Question

When you load up xcode it tells what the recent files/projects you worked on are. Where does Xcode store this information?

Answer 1

I believe they’re stored in com.apple.Xcode NSRecentXCProjectDocuments. This is part of the “Expert” preferences, which are not exposed through the GUI.

This may vary slightly based on what you are trying to do. For example, $ defaults write com.apple.Xcode NSRecentDocumentsLimit 20 will show 20 recent projects (rather than the default 10).

As for accessing the list itself, the only thing I could find was the following code in the Quick Search Box source code (though it looks like it might require an external library):

 if ([appIdentifier isEqualToString:@"com.apple.Xcode"]) {
          NSArray *recentXCodeProjects
            = GTMCFAutorelease(
                CFPreferencesCopyValue(CFSTR("NSRecentXCProjectDocuments"),
                                       (CFStringRef)appIdentifier,
                                       kCFPreferencesCurrentUser,
                                       kCFPreferencesAnyHost));