"Recent files" is currently misleading

[rini]

I stumbled across .local/share/kactivitymanagerd by accident and got curious about the contents of its database, it turned out to have quite a lot of extra info I do not want KDE to keep track of:

• Not just which apps I opened (which is okay), but exactly when and what was it being used for
• Which URLs I clicked cross-application (i.e., if I clicked a link on Signal, it would end up here)

This, I found, was tied to the “Recent files” feature (as clearing that history in settings removed all of this information), but I do want to have files I have recently used readily available, as its quite useful when I want to send an image I saved again later to someone else. I do not however want which links I click to be saved to this database, in addition to my browser history (which many people disable). I believe the latter is a privacy liability, even if it is only stored locally (as being able to disable your browser history is a common feature), and makes me believe this bit of information shouldn’t even be kept track of by default.

I would appreciate more transparency in what KActivities actually keeps track of within settings and full control over it, because it seems to upset and confuse a lot of people. So far everyone I’ve shown this did not expect KDE to be keeping track of URLs accessed at all, which is honestly the most alarming thing to me.

There are currently also bugs in which it doesn’t even clear data properly (#478876), it didn’t happen to me when I cleared data for the first time but after re-enabling the feature for testing it does suddenly keep ResourceInfo in the database

[meven]

@rini

There are currently also bugs in which it doesn’t even clear data properly (#478876), it didn’t happen to me when I cleared data for the first time but after re-enabling the feature for testing it does suddenly keep ResourceInfo in the database

When the feature is disabled, the daemon is off and can’t maintain the setting, operational.

The bug was about keeping data whereas there was a configuration to remove older than X months data. It is fixed. I fixed it.

As long as the service is on it will collect data.

@rini

I would appreciate more transparency in what KActivities actually keeps track of within settings and full control over it

That’s KDE, you have full control over it, privacy is an utmost concern.

Just find the setting…
If something does not align with this please report a bug.

@rini

I stumbled across .local/share/kactivitymanagerd by accident and got curious about the contents of its database, it turned out to have quite a lot of extra info I do not want KDE to keep track of:

Did you have a look at its settings ? Systemsettings > Recent Files, krunner > recent…

You can exclude applications, choose the data retention duration, or disable it.
The default data collection retention is now 4 months by default. https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kactivitymanagerd/-/commit/45ff7f7cf8cb4e4b616bd0801e937b0a03b447da

It has a limited access to the activity of the applications, only what application do mention to the system do we collect.

All the data collection is implemented there: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kactivitymanagerd/-/tree/master/src/service/plugins?ref_type=heads

The entry points are the ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel file and the libreoffice recent files.

[meven]

@rini

because it seems to upset and confuse a lot of people

Do you have a source ?

[rini]

@meven

Did you have a look at its settings ?

I think you misunderstand, my main problem is that “Recent files” is not just “files”. It keeps track of other things–like URLs I click, which is IMO a privacy problem.

I just tried excluding my browser from that setting, and URLs still end up in ResourceInfo. I sent a link on my chat app, clicked it, and after running echo .dump | sqlite3 .local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database I can see the link at the bottom of the ResourceInfo table:

INSERT INTO ResourceInfo VALUES('https://example.com/','','application/octet-stream',1,0);

[rini]

@meven

The bug was about keeping data whereas there was a configuration to remove older than X months data. It is fixed. I fixed it.

I am clicking “Forget everything” and the ResourceInfo table remains there, with web URLs. There is a database~ file which is empty though so this might be a different bug, I don’t know.

[meven]

@rini

I am clicking “Forget everything” and the ResourceInfo table remains there, with web URLs. There is a database~ file which is empty though so this might be a different bug, I don’t know.

The database~ file is likely a backup file as the main file is being written to.

@rini

I just tried excluding my browser from that setting, and URLs still end up in ResourceInfo.

How are they present in the xml file ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel ?
It should tell which application shared the data, in particular in bookmark:application attribute name.
There might be a bug.

What is your plasma version ?

@rini

I just tried excluding my browser from that setting, and URLs still end up in ResourceInfo. I sent a link on my chat app, clicked it, and after running echo .dump | sqlite3 .local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database I can see the link at the bottom of the ResourceInfo table:

While looking at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=470026
I noticed too some data is left in ResourceInfo, but most of it was cleared still.

[rini]

@meven

How are they present in the xml file ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel ?
It should tell which application shared the data, in particular in bookmark:application attribute name.
There might be a bug.

What is your plasma version ?

I am on plasma 6.5.1 on Arch, and I do see this

  <bookmark added="2025-11-02T19:09:13.829000Z" href="https://example.com/" modified="2025-11-02T19:09:13.829000Z" visited="2025-11-02T19:09:13.829000Z">
    <info>
      <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org">
        <mime:mime-type type="application/octet-stream"/>
        <bookmark:applications>
          <bookmark:application count="1" exec="/usr/lib/firefox-developer-edition/firefox %u" modified="2025-11-02T19:09:13.829000Z" name="firefox-developer-edition"/>
        </bookmark:applications>
      </metadata>
    </info>
  </bookmark>

Actually, URLs are still showing up here even though “Recent files” is set to “Do not remember”, what causes this?

[meven]

Well the name. firefox-developer-edition isn’t great.
Did it appear clearly in the recentfiles kcm ?

We need it to match one of the application desktop-id in the app-list. You can see that partly in kmenuedit.

[rini]

This is what shows up for me after re-enabling the setting. I don’t know why System Settings shows up like that, but Firefox is fine

[rini]

I’ve replaced recently-used.xbel with an unwritable file, and I see this error:

% xdg-open https://example.com
kf.kio.core: Failed to recently-used.xbel for writing: "Existing file /home/rini/.local/share/recently-used.xbel is not writable"

This isn’t a solution (since it breaks other apps’ recent files) but it tells me the problem isn’t kactivitymanager, but actually something in kde-open (called by xdg-open) writing URLs to recently-used.xbel without respecting settings

I still think non-file:// URLs shouldn’t be written to that file at all, but going back to my main point, this should at least be a setting

[meven]

@rini

This isn’t a solution (since it breaks other apps’ recent files) but it tells me the problem isn’t kactivitymanager, but actually something in kde-open (called by xdg-open) writing URLs to recently-used.xbel without respecting settings

recently-used.xbel is written to directly by apps.

Gtk has an internal implementation to add them, must be used in firefox.
kio does the same for its applications.

Kio cleans some things from this file (reducing its size, removing hidden files IIRC) but it could do more, like purging applications you don’t want an history for. In Kactivitymanagerd daemon probably.
There might be a feature request already, feel free to open one.

[Cincinnatus]

Wow, I didn’t know this. Have you found an easy way to solve this issue? I’ve read through the responses here and it seems to be just way out of my league.

[bunnikyuube]

As a non-dev who’s been using and customizing plasma for months: yeah, i’m with you.

As far as i see it, Recent files shouldn’t even be active by default. I had slid over that menu for months even though i never use the feature, and as a result i had no idea it was enabled or that it had a whole 4 months of memory.

Dolphin should show a display on first opening Recent Files linking to the settings window to enable it if you wish. It really should not be enabled by default. I’m not a dev, but i’m hardly dumb- i just was unlucky and missed this one setting i would have disabled month ago.

[moschlegbz]

Similar to the OP, I’d prefer KDE not constantly store off what files and paths are used.

I went into System Settings→Recent Files, set it to Clear History (Forget Everything) and disabled storing documents(checked “do not remember”). But the ~/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/ files still existed and stored information that supposedly was just cleared. I was able to see some of the contents with “strings *”
I went ahead and wiped them out with:

cd ~/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources
find . -type f -exec truncate -s 0 {} \; -print

which finds every file under the resources and truncates it to 0 bytes. I’ll monitor that to make sure the files don’t fill back up

[krake]

@moschlegbz

finds every file under the resources and truncates it to 0 bytes.

That only clears the cache of the kactivitymanagerd.

As @meven pointed out, the source of some of this data are files that are used by other applications to store such information, e.g. Firefox

[moschlegbz]

the source of some of this data are files that are used by other applications to store such information, e.g. Firefox

Yes, I figured that out. KDE is squirrelling file data all over, like Okular puts metadata into ~/.local/share/okular/docdata/ and continues doing so even if you go in the Okular preferences and set the “General → Items in recent history” to “0”.
This is bad design (mostly in the apps), if the user says “I don’t want history saved” it shouldn’t be implemented as just not showing the data but still saving off the files. The files themselves should be deleted and no longer saved.

You’d have to find all the folders and manually delete the files occasionally as they build up. Do the files always go under ~/.local/ or might some go to ~/.cache/ ?

After a tedious review, I found these files/dirs that save off files information on my laptop.

.local/share/okular/docdata/*
.local/share/kwrite/anonymous.katesession
.local/share/meld/recent*meldcmp
.local/share/baloo/index*
.local/share/kmail2/kmail2_recentfiles
.local/share/RecentDocuments/*
.local/share/konqueror/closeditems_saved

So I could just make a script to delete those on startup. Many of those apps don’t stop making those files even if you tell them to not do that. For example, you can uncheck “Save the recently played items in the menu” in VLC’s Qt interface preferences but the movie or audio files will still have their metadata file saved in ~/.local/share/RecentDocuments/

for example:

cat RecentDocuments/power.mp4.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Icon=video-mp4
Name=power.mp4
Type=Link
URL[$e]=file:$HOME/Videos/power.mp4
X-KDE-LastOpenedWith=vlc

If you have more or different apps, you’ll have more. In some cases I used judgement to just skip looking in the subfolders

Like shown in the “power.mp4” sample file, the “RecentDocuments” seems to take files from multiple apps, the files contain a “X-KDE-LastOpenedWith” value that apps apparently look for. But not all applications use it.

[rini]

@meven

recently-used.xbel is written to directly by apps.

Gtk has an internal implementation to add them, must be used in firefox.
kio does the same for its applications.

You can correct me if I am wrong, but by debugging using strace (which tracks all syscalls of a process), I can see that kde-open itself is writing the entry to recently-used.xbel. I am really not familiar with KDE internals so I can’t dig further, but I think it’s incorrect to say Firefox is writing these entries.

rini ~ % rm .local/share/recently-used.xbel
rini ~ % strace -e trace=write -s 999999 -o trace.txt kde-open https://example.com
rini ~ % rg bookmark trace.txt
14:write(23, "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n<xbel version=\"1.0\" xmlns:bookmark=\"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-bookmarks\" xmlns:mime=\"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info\">\n  <bookmark href=\"https://example.com\" added=\"2025-11-05T19:23:46.127000Z\" modified=\"2025-11-05T19:23:46.127000Z\" visited=\"2025-11-05T19:23:46.127000Z\">\n    <info>\n      <metadata owner=\"http://freedesktop.org\">\n        <mime:mime-type type=\"application/octet-stream\"/>\n        <bookmark:applications>\n          <bookmark:application name=\"firefox-developer-edition\" exec=\"/usr/lib/firefox-developer-edition/firefox %u\" modified=\"2025-11-05T19:23:46.127000Z\" count=\"1\"/>\n        </bookmark:applications>\n      </metadata>\n    </info>\n  </bookmark>\n</xbel>\n", 755) = 755

[Cincinnatus]

Judging by the comments, it seems that there’s not a way to stop this from happening. It seems that your history in saved in a lot of the apps to no matter what you do to your settings, which is ridiculous if you ask me.

From here forward, I think every time there is a release update available for my OS, I’m just going to do a fresh install each time. Not perfect, but at least my history will be cleared when I upgrade which I guess is better than nothing.

If anyone figures out an easier way, please let us know how to do it and thanks for pointing this out.

[meven]

@Cincinnatus

If anyone figures out an easier way, please let us know how to do it and thanks for pointing this out.

rm ~/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database
rm ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel

And in systemsettings “recent files” you can turn off the feature. This will stop the database to be populated. recently-used.xbel depends on applications.

@rini

I am really not familiar with KDE internals so I can’t dig further, but I think it’s incorrect to say Firefox is writing these entries.

Well then listen to me. You could have strace firefox.
As I said:

@meven

Kio cleans some things from this file (reducing its size, removing hidden files IIRC)

That includes kio-open. kio-open is more likely to add entries to the file in this instance.

Whether kio writes to the file doesn’t prevent other programs to write to it.

This is specified by desktop-bookmark-spec

[rini]

@meven

Well then listen to me. You could have strace firefox.

Okay, I just did:

Not once did Firefox open the file, yet the entry still shows up there after running xdg-open because kde-open is writing it. Please believe me.