way to do this is to hold down the Option key when selecting the Finder’s Go menu. A Library item will appear. Select it.
Once inside the folder, locate and open the Preferences folder. From here, use the Find (Command-F) command to search for all items that contain the word “textedit.”
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