How to delete recent documents in Unity

Yesterday a friend called me at home with the following question: How could I eliminate the Recent Documents en Unity? Since I am not a user of Ubuntu and I started looking and what I found was the following.

We open a terminal and put:
rm ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite
zeitgeist-daemon --replace

These are the things I don't understand. How is it possible that something as basic as that is not included by default? Maybe another option would be to disable Zeitgeist, but we would be doing the same as with KDE when deactivating Nepomuk+Akonadi and all the elements of the semantic desktop.

Now it remains for someone to create a launcher to optimize this process ..


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      jonathan said

    I agree that something so basic should exist by default, in gnome2 it is, in LXDE it is too. This is one of the many reasons not to use Unity.

         elav <° Linux said

      Welcome Jonathan:
      In Xfce it is also. It is something very basic as I said. What are you wearing then?

      regards

           Courage said

        Normal gnome?

             Thirteen said

          And Courage using Windows ... "goodness the virgin" hehe.

          Greetings.

             Edward2 said

          Courage brutally slam your face against the wall for using Winbug, the Taliban have ordered.

               Courage said

            That computer is giving me the ass to install Arch and while it is what there is, let's see if the sandy one thinks it is incompatible or whatever with the photo I sent him

               KZKG ^ Gaara <"Linux said

            +1 LOL !!!

         maikimo2 said

      if it exists by default. If in the tab 'Dash Home' you write 'privacy', a window appears from which you can delete all the "history" of Unity, and even deactivate the option "Remember Activity"

           Jeans said

        Thanks, every time I adapt more to Ubuntu and I miss Windows less

             generates said

          Thank you, it was very simple, it has served me a lot 🙂

           Ezekiel said

        Thanks a lot!! I spent a long time looking for it and in the end it was very simple.

           kaian said

        Thanks the truth I'm new to linux and did not know how to disable that option thanks.

         to success said

      Like no You just have to go to SYSTEM CONFIGURATION, once there you have to select PRIVACY and there you have to delete the history and that's it.

      What I don't know is that if windows uses the ASCII code table to work with the special characters, which table does Ubuntu use?

      Courage said

    These are the things I don't understand. How is it possible that something as basic as that is not included by default?

    As usual

      jose said

    That's one of the things that caught my attention since I tried it before the summer. And since then there is still no simple option. In Gnome 3 Shell it is the same. In the end, I chose not to generate "recent".

    It would be enough to delete ~ / .local / share / recently-used.xbel
    so that it does not appear again we can do the trick of creating a folder named the same which would prevent the creation of a new file

    There is also a manager for Zeitgeist, which is the new engine for these indexing tasks: Activity Log Manager or Zeitgeist Global Privacy

    Another option is creating a script:

    #! / Bin / bash
    rm $ HOME / .local / share / zeitgeist / activity.sqlite
    zeitgeist-daemon --replace

    In the menu «file - save as» we name it for example «delete_history» and we save it in the personal folder.

    Now we give it permissions, by right clicking on the file and in "properties - permissions" we activate the box "Allow executing the file as a program"

      jose said

    Activity Log Manager in my case works when it feels like it…. although it seems that if they continue to develop it it may be a good option. On the part of the Gnome team, I think there is a gnome-activity-journal. The first is more designed to take care of privacy and the second, to manage your activity in front of the PC.

      jose said

    Zeitgeist seems very good, because it records everything… .. But when it comes to managing it and forcing you to do things…. there is no definitive and comfortable path. A matter of (too long) time.

      perseus said

    Thanks for the contribution, I think that more than one of us asked ourselves this question.

    Doubt, the first instruction deletes the file: "Activity.sqlite", is this file created automatically as a kind of log? Exactly what the command does: "Zeitgeist-daemon –replace" or what is it for?

      jose said

    zeitgeist-daemon –replace restarts the zeitgeist daemon, starting all over again

      jose said

    To say that they are not 100% effective methods…. Sometimes they worked for me and sometimes they didn't. In the end I opted for the first option, until Activity Log Manager or a similar program is more mature.

      Gabriel said

    another function that mark was forgotten ...

      jose said

    Not just Mark. In Gnome Shell there is no…. Let's not forget that we are in a transition period and things are missing.

    To give another example. In Gnome Shell (not if with Unity as well) the copy / move evolution indicator is missing, for when you copy or move files from one place to another. There is a window that indicates this, but if you have several open it is easy to lose sight of it or think that the copy has already finished. There should be a notification type indicator on the panel. But there isn't. I guess installing something…. but I haven't figured out what yet.

      Thirteen said

    The problem is with zeitgeist that comes with Gnome 3 and is still somewhat "green", but you can build a script to clear its history and not have to do it manually from the terminal.

    But there is a better option which is called Activity Log Manager. It is an application that allows you to control the Zeitgeist so that you can erase its history for periods and create a black list of folders that you do not want to be part of the Zeitgeist database.

    Greetings.

         Thirteen said

      Oops, I think José had already mentioned that. That happens to me for not reading all the comments before. It would be nice if these two comments of mine were deleted to avoid redundancies of something that had already been said.

      sebastian said

    In mint 12 the same problem… nothing is perfect!

      victims said

    I think that deleting the history is very easy, even though I am not very new to say, I have never gotten into this much, I just install, browse and try to do some things that help me.

    to delete the history of ubuntu 12.04 just do the following:
    System configuration / Privacy / .. On the right choose everything and click to delete history and voila ..

    With this you erase everything and you can even point out some things that you like so that it can store or simply erase only when you log out.

    regards
    JOSEPH
    VICTIMS

      Constantine said

    Excellent information VICMAS, I remembered that I had seen something, now I know how! thanks

      Constantine said

    You can also choose "Delete history" of Last hour, Yesterday, Last week or Advanced (any period).

      Mauricio said

    Thank you VICMAS! excellent solution.

      ro3inson said

    Vicmas, you put us all to bed, I am changing my way of seeing things in Unity (that is, of bitching about everything), THANK YOU ...

      Zazoilus said

    Thank you.

    In Linux Mint there are, as far as I know, 2 files where the history of recently opened documents, items or files is kept. Just delete or delete them to clear the history.

    1) From OpenOffice.org: /home/username/.openoffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Histories.xcu (the openoffice.org folder is hidden - it has a dot in front of it-) .

    2) From the rest of the programs or applications (gedit, eog -Eye of GNOME-, evince -Document Viewer-, Totem,…): /home/username/.recently-used.xbel (the file in question is hidden).

      os said

    It is simpler, it comes with a history manager, go to the unity search engine and execute the «privacy» component and there you will be able to customize all the history and privacy of it. better explained here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucSJt-e5PFU

      elmer said

    Well if I see it was very easy… .thanks it has helped me a lot I thought it could not, what is not having the right knowledge makes you see yourself in trouble… .thanks and greetings.

      black said

    How do you undo that command so that recent documents reappear?

      black fog said

    How do you undo that command so that the recent documents appear again?