Nautilus and other file managers just show you the list they receive from GLib, a lower lever library for building applications independent from the desktop environment. It's up to the application when to tell GLib that it has opened a file. GLib automatically updates the list on app startup if the app implements GApplication open and receives one or more file paths as command line arguments.
GLib API for recent items and other XML interaction isn't entirely GObject introspection friendly. This means the app has to be written in C or maybe Vala if it wants to write to the recent items list at arbitrary times when already running. Or implement its own tool for updating recent items on every target platform. -- nautilus-list mailing list nautilus-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/nautilus-list
