Xfce Forum

Jaymo

Member

Registered: 2026-06-12

Posts: 1

Xed no longer displays recent docs in file menue

Read this is governed by privacy settings ... have not changed them & the results I find online don't relate to my system as it is?

Help appreciated

bggf

Member

Registered: 2026-04-13

Posts: 35

Re: Xed no longer displays recent docs in file menue

Hi Jaymo,

This is a xed specific question. I'm guessing you have already checked any xed specific configuration files or settings?

I don't have the software installed so can only give my general thoughts:

1) To my knowledge xfce per se does not have any privacy settings, the settings, like "recent files" are handled by GTK
See this recent forum entry https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?pid=79341#p79341 , where a user is asking for a method to forget recent files for Thunar and the answer was to change a GTK configuration file.
This is how you suppress or allow the "recent used" files to show and/or update in most/many xfce applications, the "recently-used.xbel" file (give a look, it is a text file)

2) I can't see any generic privacy settings in the settings-editor (settings menu) of xfce either.
When you open the settings editor check if your application is listed (left side), I have the applications "Thunar" and "parole" but I would be surprised if Xed was there..still, not knowing xed and it's xfce integration.. .
To be sure also search for "privacy" on the top to see if any other settings that could impact this. For me the result was negative, but who knows...

3) I would not expect it because entries on the internet said that "xed follows the dconfig rules".
dconf is another configuration place/database that gnome/cinnamon.. applications use and save their preferences in.
Most people (I do ) will have it also installed when they install an application that uses it to store their preferences in.
Link I read: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic. … 7&t=239684

Unlike (it seems) gnome or cinamon xfce does not have a native dconf interface for users (I know of) , so install the "dconfig-editor" and ,with the search, look for "privacy", "recent files" etc, perhaps specifically "desktop.privacy remember-recent-files"

Most likely some entries like that will exist, but set to "default". Set them to remember the files.

One thing that people on the forums seem to think sometimes is that "the operating system" turned off recent files and that all applications will be impacted.
In reality the application/program has to search for them and adapt their behaviour.

So if your program has not been programmed to look for, say "/org/gnome/desktop/privacy/remember-recent-files" in dconfig, but uses the GTK file system only, setting this parameter in dconf, in a gnome environmet, should have no impact.
Although, to be fair, I would think that many modern, cross-DE programs will look and follow the dconf rules, especially in the GUI, even if they may originally not have used this mechanism.(this makes it complicated to troubleshoot sometimes).

Example: configuring the filemanager "nemo", here some people are confused between dconf settings and the GTK file: recently-used.xbel
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=431474

Btw.This seems to be excactly your problem:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=359320

Please let me know if you had such an entry in the dconf files and what the path was.