Here’s version 2 of my little Clear Recent Items OSX app, now called The Cleaner. It still quickly and easily clears the recent items from Finder menus, but now clears Firefox and Safari histories and even securely empties your Mac’s trash - all with just one click.
The Details
If Firefox is running, The Cleaner runs the Tools » Clear Private Data menu from Firefox, clearing out any items you’ve checked in Firefox’s preferences (Firefox » Preferences » Privacy » Settings). If Safari is running, The Cleaner wipes Safari’s browsing history as well and then moves on to clear all entries from Finder’s Go » Recent Folders menu as well as the Apple » Recent Items menu.
Finally, The Cleaner invokes the Secure Empty Trash command from Finder, which not only empties the trash, but “shreds” it by overwriting the deleted files with junk data. You’ve just trimmed 8 clicks down to 1.
Why do my browsers have to be running? Just to keep things simple. Chances are, you only use one or the other on a regular basis. There’s no need for The Cleaner to launch a browser if you don’t use it, and it would get rather annoying if two browsers launched every time you ran the app. So, if they’re open, they’re cleaned. If not, they’re left alone. If you’d like a version of The Cleaner that will clean closed browsers, let me know and I’ll whip one up for you.
I’ve been using The Cleaner on OSX Tiger, but it should do the trick in Leopard as well. If not, let me know.
UPDATE: tested on Leopard as well, and it’s working great.
Download
Drag The Cleaner into your dock, or invoke it with Quicksilver, then one click and all of your basics are clean
Important: access for assistive devices must be enabled for any Applescript to use your Mac’s menus. Turn it on in your System Preferences, under Universal Access.
If you use this, drop me a comment and let me know what you think.
Thanks to PixelPressIcons for making this pretty.
3 Responses to “OSX: one-click to wipe Finder, Firefox, Safari and Trash”
[...] - bookmarked by 4 members originally found by myth on July 18, 2008 OSX: one-click to wipe Finder, Firefox, Safari and Trash http://www.decavolt.com/2008/07/osx-one-click-to-wipe-finder-firefox-safari-and-trash/ - [...]
Doesn’t work. In Firefox try saving an image (right click save as) and the dialog that comes up has a drop down list of recent places that is not cleared even after relaunch. All my software is up to date.
@trip: Those are recent places Firefox has saved to, and are not cleared via Firefox’s “Clear Private Data” option. I’ll look into it and see if it’s possible to clear that menu as well - I’m not sure that it is without removing Firefox preference files.
The Cleaner does, however, clear Finder’s Go menu, Recent Folders menu, runs Firefox’s “Clear Private Data” and Safari’s “Clear History.”
So yes, it does work.
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