The recent items that are displayed can be a security and privacy risk. Even more so as there are no obvious means to delete and manage them effectively. The only option that a user has is to right-click specific recent items in the jumplist for options to delete that item.

There is no option to delete all items or to exclude items from being displayed in the jumplist.

What most Windows 7 users do not know is that Microsoft is storing the recent items list in a super-hidden directory that cannot be accessed directly in Windows Explorer. One of the options to access that directory is to copy and paste the following path into the Windows Explorer address bar.

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

This will display a list of encoded file. Each file contains the information of a specific jumplist. It is however not easy to link those files to a jumplist. The only viable way to do that is to open the items in that folder in a text editor and search for recent items that are in the jumplist currently.

An easier way is to delete all files in the directory which will remove all recent items in every jumplist. This process can be automated with the command

del %appdata%\microsoft\windows\recent\automaticdestinations\*

Experienced users can add this to the Windows Task Scheduler to run the command on every shutdown of the system. (via How To Clear Recent Jumplist Items at Windows 7 News)

It is furthermore possible to drag folders into the jumplists which can be a very comfortable way of linking folders to specific applications. This could for example link download folders and P2P applications, document folders and word processing applications or movie players and movie folders.

While it is possible to drag folders into the jumplists menus it is not possible to do the same with applications. This would also be interesting in cases where applications are used together. It could for instance be useful for webmasters and bloggers to link a web browser like Firefox, Internet Explorer or Google Chrome with software programs that can take screenshots or upload files to ftp servers.

Jumplist Launcher has been designed for this purpose. While it does not provide the means to drag and drop applications into existing jumplists it offers its own jumplist that can be used to add programs to it. These computer programs can be grouped for quicker access. The Jumplist Launcher can list up to 60 different applications in its interface. Names and icons are customizable giving the user full control over how and where the applications are displayed.

Jumplist Launcher is compatible with Windows 7.