Ubuntu Guide For Windows Users: Clear And Disable Recent Documents
Ok, you made the switch over to Ubuntu from Windows, everything thing is going good, and now you want to do some familiar things like hide your tracks and disable the recent documents folder.
Clearing them out is easy, just click on Places on the top panel menu, and select Recent Documents \ Clear Recent Documents and click on the Clear button when prompted.
The list of recently access documents will be deleted (not the documents themselves). But now you want to disable the view completely.
NOTE: The following steps was tested on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and may not work properly on previous versions.
To disable, open up a Terminal window by clicking on Application \ Accessories \ Terminal from the top panel menu and enter the following set of commands:
rm ~/.recently-used.xbel
followed by…
touch ~/.recently-used.xbel
…one more (after entering the following command, you will be prompted to enter your password)
sudo chattr +i ~/.recently-used.xbel
Next, clear the Recent Documents list as described above.
Now when you check Places \ Recent Documents again, it should now be greyed out and disabled.
No more displaying "those" recently viewed documents (..aahem).
To explain what occurred to disable Recent Documents using the above set of commands:
- We first removed the file recently-used.xbel (located in the root of your Home directory by using the rm command (this file is used to store the list of documents)
- Next we re-created the file using the touch command.
- Then we changed the attribute of the file to make it inaccessible using the command chattr +i.
If you decide someday that you want to enable displaying of Recent Documents, just run the following command:
sudo chattr -i ~/.recently-used.xbel
The view will remain greyed out and disabled until you access a document, which will cause it to start displaying viewed documents.
Oh yea, one more thing, when you do enable Recent Documents, all documents that you accessed when it was disabled, will be visible. So make sure you clear them out again….otherwise everyone will be able to see what you were trying to hide in the first place ; -O
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Comments on Ubuntu Guide For Windows Users: Clear And Disable Recent Documents
Beats me why could nt we do it with the third command only…
"…when you do enable Recent Documents, all documents that you accessed when it was disabled, will be visible."
—
So you're saying that after applying this tweak, Ubuntu STILL tracks used documents? And all someone needs to do is re-enable it, and a list of all recently opened docs will STILL be there? Is that right? If that is correct, it's worse than doing nothing! It is setting up Ubuntu to track you without leaving any evidence.
This is nuts. There should be an option to disable this anti-privacy "feature" – period. Security (as in privacy) seems to have a very low priority at Ubuntu. This is the type of thing that is immediately obvious to Windows users, and it needs to be fixed.
This is an invaluable article. Every time I put Ubuntu onto a new machine, I come back to this site by googling "disable recent ubuntu windows."
Thank you for putting forth the time and effort to make this available to the public.
@dreasis
Your welcome : -)
Bob, the chattr command makes the file immutable, so it can't be added to. It is not simply hiding things, it is not ADDING things to the file, so privacy works.
So why not just lock the screen when you walk away? That file is in your home directory, and shouldn't be readable to others, and the feature in the menu works for the current user, so…
Thank you very much for this tip. It's work!
But chattr is only for ext2/3/4 file systems, not for RaiserFS or any other.
The easier way, is just to create a directory named ".recently-used.xbel".
mkdir ~/.recently-used.xbel
Regards,
MV
Thanx Alot Simple Fix
Thanks a lot. Nice and simple, and I learnt a little bit in the process!
Really thanks a lot Author. Your writing is clear and simple, hence with quite full details of explanation/tutorial
Really like the explanation part, it's really educating!!
Cheers!!
This is pointless, if all the files you've oppened re-appear when you re-enable it, then it means ubutnu is tracking what files you've opened somewhere else.
All you are doing is putting a bandaid over the problem so no-one can see that you're being tracked. This basically does nothing useful.
What needs to be done is to add a hack or a way to stop ubuntu from saving them _anywhere_
or there is another way – delete the file and create the same one but like directory, not file. works flawlessly