MacOS – View recently closed files (e.g., in Preview) on OS X

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Mac OS X has built-in features for viewing recently opened applications, or recently opened files in applications. I open lots of files in Preview and keep some of them open for a long time, usually the ones I am most likely to open again. So I would prefer to be able to quickly view all of my recently closed (typically unmodified) files. Is this possible either system wide, or specifically in Preview?

Note: There is related program, AppsBar, which allows one to view recently closed applications, but based on the description does not seem to apply to specific files. If it makes a difference, I am running Mavericks.

Best Answer

It is unfortunatly impossible.

At the file system level, there are only 3 dates associated with any file or directory:

access time
creation time
modification time

The access time is modified upon opening a file. The modification time is modified upon writing the file.

None of these 3 dates is modified upon closing a file. Hence the file system doesn't provide a timestamp of the event you are interested in closing time.

For example, the access time will show you when Preview opened your file, but if you close it 2 days later, no date is changed.

This is a structural limitation at the file system level.

At the Finder level the limitation is exactly the same.

This might be changed if Apple decided to improve the ergonomy of the Finder so as to be able to open what the human behind the keyboard is working on. And this won't be a programming nightmare. A basic cache of files opened and closed (modified or not), maintened through a count of references to opened files (when ref_count == 0, file is closed) + survey the deep Spotlight harvesting (to avoid to wait it a few hours to free files) would make it.

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