MacOS – Clear recents list in Screen Sharing on OS X El Capitan

macos

Please help me clear the list of 6 recent connections offered by the Screen Sharing app. View the list via a right-click on this app when docked. This is on OS X 10.11.2 (El Capitan). I've tried shift-click, control-click, option-click etc. on the items but never get a pop-up menu.

This 2008 discussion over at Apple Support Communities points me to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist, a file which does not exist for me. I do see files com.apple.ScreenSharingLSSSharedFileList.plist and com.apple.ScreenSharingSharedDefault.plist but both are tiny and the recents list doesn't appear in either one.

Confusingly, I can see and clear the recents list in the open app by picking menu Connection, item Open Recent, item Clear Menu. That wipes the list shown there. The right-click context menu shown in the docked app remains populated. Baffling!

Best Answer

Finally stumbled across the answer to clear the docked recents list, ridiculously easy of course:

  1. In the Screen Sharing app, pick menu Connection, Open Recent, Clear menu (as described in the question)
  2. Quit the application
  3. Undock its icon (right click on it within the dock, pick Options, pick item Keep in Dock).
  4. Reopen the app (Finder, menu Go, item Connect to Server, type "vnc://host:5901" in the Server Address field, click Connect).
  5. After it opens, redock the icon (same as #3 above).

After this, the recents shown in the right-click context menu should be gone.

p.s. thanks @grgarside for the clean-up edits