Menubar apps are all the rage these days. They take up little room and provide a whole lot of functionality. The latest ‘lil app’ is something called ‘Blasted‘. It attempts to solve the problem of having quick access to recent items.

I’ve never used the “Recent Documents” list in Windows, but I hear people complaining about the lack of that functionality in Mac OS X. Sure it’s there in the  » Recent Items list, but it’s little inconvenient and doesn’t have any drag and drop function. Blasted on the other hand stays in your menubar, watching as you open, create, or modify existing files. Clicking the icon reveals a relatively small HUD, with a list of your recent items. The titles are large and easily readable, and the items are draggable so you can quickly move em to a flash drive or email. There’s also an excluded files list, which by default includes all those ‘noisy’ sections of your Mac which aren’t really pertaining to your files.

In my brief week or so of using the app, it’s been an ‘okayish’ experience. I’m more of a spotlight guy, and ever since I’ve started using Notational Velocity for my notes and writeups, ‘document files’ are out of the equation. I’ve also noticed that if one checks the ‘created and modified files’ option, it brings in a lot of junk, so I’ve left it at ‘Opened files’. For what it’s worth, the app works just as advertised. But I won’t be using it as I don’t need this functionality.

The stupidest thing about the app, is that there’s no way to try before you buy. Sure it costs a measly $5 for the app, but a trial is always something that makes for more sales.

Using the ‘Recent Items Stack’ instead

Here’s a trick I learnt a while mountain biking through the Alps. Turns out there’s also a “Recent Items” stack which can be enabled by this simple Terminal command. Simply launch the Terminal app, and enter:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’ && killall Dock
[Copy from this txt file if command returns error]

This will add a “Recent Applications” stack in your Dock. If you right-click on it, you can select from Recent Servers, Recent Documents, or even Favourite Items (which is basically your Finder “Places”. You can run the command over and over again to get new “recents” units. This coupled with the new “List View” tip mentioned earlier, and you have your free Blasted app, only moved from your Menubar down to the Dock.